Recent reviews by TheyCallMeRecon

if your here for the old battlefields this one is half baked. 3/4 of the maps are tiny, most of those dont have helis or jets those that do half are broken and only one side gets them. Firestorm was "brought back" but is massively changed for the worse. most building you can go in a small unconnected room. most buildings arnt destructable. levelution doesnt exist. alot of your games will be filled with bots

-TLDR: If your not into management games this aint for you. If you are your in the right place. Also, damn is this game constant eye candy. The premise on paper is a little boring, you basically mine resources, find/discover more, move and repeat. But its surprisingly good and the story and twist is also surprisingly good, its also surprisingly well optimize and refined (no cliping, graphic bugs, or crashes so far)-

I'm just starting out but ive got to say, the game is damn good looking. Im on a 5070TI and i can run 4k dlss 144fps with 138 1% no frame gen. which is honestly So refreshing. Additionally the game is super well tuned no big drops or hitching and damn everything looks super good, the suits look like fabric, wet things are shiny, faces dont look off, colors are great without being over the top and the lighting look SOOOO good. Its also a nice touch that when climbing stuff your not cliping through the wall, or grabing nothing there. you put your foot on ledges and grab ledges. Which again while not being necessary is very refreshing with the current state of unrefined releases. If your not into management game this wont be for you. but so far its super enjoyable for me.

-TLDR: Game has glaring bugs that punish you with the lack of saves/checkpoints (campaign) and the AI for airborne units is horrible and will blatantly ignore commands at times and sit in spawn or wherever its orbiting.Not bad tho, will probably be worth it once the edges have been smoothed out that being said theres just some really dumb choices, for example theres laser guilded munitions... but they only work if you only off by the length or width of a tank. meaning you can laze for a cruise and they move 6 ft forward you miss, despite the tank being lazed, the cruise having all the time in flight to correct.-

The game needs more time in the oven. Its by no means bad, but the ai target prioritization is horrible. Helos regularly will target unarmed transports over AA thats both closer and actively shooting at them, targeting randomly restarts and the jet AI IS HORRIBLE. they will regularly just ignore commands and ignore your targeting so even micro managing doesnt work. Im sure this will be good after some AI tweaking but at the moment its just frustrating

Additionally the campaign has no save system, and forces you to listen to flavor dialog some times for several minutes before being able to redo a mission. This is on top of metals for RNG things like "All Helicopters survive" then having scripted rockets in the mission that have about a 50/50 chance of knocking out a bird. which wouldn't be that big of a thing if the dialog wasnt unskipable, result in pause bugs, and the missions having 0 checkpoints. meaning if its a 40 min mission and you get a freeze or bug, congrats your doing all the work... again... for another 40 minutes... lets hope your not metal chasing or have the unfortunate luck of yet another bug.

Ive also encountered multiple game breaking bugs such as every time you pause theres a small chance the game will just refuse to let you unpause (as far as i can tell its if you pause during talking... which theres alot of (the talking isnt necessarily bad its just unfortunate that the bug seems to be tied to it.). Ive also had 2 freezes that hasnt locked up my pc but has the game, and refuses to close, task manager and loging out wouldnt kill the game so i have to hard reset my pc to close it both times.

Theres also a really weird gameplay choice where if a transport is destroyed with troops inside alot of times they just disembark completely ok? im not sure if its a bug or intended because i dont think it happens every time, but ive bombed transports only to have it crack open like a russian egg and spawn 5 squads i then had to fight, same thing can happen with helis tho it seems less common. if its them wanting to make the argument that people could survive the initial attack i mean, sure ig... but then why are they at full combat capacity undamaged and unfazed.

The pros from the game is the tutorial is simple enough to get you started (tho id like a quick breakdown of the cards because its not as intuitive as it first appears), the campaign has you play opposite sides of the same war just different battles and it works well. The game runs VERY well, had no idea i was running it at 4k max and never noticed hitching or fps drops even with large abouts of BMs and Patriots shooting down said missiles and while pushing up over 12 tanks. The vehicles feel extremly modern for the genre, the game is mostly intutive if you play warno or similar, the UI could be touched up to be a bit more intuitive but its by no means bad. vehicles feel like they all fill different roles despite there being a bunch and most can flex if necessary which feels nice. Despite what others claim on here infantry (if used correctly) can be terrifying. One standard squad with AT can kill 2 T92s if placed properly and ambushing.

As i said previously the game seems like a good contender especially if you like games like warno. However small things like AI prio targeting, AI movement, and AI responsiveness all need touched up before i would consider recommending the game, the game also has some game breaking bugs (its launch week so thats to be expected) also no save system is a massive OOF. That being said its far from the worst ive seen and is both playable and enjoyable.

-TLDR: Despite what streamers say, if you loose your base or gear to a bug support will politely say that sucks then do nothing to comp lost gear. Loose your all your loot in your base and crafters despite it being water shield and shields on. too bad. loose your entire kit to the worm because server went down while your flying over DD (out side of normal restart)? too bad, guess you gotta play our game for tens of hours to recover. if your here for coop survival-Great game. If your here for coop story/pve congrats you spent all this money for like 4 missions and 8 trials (basically intractable cinematics) you have to do solo. If your here for PVP you either wont find it or its a rocket spam followed by 4+ hours of trying to remake/repair you vehicle with basically no return. ASSET flips have better pvp. ENDGAME UNPLAYABLE due to dcs or crashes in teh desert results in you being spawn away from your vehicle, which will ultimently result you your loss of ALL of your gear to one of the worms(support WILL NOT comp you for this). Its is literally IMPOSSIBLE to prevent this unless you have someone come save you BEFORE the worm eats you and its a toss up as to weither it will eat your heli. Its all RNG if it happens. at t5/t6 your looking at around 4-9 hrs of farming to recover your losses... because of a crash/bug thats completely unavoidable. sometimes crafters and chest will take dam in your base despite it being water sealed, and powered, which at T1 is probably only a handful of hours but at T5-T6- its TENS of hours. If you want to take a break guess you gotta restart because the devs have said they have 0 interest in long term storage. Unless your the first group i wouldn't buy the game for at least a year, or until a major overhaul it blatantly wont respect your time or that you have a life, they will expect you to log in at least every 3 days as a solo. If you want to play anyways Id recommend immediately joining a guild or finding a few friends to maintain bases when the others cant.-

about a quarter of my playtime is from waiting for the servers to be back up from maintence (this was a launch week issue i havent encountered since) then about half is farming trying to recuperate, my stuff being wiped by server bug, worm (only happened once), or unannounced delayed server wipe. leaving only about a quarter of my playtime actually playing/experiencing the game

PVE is pretty solid and enjoyable and will give you several hours of enjoyment. If you have played other similar pve style games (conan, 7days, ect) youll know if youll like this game. That being said only like a quarter of the mainline story is done, and despite what people say you can absolutely make it to end game as a solo. i have ... as a solo. That being the case the game has glaring problems weither you are a PVP player or PVE. PVE outside of the survival aspect, the game is basically only a quarter complete. They hide behind the live service excuse but you have 8 locations to travel to, then like 4 missions (main story line- theres ALOT of side quests, contracts, and locations to visit) (though i will say the missions are cool, well done, and i did enjoy them) then the story pauses and its liek ;welp you know everything you did when you started youve been introduced to like 2 (debatable 3) main story characters thats all you get...for now. which is basically nothing.

If your a PVPer, on ground the TTK is VERY high (5 -15 seconds of uninterrupted 1v1) and the agility is stupidly high (thats one of the fun parts) so on ground pvp just doesn't happen, people just insta flee. 99% of your PVP is going to be in the air at the end game, and is just an unguilded rocket spam to see whos the first to land like 10 rockets. A majority of time people will again just flee, with you unable to stop them, OR they land and despawn their gear/heli leaving you with nothing. you will also very regularly run into guilds and zergs of 5+ players that all have rockets meaning you have 0 chance as a solo (assuming they can hit anything). Additionally the consequence for PVPing is a damaged or lost heli that JUST ON ALU COST ALONE TAKES 3 HOURS TO SMELT.

Again if your not a pvper your forced to attempt to infiltrate these guild and zerg death pits to try to find scraps and hopefully survive a several minute flight back a safe location. every trip will take over 15 minutes to fly there and back, the entire time risking running into 5+ players. Luckily the guilds in my DD are pretty standoff/nice and are not all SOS but this could easily not be the case.

If you like FTL, Its FTL with Tweaks, 40k ish with new factions, weapon types, mechanics and more. Its not an FTL clone, more like a total conversion mod or a spiritual successor. So if you enjoyed FTL then get it. Thought 20 bucks was a bit steep, but seeing as how i already have 20hrs in im satisfied and intend to keep playing.

Also I can confirm IT WORKS ON STEAM DECK, however the cloud save system does not, so you can transfer you saves back and forth between them. Nemo has a guild on the Community hub and I provided the file path and recommendations, for the steam deck, over there.

Highly recommend. I beat the game once, stopped playing for a few years and came back because a friend recommended the new game + and ++, and being someone who normally doesn't do that, i was hesistent. But ive gotta say it was worth it and that i love this game. Its gorgeous, hard, cinematic af, and plays and feels how it looks. Its feels like being the main character in your own anime without all the cheesy stuff... then you face a boss/2/ maybe even 5 that you've never seen before at once and your high opinion of your mech changes. Then after some alterations your back to being a bad ass again. Probably in my all time favorite games.

The game cares more about your money then solving problems. They show that the game is early access, sure. But there's 3 keys to get you into the microtransation menus and only 0 for reporting a bug. I played for nearly 3 hours and had 3 separate items break and be completely unusable. would refund if i could.

First of all the bad because its simple

Any complaints about Alife (aka enemys spawning on you)
Complaints about optimization
voice acting or spongy mutants
ALL are valid

Edit: all months later are still here, despite being a decade after the old game they've managed to make it open world and add 0 content, which is even more egregious seeing as how the moding community has shown concepts that work like weapon modification and breaking down weapons to repair, gear repair and work-benching, if you want more stalker just go play gamma if you've experienced gamma then maybe look here.

That being said if you like Stalker and wanted more this is it. I personally prefer more of a gamma experience but whats here is good and damn is it gorgeous. The gun-play has been tuned up and animations smoothed and alomolys touched up in a good way. I also think mod support will help this game SIGNIFICANTLY. Im also surprised to not see this game review bombed.

If this style of game is your thing, this will be one of your top games. If you like infantry based strategy games that are more then just door kickers this is for you. IMO i think this game has the best bones out of any of this style of game and because of that it is a joy to play. Given some time to polish its self it'll stand out in the genre. That being said the first mission (imo) is the best map. After that it has some cool designs but the maps all feel a little small and it can become hard to maximize the utility of your units. At times it does feel like a door kicker (not that there's anything wrong with that.) I would like to see in the future the game become more like a platoon/company manager where setting up a perimeter or over watch actually serves a purpose. ATM though a sniper/over-watch unit can be occasionally helpful it tends to be just better served by riflemen. This is the trend of the game that typically a rifleman is your best bang per buck for most uses due to the fact that you never have a need to worry about ambushes or reinforcements. I think this could be achieved by bigger maps a bit or random chance, and diversity in units. ATM your ment to be a SF unit so your ment to avoid getting in fights your not likely to win and by picking off one by one, however, I belive the style of the gameplay would better be suited to the idea i posed earlier. So if a new game/DLC were to come out thats the direction I think that one should go. I believe the developer has alot of talent and could end up making some impressive stuff over their career.

While this game used to be good it has a history of horrible UI and not listening to their community.

Current problems
-cursor on screen mid game and will tab out *only fix is alt+f4 and 50% chance game wont detect you were in a game,
-game wont launch if crashed once prior regardless of crash reason
-splash screen can take secords or hours its luck of the drawl
-rejoining games can be near instant or become bugged and make it unable to rejoin
-Solo players have the ability to revive themselves to full health which no one else can do resulting in them making up half of the servers and sitting in bushes snipping accursed the map until they die or run out of ammo then get back up and run away.
-Garbage nat code that results killing people then half-2 seconds later dieing to their bullet and trading. Trading is extremely common and is how most gunfights end. If with a solo player they can just stand back up and loot you.
-Most of the veteran community has left game resulting in low player counts. This is due to the devs not listening to community wants and instead focusing on adding small things that break more things and never focusing on problems that have been around since 2020.