Recent reviews by dev_null

Miles better than D4 and it's not even finished yet. Definitely a pivot from PoE1, very familiar but slower and more deliberate, with a dodge roll and slowed movement while attacking. It makes for a much more fluid experience and I can't wait to see what else they have in store.

Pack gives you a bunch of items, but you can only hold 4 at a time from the start so anything you get over that will be auto-salvaged. The only way around this seems to be to hold on to the packs until you have more inventory space, which requires massive amounts of borb juice to unlock. The borbventure update doesn't seem to make much sense either, I guess you use the borb sword to get borb juice from borbs, but the amount you get is VERY low. The only way I can see to get borb tokens is to convert 500 borb juice into 5. Since you need anywhere between 10 to 30+ tokens to start 1 borbventure (at least in the beginning levels), you might need up to 3,000 borb juice, which can be converted from 100,000,000 (1e8) borbs. Using the borb sword seems to get you like... 5? borb juice each, so converting seems to be the way to go. So to start ONE level 10 borbventure, which gives like 1 item or 150 juice or something, you need 6e10 borbs. That is INSANE, and I can't figure out any better way to get the tokens. This makes no sense at all. Did they even playtest this?

Oh and also I appear to have like 94 tokens for some reason. Maybe you can get them from the packs somehow? But it won't let me start any borbventures, even though they only cost 17 and 28 tokens and I now have 2 borb guys so I don't even know what's going on. I think this indie developer deserves some extra cash so I'm fine with paying up regardless and I don't regret it, but if you actually wanted something cool out of this pack move along. All you'll get is confusion.

Edit: I didn't actually have 94 tokens, when I closed and reopened the game they were gone.

Having a ton of fun playing with my SO so far. It's definitely not a typical open-world persistent survival game, but it's a refreshing twist on the gameplay loop. Don't get too invested in your prospects, they're intended to be short-term goal-oriented missions. If you want a persistent sandbox, make an outpost. I see this as sort of a roguelite/survival hybrid; it scratches that survival itch with all the long-term progression and replayability of a rogue-lite.

Performance could be better, I'm playing on an RTX 2070 SUPER with 32gb RAM and a Ryzen 7 2700X processor, getting 40-50 fps on Medium-High settings. It's not perfect, but it's more than acceptable to me. I'm sure optimization will get better and the developers seem very active and motivated to give this game the polish it needs.

Haven't encountered too many bugs, there are some visual quirks that are more hilarious that anything (like animals performing extreme yoga while running into rocks/walls) but nothing game-breaking so far. I get the impression that most of the negative reviews boil down to 2 camps: the people who are expecting AAA quality/performance from an indie dev team, and the people who are expecting Ark and didn't actually read the game description. As long as you go into it with informed and modest expectations (and a decent PC), you'll have a great time.

This game really deserves another good review to offset the baseless negative reviews.
The common complaints:

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The game tells you right at the start that it's best played with a controller. I played about 30 hours with a controller and I've had ZERO qualms with the controls or movement (the "hold X to sprint, release to jump, stop moving and release to not jump" is a little weird, but sprinting really doesn't make you move faster than just jumping nonstop anyway). I tried to play with M+KB for 3 minutes and hated it. If you don't have a controller, just skip this game. Don't ignore the game's recommendation and then turn around and leave a bad review. Once you get the hang of movement, it gets really fun. Jumping off a cliff, grabbing vines to swing over to a tree and landing on a limb, super fun and satisfying. Sometimes you will over/undershoot it, yes. Sometimes you'll plummet to the ground and break a leg. It's not bad game design, it's realism. This isn't Assassin's Creed where your feet snap to every surface. Every jump is a risk until you're fully comfortable and familiar with your limits.

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The AI in the game isn't fantastic, I'll admit. But there are certain safeguards built into the game to offset it. You can learn passives that allow clan members to dodge and defend themselves. You don't need to micro-manage their needs; they'll keep themselves fed and hydrated as long as they're at the settlement, and if they're following you, they'll just eat when you eat and drink when you drink. The only thing you need to keep an eye on is bleeding, which is very blatantly indicated on the clan circle in the corner of the screen. Get them some medicine and they're fine. Pathfinding is a little weird at times and you will probably have to backtrack now and then to pick up stragglers, but as long as you keep an eye on the "following" indicators and make sure everyone is always following you, you shouldn't have any issues. Most of the time, you don't even need followers. Grab a couple kids and go on solo expeditions, as long as you think smart and approach every situation logically you'll be fine.

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This game does not have one, and for a very good reason. You're meant to LEARN, just like our ancestors did. Trial and error, experimentation, discovery. Grab two items and try to smash them together to discover new tools. Eat a mushroom to figure out what it does. Remember all of this yourself, just like your ancestors had to. If you forget what a plant cured, or what ailments it caused, then your ancestor also forgot and had to relearn. They didn't have a recipe book. They didn't have waypoints. Treat this game as more of a simulator; through learning the gameplay and world, you are reliving the experiences our ancestors had of learning to survive and evolve.

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Overall, I really love this game. The first 10 hours of play, you're playing a survival and exploration game. From that point on, you're focused on the long-term aspects of evolution and progression. Once you gain an understanding of how the generation/evolution systems work, it becomes a game of practicing traits and completing unlocks to further your species. There's always something to do, things to learn, and ways to grow and literally evolve. 35 hours in, I'm still discovering ways to combine items and find new tools. I'm still discovering new wildlife, new foods, new genetic traits, new areas. The map is enormous, the tree limbs have a certain flow to them for easy travel, and the crafting system feels rewarding when you discover new things. You can take your time and try to unlock everything before passing an evolution to maximize growth, or you can rush evolutions for a more constant pace. As long as you think smart and put yourself in the footsteps of your ancestors, the game is rarely punishing and every punishment feels deserved.

Final thoughts: If you like immersive open-world sandbox survival games and long-term progression, don't pass this one up. Just, please, use a controller and be prepared to have to learn things on your own. Or, ruin the experience for yourself and look everything up. Either way, this is a gem of a game and is at least worth the discounted price, if not full price.

Great little game with solid puzzles (except for a few at the end of the game). If you like South Park, you'll like the sense of humor in this game. I personally think the juxtaposition of the graphics and the writing is brilliant. If you don't like edgy/potty humor though skip through the dialogue and enjoy the puzzles.

- IF YOU ARE ON THE FENCE ABOUT BUYING THIS GAME, STOP HERE! -
Now let me ask you a few questions...
Is the print on your TAB, 1, 2, 3 and 4 keys worn off from mashing them endlessly?
Are you sick of the recycled 'kill x of these' 'collect x of those' 'talk to that guy' quests?
Are the generic fantasy landscapes and creatures becoming dull and boring to you?
Do you spend well over half of your MMO gameplay standing still, waiting in queues?
Do you find yourself feeling guilty over the $15 that's ripped out of your bank account every month, hesitant to end the subscription because you may play again or still play on occasion?
Is your MMO experience beginning to feel like a chore, feeling obligated to log in and do the same handful of daily quests every day to progress?
Do you feel handicapped in PvP because you don't have the time to devote to a game to have the best gear like everyone else?
Do you long for a sci-fi MMOFPS that doesn't totally suck?
Do the words 'Borderlands MMO' excite you?

If you answered 'no' to all of these questions, move along. Go back to WoW or FFXIV or Generic Fantasy Online.

If you answered 'yes' to 3 or more of these questions, Defiance is for you.
(Incoming wall of text; TL;DR at end)

Now, I know there are a LOT of mixed reviews on this game; I was hesitant to buy it myself. However, after 20 hours of playing, I'm inclined to believe that those negative reviewers are the type that actually LIKE the boring grinds, the generic daily quests, the stale tab-targetting system, and the run-of-the-mill fantasy landscapes. As for me, I've grown weary of all of that long ago. I'm a sci-fi nerd at heart, and LONG have I dreamed of a good, solid sci-fi MMOFPS. I played in the Huxley beta, and it held so much promise but its cancellation smashed my dreams to pieces. Now, years after Huxley's cancellation, I can safely say that I've found a scifi MMOFPS that I love.

The combat system is fluid and responsive; I haven't felt bogged-down or limited by the controls or interface (except for accidentally hitting CTRL to try to crouch out of habit, been meaning to remap that...)

The 'quests' are almost completely limited to experiencing storyline; the real experience-generators are dynamic map-wide events with a localized objective, which anyone in the area can join in on. These 'emergencies' aren't hard to miss, either; I commonly find myself deliberately skipping them just so I can finally make it to my original destination.

It's nearly impossible to play this game 'solo', but you don't feel forced into group play. The game focuses strongly on area-based events, which attract the attention of all surrounding players. What may start out as you killing a few mobs around an incursion site may (and almost always will) snowball into a half-hour long territory domination war with 50+ other players.
If you like playing solo, don't worry! You're not thrown into a group with these people, and you don't have to talk to them. Just stay in the area and do your job, and you will receive proper reward.

Now, onto the gear system. Personally, I've grown tired of the complicated gear structures of MMOs. The wide diversity of stats and gear slots and enchantments and bonuses; frankly it became tedious for me to keep track of. While FFXIV was (and is) a great game, managing all the gear pieces for all my jobs was a chore.
In Defiance, you have 6 equipment slots to look after;
Weapons (2): You carry 2 weapons at all times, and hitting Q switches between them. This opens you up to many possibilities; want to stay strictly close-range? Rock a shotgun and a grenade launcher! Prefer to stay at a distance? Use a sniper rifle and keep a machine gun for when things get too close!
Shield: Pretty self-explanatory; a shield that absorbs a certain amount of damage, and recharges after a period of not taking damage. The choices here are relatively diverse, the variables being shield capacity, recharge/second, and recharge delay. There are also some additional effects; more on that in a sec.
Grenades: Think grenade mods from Borderlands 2; grenade mods apply a variety of effects to your grenades, from the standard explosion, to a hail of napalm, to a splash of movement-slowing sludge, to a dazing flashband effect. Hell, I'm using a mod now that causes 4 or 5 face-crawlers to appear and eat the faces off my enemies.
Spikes: These act as pylons that grant an effect to all players in its vicinity, be it shield/health regeneration, damage boost, or ammo regen. I can't tell you how many times the Protection Spike has saved my ass.
Stims: Your 'potions'; the standard med stim to restore health, damage-boosting stims, and even a melee-damage-boosting stim.
Weapon Mods: All weapons come with 4 'mod slots', consisting of a barrel, sight, magazine, and stock. These apply slight bonuses to the gun you install them on, giving you a bit of customization with your weapons.
Once you get past the starter zone, you'll start to find items with 'synergy bonuses' which apply additional effects based on how many items you have equipped with that synergy (think set bonuses here). In most cases, you don't have to grind for that ONE piece of gear in the set that you want, as the set bonus is a random variable on all weapons. Now finding that specific type of gun with the set bonus you want on it, that gets a bit tricky.

Player Progression: Since you don't really have to constantly grind after the next best set of gear, you're probably asking how one progresses in this game. The answer is Defiance's EGO system. Your EGO is basically your 'level', which caps out at 5012 (or 5016?), and is advanceable not only through killing stuff and doing events, but also through raising your skill levels with weapons and vehicles. You earn EGO Units as your EGO level raises, when are spent on perks in the EGO grid. This is a skill-tree (more like a skill-map) of perks that you advance through based on the path you take through the grid, beginning at one of four primary abilities. These perks consist of a cloaking device, a short sprint effect with a melee damage boost, a holographic decoy which you can instantly switch places with, and a temporary damage boost. Once you choose your skill, you unlock all the cells that are touching that 2x2 cell (effectively unlocking 8 new perks to choose from). When you choose a perk and unlock it, you then unlock each of the adjacent perks, moving further and further into the rest of the grid. Most perks in the area around an ability compliment that specific ability, but there are some perks that do not augment their respective ability, opening you up to some interesting perk combinations down the line.

Now, onto another critical factor in any MMO; travel. This has always been a make-or-break for me, as I hate running for extended times, or riding on a taxi-system and waiting to arrive.
The 'mounts' in this game are vehicles (one of which you are given right off the bat), divided by 3 categories; runners (ATVs), rollers (dunebuggies and cars), and Cerberus (which I assume to be larger, slower vehicles, such as trucks; however I don't own one). And though they serve the primary purpose of transportation, they are FUN AS HELL, effectively adding a racing/driving aspect to the game. You can boost, powerslide, run over enemies, and go off jumps (in fact, you gain skill levels and EGO for all of this as well!). The driving mechanics in this game are VERY fluid and enjoyable.
If that weren't enough, there are even RACING MINIGAMES which reward you EGO and cash. Each one even has a leaderboard of top scores.
If you somehow get tired of driving, you could also just warp between evenly-spaced hubs, which include merchants and quests. Warping is free, instant, and has no cooldown.

It seems I've run out of room for this review.
TL;DR: Scrounge up $10 and buy this game! (Or try the trial.) You won't regret it!