Recent reviews by блины

I will not be going into the likeliness of the web series or comparing it to Project Nexus Classic. This is a negative review and after putting in almost 1k hours, this is the closest I can give to a neutral rating.

I still find this game wildy fun and know the mechanics and exploits like the back of my hand. My first 20 hours were brutal and lately, I've had friends new to this game give up on it for the same reasons I used to struggle with:

While a clever recreation of one of the earliest episodes, it does not teach you mandatory things such as tac, sweet spots, kicking/drop kicking/shoving, timing counters/critical hits, full dodges, alternating controls (e.g. holding SHIFT allows for unarmed combat while holding weapons) and much more.

Whatever the tutorial 'teaches' you is not memorable. You follow prompts to completion with no context given (headshot tutorial on the sign is a perfect example). You are rushing through actions you will likely not do early in campaigns (G03lm takedowns and heavy/charged swings) and will forget quickly.

You are expected to play story first which recaps the basics of combat and allows you to learn to deal with most enemy types. You are left in the dark to character exclusive skills and sweet spots, nor are you shown the stats of ANY weapon. These are only taught in arena.

But the only tutorial you get in arena is how to sprint. Story teaches you how to brace your gun and command your squadmates. You will not learn anything in arena unless you figure it out by accident or read what few skill descriptions have instructions.

Arena origins with unique controls don't have any information in their description on how to use them. The only way to view this is to go into a specific tab in your inventory (Creber origin however, does not tell you anywhere that you can switch between clones as you do between squadmates in story mode).

Outside of this, your only reliable tutorials are the loading screen tips as they are not displayed anywhere else. Even then, this does not tell you important gameplay tips such as throwables having a hidden sweet spot or the full extent of partner/hireling commands.

To add insult, the gameplay is incredibly simple. It does NOT get any more complex than when you first start. Understanding how the simplest mechanics work, but only after you've seen everything there is to offer, is a major issue.

With the exception of gun enemies keeping a small distance and engineers covering/dodging often; they will always walk towards you in a straight line to attack, only sometimes backpedalling.

That is it.

You either mow them down in a predicatable line or you get cornered. Your only strategies are seeing what weapons are available. This, on top of stunlocking enemies grouping up on you makes it even more tedious.

The way it impacts AI is how often they attack and how quick they are to aggro on you.

Tourist difficulty should not exist. It makes the majority of enemies stand around.

Normal difficulty has the right amount of aggro, but is far too easy as attacks from enemies are not that common.

Tough difficulty makes enemies bullet sponges. This is extremely tedious and boring. Especially in story with tanky enemies in the Sanford/Deimos levels; and notorious in the final stages.

Madness difficulty is the closest you will get to an engaging playthough. Enemies are very aggressive and everyone, everything and YOU get put down with ease. This being locked behind Tough is strange since you need to have played a level at it's worst to get the definitive experience.

Regardless of difficulty, enemies still act the same by running at you with no tactics whatsoever. No extra skills, no extra stats outside of HP, no enhanced traits like dodging more, nothing.

I do not have to explain why this is not fun but I will anyway. Some enemies' whole purpose is to charge at you and stunlock you while dealing absurd damage. These enemies are extremely common in overcrowded rooms and large rooms with awkward geometry. The enemies accompanying them typically have high tac so you have to focus in on one enemy at a time. For the ones with no tac, they group up fast and act as meatshields while you're relentlessly shot at from enemies behind them. This is most apparent in Climb.

Getting stunlocked is unavoidable in certain situations as big groups can completely block your dodging attempts and the player's flinching animation is longer than the enemies' attack animations. Though spamming space might let you dodge out of them if you get lucky.

(You can 'break' out of attacks at the cost of some tac by perfect blocking while walking backwards or simply countering the attacker. The game never tells you this)

A good example are the story campaign partners. They will not move or attack if they're duel wielding a gun and a melee weapon, causing a complete shut down and get themselves killed. They burn through ammo quickly, do not duel wield on their own, mostly heavy swing and leave themselves open, not throwing away or dropping empty guns, having no weapon priorities/picking up weapons they don't specialise in, using throwables on enemies near you rather than the enemies they are preoccupied with (shout out to Sanford and his grenades), disobeying commands after losing corpus/getting ragdolled and so on and so forth.

Arena hirelings have their own issues and they're largely the same as story companions.

The only way to avoid these issues is by having a second player but the game doesn't show you the majority of controller inputs, nevermind not teaching you on keyboard either.

Excluding magiturge, the post-launch origins are just mid.

The S-3lf Eater update is underwhelming, frustrating and does not unlock a new loadout for what little it's worth.

The Heist is only worth playing once and does not give you good XP or as much money/tokens as endless waves would with the same amount of time put into it.

There are many environmental and attack animation collision issues, AI shutting down, red ghosts endlessly teleporting if not killed fast enough, the final boss can softlock into one attack, weapons/throwables clip through the ground, enemies fall out of the stage and cannot be killed, co-op controls and getting them to work, stat distrubution in armour is questionable (camo pants + bandolier), magiturge arsenal being worthless outside of one wand base, augments (nano respirators > everything else), starter origin perks/drawbacks (compare patient to experiment), useless skills leftover from the beta etc.


The devs seem to have gone the route of letting the community fix the game for them but as of writing this, only custom models and campaigns are supported.

I'd give this a neutral rating if I could. Despite the issues present, not knowing how to play until you discover the controls accidentally is bad design for a fast paced game about improvisation. There are no guides to explaining all of the core mechanics and I would only recommend this to those who have a friend already experienced with this game to learn from. Once you get everything down, this game is one hell of a time.

Bonus complaints:
Unarmed/melee finisher animations. Especially while an enemy backpedals away from you or continuously attacks you mid swing. These need to be removed, only trigger with one enemy remaining or by having it as a toggle like aim assist.

Combat lock indicators in story. The infinite ones with no indication (Nexus generator rooms) can burn in hell.

My dad walked in and said he was disappointed with me.

I can't refund it now so I can't fix our relationship.

Honestly, I would've recommended this game like 8 years ago.

The current state of DST is very unfocused. It's not just the new art style that clashes but the balancing is awful and the new content feels like it's aimed towards streamers and newbies who have no interest in rogue-likes. The majority of positive feedback reflects all of the lukewarm and half baked updates.

Longtime players are vocal about looking to extend the end game rather than building on what could be a solid mid-game. New players however will complain about the game being too hard for it's first week. I'm unsure of why these are pandered to if the outcomes have been the same throughout the years of new players simply dropping the game after dying a few times and old players speedrunning their way to the top. There is no inbetween. If you have any complaints about the game: Klei won't listen unless they're about to get political backlash (if you know, you know).

There should be no reason the early game is changed to be extremely easy. The character reworks and skill trees have made everyone overpowered (except Wilson) and the late game content punishes the whole server regardless of player experience as long as one player ends up soloing specific bosses; all the while mid-game content has been untouched for years.

The optimisation is still poor, there are still bugs that break worlds entirely after a few days, the ocean and lunar island are still empty, most craftables added in DST have such niche functions that there's no incentive get them aside from bragging rights, there is too much focus on decorations despite the amount effort players have to go through to get them. Mob/boss health scaling is also mandatory for the default experience but it isn't implemented for whatever reason so you have to use mods (sorry console players).

New bosses are mostly raid bosses that require a full server of experienced players and the items these bosses drop are very trivial and rival easy to obtain mid-game equipment or it's just like... a table or a chair. If you're playing alone or have friends at a decent skill level, that's content you're locked out of participating in unless you're prepared to lose everything.

Klei has been shooting themselves in the foot for the last 5 years. Long time bugs need fixing and for every story arc they start; after a year, all content themed around the arc is discontinued and they'll move onto the next. If you see something trivial or a certain part of the world feels barren, there's the reason. The story arc related to that trivial thing is simply over.

Lastly, if you go on the Klei Youtube channel, positive comments are liked so any criticism will be unseen. If you go on the forums, any threads critical of new content are ignored.

Also the characters have been completely flanderised and there are retcons everywhere. The story hasn't progressed since early access in case you care about this kind of stuff.