Recent reviews by catcatcat

The engine improvement is immense and is by far my biggest praise in a sequel, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the devs and modding community can do over time. It's mostly the same game, but with a few new, and interesting mechanics such as crippling ships, physical firing arcs and projectiles, planet slots so you can tailor planets properly (more than simply maxing everything out as we did before), as well as a few other things I'm still finding as I play. The asymmetry they're attempting in the sequel is also paying off in my eyes as the races feel far more unique than its predecessor.

I only have two real dislikes so far.
- The UI. I feel this took a significant step backward from Rebellion. It's no longer 'clean' for lack of a better word. I can no longer simply look at the info-cards and quickly find what I was looking for, and instead have to scan the whole thing to make sense of what I'm looking at. This sort of philosophy in the UI is everywhere. It's likely subjective, but I'm not a fan. I'll be downloading a classic-esque UI mod as soon as it becomes available.
- The Research Panel. Still sort of UI related. I miss having the research condensed into one area where you had your Military with your Combat and Defense techs, and the Civilian with Civic and Diplomacy. Now they are split into 2 different menus where the tiles are huge and you have to scroll down the tree to see everything. I also don't see different ranks in Tech, which I became a fan of using the expanded research sub mod for E4X in Rebellion.

Overall, this is a solid launch, and will easily become my preferred sins with a few mods or patches.

One of the best game loops I've encountered over many years of playing games, particularly co-op games.

However, forcing people to link a PSN account given the track record over there? No thanks.

This is after months of just allowing steam users to just use steam. Feels like a very obvious bait & switch. Way to screw up your miracle game Sony/Arrowhead.

UPDATE MAY 6:
Sony has backtracked on the update which would have required Steam and PSN linking for new and current players. They stated it would not be moving forward.

I'm leaving the initial negative review, but changing the feedback to positive. It's more to show what happened and how corporate greed nearly ruined one of the best games out in recent years.