Recent reviews by High Roller

It's like s&box but fun.

I’ve waited until the game was released to give it a fair review, I played the original demo a while ago and thought the game would be great at this point, and I can’t help but feel like I’m doing a disservice to the developers by admitting that it’s still not something I’d recommend. But the publishers and developers are asking for reviews and I do want to give my honest thoughts on this game and how it plays.

First of all, there’s not really any game like Terra Invicta at all, I guess you can say that it exists in certain categories that we’re all familiar with like 4x or grand strategy but it would be totally unfair to try to draw a direct comparison between TI and any of those genre’s more ‘conventional’ games. Now this a real double-edged sword because trying to play TI like a traditional strategy game doesn’t really work, in this game you have to actually plan for the future, which means if you make a mistake early on, you might not even realize your blunder until several in game years later. But these mistakes are rarely, if ever, strategic errors but rather they are what you could call a ‘noob trap’. And there’s a bunch of them. One nice thing is that these noob traps aren’t really bad enough to be totally game ending, but stack on enough in one playthrough and you’ll find yourself not literally defeated by the Aliens, but frustrated and annoyed enough that you just decide to quit from a lack of fun. You see, there’s actually an achievement where you beat the game after the pro-alien faction achieves their victory, but I can’t imagine who has that much time on their hands to go through all of that, or would even enjoy that. An important but not so obvious part of this game is that you’re supposed to fail, at least a little bit. The ‘correct’ way to play the game is start a guerrilla warfare in space against the aliens while they’re still trying to take over the planet ‘peacefully’, except doing this is a real challenge, especially if you’re new to the game and don’t know what you’re doing, the aliens have a tit for tat system where eventually they’ll blow up a few of your space assets and go back to what they were doing. Taking out anything of actual importance in the early to mid game is incredibly difficult and you get punished for taking out even the most basic reconnaissance ships, which don’t get me wrong, makes sense, but for me at least, watching your stuff get blown up and rebuilt over and over again isn’t really my idea of fun.

Another noob trap is the tech tree, there’s several technologies you can research that are tantamount to utterly useless, and even ignoring those techs there’s still so much stuff to research that you have to actually plan out what sort of tech you want to focus on, which would be fine if the game was upfront about that and explained it a little, but even planning out what drive to use for your ships is a pain because you have no idea what their stats will be until you actually finish the research or do what everyone else does and just look it up online.

Well if you can stomach all that and make it to the ‘end game’ where the focus of the game switches to waging a direct total war against the aliens and taking the fight to them, you’re rewarded with the feeling of satisfaction of finally beating the aliens at their own game, which is followed immediately by the realization that the space combat in this game is utterly dreadful and devoid of any meaningful tactics outside of ‘make sure you have more/better ships than the enemy’. Then you’re hit with another realization of the fact that you have to do this over and over again until you’ve wiped out all the aliens for good.

I don’t have the time for this, 250 hours later and right when I’m at the finish line, I realize I just don’t care anymore and stopped having fun a long time ago, not to mention the performance issues this late in the game. If you’re employed or have any life responsibilities at all, you’ll likely never beat this game so keep that in mind if you decide to buy it.

Not a single major patch in months for an obviously broken game, might be fun and playable by 2046

damn near triples the content of the game so yeah it's worth another 35 bucks.

Ready or Not is the epitome of games that appeal to the idea of tactical shooters, without actually being that at all. Combine this with the constant over the top shock bait and you have a game that falls short and regresses from its ancestors, rather than innovating and reinvigorating the genre in modern times.

A good example of what I mean are the levels in this game. The most glaring problem is the complete lack of replayability or even the lack of being able to plan anything meaningful at all. There's never anything like a clever exploit left in the intel or a risky opportunity to try. Every mission feels the same because they are the same, which is going on a bug hunt and killing the bad guys.

But it's probably clearest where the developer's mindset was when you look at the design of the levels themselves. While they are obviously inspired by real world situations, they are also very obviously designed for a video game. The Campus map is a great example. It makes zero sense... Instead of dealing with the challenge of long open hallways and tight classrooms with little cover, you deal with a twisting maze, and how convenient that the shooters decided to target only one building.

This game isn't all terrible, but it's a disappoint.. I probably even understand the dev's choice, but the fact remains that the game appeals to a different, broader audience, rather than the audience that this game's predecessors had.

it's good and also fun.

Game is great, MP is a little clunky though.

Probably the best game to have a ♥♥♥♥ ton of hours on and still negative review. The devs, knowing they have a VERY secure hold over a bunch of military nerds, are merciless in their penny pinching, just go read everyone else's review.

Fun game, I've only seen a few titles go from rough prototypes to a complete game like this, so bonus points for being an early access game that delivered. The game peaks in coop with friends.

Another example of over-monetization in a game that already costs 40 dollars to begin with. In the Grim Darkness of the 3rd millennium, there are only micro-transactions.