I've just completed the game, so I have complete understanding of all aspects of the current state of it (it is still in Early Access at the time of writing which is late August, 2025). Long post, sorry, but worth reading, I hope. I have read some of the negative comments from other users, some of them I halfheartedly agree with like yes, the main characters are not sexy, they are 30+ and 40+ and they are not overly interesting either but these criticism are missing the main point: this game is about _average_ people who had nothing really special going on in their lives until the alien invasion, they are not celebrities, models, super soldiers so I think them having "average" looks, physical builds and capabilities is both forgivable and understandable. I will continue with the negatives since they are less in number: even though the world is detailed and well designed, it has still a lot of content repeating, like there are the same posters everywhere and the same writings in some streets over all the shops. I think AI could be put on the job to bring more variance and nuance into the environment making it more believable. The positives are a lot more when it comes to the game: - The graphics are not extremely good, not overly detailed but they fit the expectations of a modern-time tactical shooter. - The revisited concept of the tactical fighting is extremely good and the added FPS elements (which are really not testing the player's reaction and aim as all the shooting happening in really slomo) also takes away most of the RNG (which most tactical shooter players really hate) to hit percentages. It works like the 3rd person cuts in XCOM2 but instead of watching your character shooting, it is you who actually aim and shoot (at a really slowly moving target). It just works really good, making the fights a lot more engaging and interesting. Reflex moves and shots are another brilliant addition and can help you to escape a lot of "a single grenade wiped out the whole squad" situations. - Audio is a bit generic and is okay, voice acting is really good albeit not superb, the music is atmospheric (but definitely not something that you would whistle during a shower after you played the game). - The game in overall is challenging but only until you realize that you do not need to fight all the fights until you die (when you would need to restart the day without most of your equipment, start looting again, go fight the same fight with a lot shittier equipment - even though currency (called scraps) and character progression is preserved). At the time of the writing you can just skip all that (and I recommend that you do so because of the bugs the game still has at this time) because the game does not save the progression during fights, when you quit you can just start the game again and continue from the start of the battle (where you can even back off fully in a lot of cases). Be warned: the game is in Early Access and has several really frustrating bugs: - Characters can get stuck in terrain (you switch to another, move away until they will jump back to you) - this happened to me only during exploration. - Unclimbable ladders: happens during exploration and during the stealth phase (before initiation) of the combat. In this chase your character climbs the ladder all the way up, then they awkwardly stop on the top and fall back to the floor below. I found no direct way around it, you need to look for another route (or use the teleport device) - Harvester cores that move around randomly can fall out of alignment so their intake ports are impossible to shoot or can wander into the frame of the harvester where you are really not able to affect them in any way. It is never a mandatory goal to kill the harvester but completionists (like myself) will have to start the whole map all over hoping that you will get better luck next time. - There are some items that are displayed but you cannot really pick them up (the option simply does not appear when you are near them). It would be nice to have : - The game has a very nice hit-location concept, going as far as you able to shoot off pieces of the armor from the enemy, but there is no way (aside from visual checking which is not always possible) to know the status of the enemy's body parts. This gets really frustrating during the last mission where it is your actual task to shoot off all the pieces of the final boss. - The city map indicates stuff if you get close to them that you could pick up but not picked up yet, this is nice but since there is no indication to what parts of the map you have covered, you never know if you collected all the stuff from a spot or you never were there. This could be easily fixed with a highlighting effect of areas that you characters had visual coverage of (and thus already covered). - Smoke works really funny. Only your characters can deploy it (trough items or abilities) but in most cases it works against you (you really cannot see and aim through it, you do not see enemies or objects inside) but enemies are just shooting in mostly hitting you (albeit their chances are lowered, but not by much) and they are all-aware of your presence in the smoke. At this time playing I would recommend skipping the smoke effects altogether. - There should be a "coup de grace" skill to finish off downed enemies. With certain abilities you can KO your opponents but they still just lay on the ground and you need to shoot them (which is really frustrating for armored foes) multiple times to kill them otherwise they just get back up and you need to fight them again. You cannot even punch them at the time of the writing which would help (physical attacks bypass the armor in this game). The game mechanic called "bleeding" which ought to mitigate this issue somewhat is just not powerful enough. - Controls: It is really easy to make mistakes with movement and there is no undo button (which can be understandable considering the rogue-lite style of the game) but it is also very easy to skip your turn if you press enter by mistake - there should be at least a warning coming up at least when you did not perform any actions with at least one of your characters not just skipping the whole turn on hitting the wrong button. Reaction shots are also frustrating, most of the FPS shooters require you to right-click to ADS during combat which becomes a muscle-reflex in which case in this game you just exit from and thus loose your reflex shot. With all this said , I would give 7.5 (8 if all the above were corrected) and a strong recommendation. Even if you do not like some aspects of the game, the fresh ideas it brings to tactical combat makes it really worth the time (roughly 20-30 hours) to beat the campaign.
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