Short review is - this is a great shooter and you should buy it if you are interested in the genre. My completion of part 1 took 16 hours (though I spent a lot of time looking for secrets), and I am currently replaying the game with the special campaign. The amount of the new stuff and randomization is great, and ARPG/looter-shooter style tiered weapons are just a genius move. Now to the other part - though I respect decisions made by devs and sure I am in the wrong with at least some parts if this review, I cannot help but think that the game is somewhat unrefined, and I hope that it may be useful. The weapons part - grenade launcher aka MGL: MGL is the typical high risk - high reward weapon. Given mostly close quarters design of the game - MGL as a default weapon choice will often lead to self-inflicted damage as it cannot be swapped instantly. So it is punishing to use (the high stakes part), but it is not rewarding. Killing regular enemies is easier with regular weapons - is is much easier to land hits and those don't take much to kill. Trying to kill enforcers and juggernauts is just unreasonable given you need to land 3 direct hits to the weaker of the two while they are moving - it is both longer and harder than with almost any other weapon. And it is also bugged in the sense that you don't get hit markers (only kill markers), so in hectic fights or behind-the-corner shots you often don't know if you are hitting anything at all. The result is that MGL is a rarely used weapon I found reasonable only with acid grenades (which are extremely good), pretty much a tier-2 grenade role. My personal opinion - add or increase base self-inflicted damage negation (35-40%?), increase buffed negation to 70-80% (existing weapon upgrade), somewhat increase the damage so it could at least kill engineers with a direct hit (somewhere around 400?) and enforces with two hits, and reduce AOE damage falloff. And the markers bug. Another option is to add a safety fuze upgrade which wouldn't allow the grenades to detonate on hit and would force them to always have a timed fuze if they hit an enemy within 4(?) meters to the player (rockets could just fall before an enemy and act the same way). The weapons part 2 - Sniper Rifle: The damage is just not there. Base sniper rifle doesn't one-shot any enemies even with a headshot (except snipers), and this is what sniper rifles are usually all about. Given again that the game is mostly close quarters - it is just not worth dealing with lower DPS than automatic weapons and inconvenience of the scope. This is remedied by very good hip-fire spread, but this both doesn't make sense (it is a large, heavy, hard to handle weapon), and it takes away the weapon's uniqueness, making it in many cases just a slightly different cricket. Later in the game you can find the charged shot mod, and this general idea I think should be the default gameplay with the sniper rifle. What I would've make: - increase hip-fire spread to commonly used "unhittable unless point-blank" - increase base damage or headshot modifier so that it could kill base rifleman with a single headshot - move headshot upgrade to lower tech tier so you could begin killing engineers with a single headshot earlier in the game - to counter-balance damage buff - add a long two step ADS transition: part one where you are bringing the rifle to the face and cannot shoot at all (around a sec), and the skill-based second part where you are trying to find the focus point of the optics, but can already shoot (can be implemented with blurring the scope part of the screen, or making the scope sprite appear way off-center at first, or both why not) - another sec. So overall hip-fire to ADS-ready state are almost the same 2s roughly, but you can begin shooting earlier depending on your skill and closeness to the enemy. - focus loss, hard sway, walking speed debuff to prevent perma-ADS behaviour (possibly apply to long mouse swipes too), maybe implement ADS-stamina. - leave charged shot mod as is for single shot torso kills for soldiers and engineers and (maybe?) enforcers single headshot kill in exchange for around 3 sec shot prep and cooldown on next shots or a forced ADS leave during shot (like because of recoil). - for CQB sniper rifle enjoyers - add an assault conversion upgrade or mod: assault scope (x2.5-x3), light frame, shorter barrel -> much better hip fire spread, much quicker ADS transition, lower bullet speed and thus damage. The weapons part 3 - short remarks about everything else: - 5k recoil on the cricket is absolutely not worth it. Maybe 3k and make other recoil upgrades percentage based, not flat numbers, so it could be reduced to like 2k. Or add a dedicated mod like a buttstock to make it playable with this upgrade. - What does stability stat do? I can only think of the weapon sway, but no way I would ever upgrade it on a nail gun. - Assault rifle default stagger is already very good, there's almost no reason to further upgrade it. Probably should be nerfed a little. - Double submachine guns prob should have doubled ammo counter and consumption, and get full honest x2 damage (if it does not, I am not sure). - Single SMG should probably be buffed, it looks to me that everybody is just using double since single is still too inaccurate for anything except point blank. - Some conversion upgrades for SMG would be nice, most obvious option is to mess with mags - larger/drum mags with much longer reload and weapon swap or double mags with couplers (every first reload is faster, every other is much slower, weapon swap also slower). - Same for assault rifle and shotgun (basically all weapons available for the whole game). Assault could get caliber conversion to something bigger (as current version is very easy to control), shotgun should probably get double barrel as an upgrade and without an option to only shoot a single bullet. I mean, double barrel is a classic, it is cruel to hide it in a secret. What to replace the mod with? Dragon breath could be nice and crunchy, shorter range and wider spread for more damage and some spectacle. - plasma is OP and prob should be nerfed a little. It kills stuck jaggers in like 3 seconds (within a mag), and those guys stuck a lot. The everything else part: - A vision change after the first levels? Conspiracy datapads in the hospital and the mysterious mister "???" cool guy after the elevator shaft are both lost and forgotten later. Maybe cut those voice lines out. - With both plant facility and starlight being different in mood and pacing from the rest of the game I think those levels should be spaced out. The pacing throughout the part 1 in general feels rather inconsistent, although tbh I am not sure if it is a bad thing. - A feature with camera terminals hinting at secrets was also mostly lost and forgotten after the first levels in the game. Sad. - Level readability somewhat suffers because of frequent blue-lit elements that are unusable. Should probably be white or some other color, as it is also a color code for indirect or special interactability. - Soldiers side-fall move should probably be removed or reworked, the distance is too small to make any difference, and the animation is too slow for it to be effective. - Enemy sprite position shift (of the head in particular) is quite severe when those are rotating, navigating between props or other tight spaces. Maybe add a bit of inertia so they don't have instant acceleration at least. - Jaggers are checking LOS from the center of the sprite or the head, but definitely not from the gun position. Given their size - it makes them veeery cheesable. - Special campaign - I got it that it is random, but you should add an option that secrets couldn't be empty. This is heartbreaking. Also maybe add some spawn limits as the resources are finite and enemies are not, so this becomes a war of attrition and you are forced to rush.
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