Hottest take ever probably but I think this game isn't very good.

It's *okay* but the game is trivially easy to the point of being repetitive and boring up until you are forced into a combat encounter that is ruined by the awkward and clunky controls that are never tutorialized, so the first person you have fight is probably gonna die just because you don't really know how the combat works yet. The game basically has a cycle of craft + eat during day, occasionally trading, and sending someone to scavenge at night. The inventory capacity and stack sizes of the items are such that you will be spending the first few hours making repetitive trips to the same place night after night just slowing chipping away at the loot that is left there. Nothing different ever happens on these subsequent trips, you just go, fill your tiny pockets, and leave, and you do it all over again until the game decides you can't go there anymore "because war" and you need to go somewhere else, that somewhere else eventually being somewhere with hostile guys with guns who will try to kill you. So that's it, that's the game. The game makes no effort to judge you for your kind or cruel actions. If you make one of your guys knife an elderly couple to death he just says he's sad but nothing changes. I got to day 13 which took every bit of 2.5 hours and by the time I finally got gunned down by some rapist with an AK I was glad I had an excuse to stop playing. Losing a character when you only start with 3 is crippling because ideally you want to be able to rotate between guard/sleep/scavenge. The game is supposedly "about" the horrors of war as a civilian but really it is painfully ambivalent to your actions as a player. The only consequence that matters is failing the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ combat and getting a character killed. That is the only way you'll lose because everything else about the game is braindead simple.

Maybe the game is more enjoyable as a roleplay thing where you try to be a good person (and inevitably die lol) but I don't see the point. None of the moral decisions have emotional weight, nor meaningful consequences. Kill a sick dad and his son? +2 sad points +100000 loot. The game is positively sterile. I don't understand the hype, and I *really* don't understand the people with 100s of hours of playtime. 2.5h in and I was bored to tears. This game doesn't evoke any emotion because it has no characters. They are sims that may proclaim they ought to smoke more and kill less but they really don't seem to mind.

“10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and the remaining 80 percent can be moved in either direction.”

How The Avengers Will React to the Ukraine War

Captain America: Don't worry guys, I've seen these Russians before. I've seen stalin, Putin doesn't stand a chance. throws shield at russian soldier, snapping his spine

Thor: "This looks like a job for me" "not so fast!!!" says Falcon. "These aren't just your everyday criminal. These are russian soldiers, I've seen them use their bow. You're gonna need more than your hammer" "you sure about that?" thor says, hitting Sergey Lavrov with lightning

Black Widow:
Enters NATO headquarters.
Head of NATO: "please save us black widow, we can give you anything you need"
BW: "I only need one thing"
NATO: "what is it?"
BW: "Courage. Oh, and a couple guns if you can spare some" she wisecracks.

Black Panther:
"I know what it's like to avoid the world for all these years like you've avoided Russia president Zelensky" This is followed by a thunderous "Yibambe!" chant as tens of thousands of wakandans converge on the ukrainian border.

Spider Man:
Enters the kremlin through a web-sling from the top of St. Basil's cathedral, swooping into president Putin's office. "Sorry for putin ya in this sticky sitution mr. president" Spider Man says, putting Putin in a web stuck to the wall of his Kremlin office.Putin breaks free as spiderman lets his guard down.

Iron Man:
"remind me not to invite you on the next mission kid."

Hulk:
"HULK DESTROY PUTIN" he yells, running right through the kremlin wall. As Putin tries to flee, he picks up Putin by his shirt collar. "Nice army vlad, but what you failed to consider, is that we have the hulk." Iron man says. The iron legion steps in to aid the citizens of Kyiv, to the cheers of the entire world.