Recent reviews by Patton_Pending

By the time you realize how unstable it is, you've played it too long to refund.
Crashes to desktop are not frequent, but much more than they should be. I've only had it a day and it's been a few times. Less than ten. Maybe five.
The game autosaves every time you go through a door or fast-travel, so you aren't losing a ton of progress, but it's still annoying.
I just expected more stability from it.
After reading others' comments it seems that every bug from the old version still exists, plus some new ones.
Seems like the only thing improved are the visuals and the load times.
It's not terrible, but man I regret wasting fifty bucks on it.

This is one of the best crafting/survival/base building games out right now.
The combat is very clean and challenging, base building is good with lots of options.
NG+ adds lots of replayability with new enemies/gear/mechanics.

A different style of strategy game. It's a dungeon crawler/looter where inventory management is the core of your combat power. Some people don't get it, but I love it. Excellent. Currently 889 hours played and I expect it will continue to rise.

Nothing personal, It just feels a bit empty and dead for me. More of a sandbox game than anything. To me it feels like if the guys who made Stationeers tried to make a super simple version of Satisfactory.
The way it plays is very cumbersome.
No player inventory, carry only one item at a time, dumping a bucket doesn't go by the cursor but a little shadow that's nearly invisible at times(looking at you, anvil.)
This kind of thing might be great for some people but it's just not fun to me.
The first time you make an infinite money generating machine out of T1 parts, you may as well have beaten the game. The only thing left to do after that is grind money/points for higher tier machines that are just more efficient/effective versions of the earlier ones with no new functionality or variety.

Very fun and flexible take on the roguelite genre. Many different varied/unique character archetypes make for many many playstyles and huge replayability.
Love it!

I'm reviewing this game based on my experience playing it ages ago, and will update based on my experience reinstalling the new updated version.
Previously I wanted to love this game due to the depth of systems and automation controls, etc., but HATED how tedious and cumbersome it was when using tools/interacting with objects.
You couldn't have your stuff on a hotbar(aka tool belt) but instead had to go int oinventory, put a tool in one hand and a material in the other, leave the inventory, press the use buttons, stop, go into inventory, take the thing out of one hand and put in a different thing, take the thing out of the other hand and put in a different thing, in a whole system that was as unending as this paragraph-long runon sentence.
I've read some dev replies to similar reviews stating that these systems were being improved, so now I'm going to check it out!


EDIT:
I want to like this game, but the controls make it hot hot garbage. I recently reinstalled it after reading that it had been through a full overhaul of most systems, but I still spend about ten minutes trying to figure out how to move a tool from my tool belt into an empty hand. Uninstalled again.
UI/controls are tedious, cumbersome, the opposite of intuitive, and just bad.
You have such potential with this game, why are you making these design decisions?
It pains me to see something with such potential be so bad because of hanging on to terrible design choices. Give us a mouse cursor and let people drag items from one spot to another, or make context menus permanently open to show hotkeys for performing these actions. If i press the button for the tool belt, scroll the mousewheel to the tool I want to use, and have pressed every button from LMB/RMB/MMB/LAlt/LShift/Space/Enter/Q/E/R/T/Tab and can't get it to move to the highlighted empty hand slot... Have a context popup to tell me what to press!
It's so frustrating and sad to see this cool concept strangled by such horrible controls.
I remember the first time playing this and watching video tutorials to figure out how to do the most basic things, until eventually automating the rotation of solar panels, tweaking the timing and speed. It was so fun digging into those systems and playing around.
Your horrible controls ruin all of that!
I want so badly for this game to be good.

Game says I have played almost 10 hours, but I have literally not been able to join a single game.
Crashes to desktop while loading every single time.
Also it must have stayed running in background processes or something because I have only spent about an hour doing the cycle of loading....crash/restart/loading....crash/restart.

It's not ready yet. For now, wait and see.
Pathfinding struggles with the multiple Z levels,
Items sit out in the rain because your colonists can't figure out how to carry them up some stairs to a stockpile.
Items sit on the ground and take up a floor tile. If there is some kind of storage unit, I haven't found it yet.
AI raids are kind of slow and boring at early levels. I heard there are siege engines later on, but haven't gotten that far yet. But in the early game, just building an elevated walkway and having a couple archers shoot everyone pretty much decimates all enemies.
For now, only buy this if you want to support development.
That said, it's no more buggy than if you added the Z levels to rimworld(via mod).
If the price is cheap enough for you, maybe check it out and follow along with the development.
If you're looking for a full experience, I say wait.

**edit: Steel Dawn Launched a week early and seems to have improved server stability and fixed many bugs, in addition to being (so far) a great story content addition.**

This game came out to a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of negative hype. Some of it was deserved, some of it was not.
Server stability was bad at launch. It was. They weren't prepared. But, on the other side of that same coin, Diablo 3 was unplayable for several days at launch, and that was from the company who reinvented the MMO genre and brought it to the mainstream. Online launches typically have server issues.

One of the main crying points among complainers was the lack of NPC's and that the game felt empty. This was a design decision, and a story decision.
It was supposed to be empty and desolate. We were supposed to be the first humans emerging from the vault.
The game had robot npc's, and one questgiver in particular (a nannybot who thinks she's a raider) was fully voiced, to great effect.
Now though, there are tons of human NPC's a few ghouls, and a super mutant npc, all fully voiced. There are more traditional quest hubs, factions, and story arcs. The other survivors have returned and the game is no longer empty.

There have been immense improvements to every aspect of the game.

99% of content can be done solo, and you can play for hours without interacting with another player if you wish, but if you want to group it's been made much easier with the introduction of public groups and the passive buffs you get just by joining.
Many of the public events now give a server-wide announcement and allow you to fast-travel to them for free, also you can look at the event on the map, and see how long ago it started, how many players are participating and give yourself an idea of whether or not it's worth your time to stop what you're doing and join. This is being done right. It brought back vibes from the old mmo Rift. Public events and world bosses pop up, and people come together and defeat them. You don't have to have a guild or a group of hardcore friends, just jump in and start shooting/slapping/whatever you do.

The player economy is gated to 1400 caps per day from selling to vendors. People hated this, but now instead of each of 7 factions having a 200 cap vendor pool, they all share one 1400 cap pool, which is an improvement. Also the addition of player vending machines gives a way to earn caps outside that(other than enemy cash drops and event rewards) by selling items, mainly crafting recipes and certain aid items and some of the rarer ammunition.

The CAMP system lets you build a little base for yourself but unlike fallout 4, it's yours, and Preston m****rf*****g Garvey won't verbally assault you every three seconds because "aNoThEr SeTtLeMeNt nEeDs yOuR HeLp!!!!!!!!!"

There are certain items that people consider Pay To Win. I can see the argument, but I don't agree. To me, the vast majority of these items are Pay To Convenience. Like a refrigerator that will make food items spoil more slowly (yes the game has survival aspects, but I don't think you can die from hunger/thirst) or repair kits that allow you to repair a weapon or armor in the field without going to a crafting station. The one exception to this is the scrapbox, which allows storage of unlimited scrap items and to me, removes the inventory management aspect of the game for subscription players.

Anyway, that's a hype-free opinion from one actual player, instead of some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ youtuber trying to make stuff sound terrible and scandalous for more clicks.

If you read this, and it piqued your interest, don't be afraid to give it a try. The community is overwhelmingly positive, and people will go outof their way to help you if they find out you're new. You don't really see toxic players, unless you Are a toxic player (they did something to keep toxic people on their own toxic servers I think.)

Maybe one day it'll look like the game in the promos.
Edit: They keep releasing concept art and calling it updates. I hate how much my newsfeed gets spammed with this ♥♥♥♥.
The game may have come a long way since I purchased it, but I haven't reinstalled it to find out, because the fact is, the videos and promos were so initially misleading about the amount and types of content in the game, that I don't want to waste time finding out.
At first I'd get a little excited when they'd release an "update" until I realized that 99.9% of their "updates" are just them posting a piece of concept art with some flavor text.