Recent reviews by ♥SL

The game definitely has some...rushed pieces. Aspects where the game just...falls through. If I paid 10-15 USD for this game, I would accept it. Plenty of ways it should be better, even though it isn't. For example, while it seems like they intended to have clear reasons for why you put weapons where on ships that feature is black boxed to the player. Guns just...wont fire because firing arc is bad. No feedback to the player.

Going to an action combat (at one point in the development it was more tactical with needing to aim carefully) would suggest giving the players a 'aim here' (or radar enables this). Was not the case. The dice resolution just feels painful for no reason (7+/8+ on d10 is terrible odds).

The apparent inability to charge up your engines faster/reduce the charge time despite them feeling cosmetic is A Choice. That function feels cosmetic because its not like you can charge up while strafing and get out of a fight. So then the delay to engaging the engines fully in a system becomes cosmetic/disruptive instead of tactical.

I could nit pick like above. Not my game however. Find it on deep discount for 10-15 USD and liked playing Freelancer back in the day and enjoyed the story aspects, this will feel alright (or make you go back and play Freelancer).

Where Factorio can feel like copy paste the game, and Satisfactory drives the 'one more production line' mania, DSP is...a slog. You are constantly feeling like you are not making progress despite doing so. The tech tree before leaving your first planet feels disjointed. It needs some polish. Core loop, inclusion of the combat (dark swarm) feels good, but still feels like someone needs to spend some time playing first planet a few times through to figure out how to make it not feel as miserable as it does. That said, if you expect this, good way to kill some time.

Go in expecting the standard 'end game' grind in terms of repetition. Expect (as of writing, 10/28) some janky movement and bugs (shield charging w/o a shield before spending points to do so looks broken for instance) and get your 'cheaper than a movie' experience.

From what I saw of launch, what I read of launch experience, and what appears to have improved, this game is in a better state than it was before. I did not play launch, but tried it during the 'return to' even with the fresh start servers.
1) Tradeskilling is a joke. EX: You upscale ingots from iron->steel-beyond using massive quantities of base resources (just casually needing to farm 1/4 mil to 1/2 mil ore NBD right?), then also need what appears to be chest drop only materials to refine further up the chain. This economy is supply scarcity driven. Meanwhile, top tier crafters gamble for their craft to see if they get the rolls they want, then advertise 'free craft with your mats' cause they blew the buffs/food/etc anyways. So why would average player bother?
2) Got 60, still couldn't do the level 50 MSQ (SNS/Hammer tank build) past that one portal. Couldn't continue brimstone sands MSQ cause didn't have tier 5 staff/base MSQ wasn't progressed. Great Design!
3) Gear farming at 60 was 'run the chest route every hour and hope.' cause dungeon groups wanted GS 580 (fresh 60 will realistically have sub 500 if not buying named purples/oranges to evade expertise system), so artificially limited
4) Bots - doesn't matter how much you report them, they will steal your nodes and not get banned. Too many fast travel points, can't find 'secluded' spots to go farming.

Original Review:
Where Satisfactory or Factorio shine is your ability to take territory and expand WHILE processes occur in the background. Where this game fell flat was finding at the final hour that your scale, your attempts at expansion were completely meaningless. So instead of creating a final event where you might end up feeling like you barely pulled it off, you were suddenly faced with demand for resources that were untenable based on the inability to properly secure and expand your expansion.

Updated/Revisited Review (base game, no DLC):
Approaching the game again after spending more time in other games like Factorio and scaling up much harder, and the game pacing still feels...off. The alien research tree continues to feel like a system that just shouldn't be there. While the idea is neat in concept (leveraging local flora/fauna to adapt), in practice the lack of information, the vast number of things to scan, and the lack of useful information in tooltips just makes this continue to feel clunky and in need of help. Pick it up for fun if its on deep discount, but otherwise I couldn't recommend it.

Mixed feelings after beating the game. The gameplay, pretty solid. The story....that is where I feel left down. I was supposed to be invested in these characters. To care about their plight. Honestly...didn't care. I think if I had some sort of response to what they were saying (even if no story impact) I would have felt invested. Instead..until a certain ship, I felt like I could have just as easily been seeing logs from some other crew. And even then, during that ship I still in a lot of ways just didn't care what the other two were doing.

Very modable, really well optimized for being "early access", and with dev blog/youtube videos covering where their heads are at, really great to see. Many companies could learn from Coffee Stain.

Very casual but oddly satisfying. Just...ending in its current state (3/24/22) is feeling very underwhelming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7RsFNXfVKs - Game wasn't fun pushing past 400 ilevel, and apparently its worse the further you go.

Ive yet to find an issue with this game in 16 hours - its an idle game, with vague 'mmo' tidbits glued in there. Not super intuitive in places, but also not so occult you can't figure it out.