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the story is interesting. the acting is great. the controls are garbage. now your value may vary, i play a shooty game, and this game sucks at shooting. its hard to aim, the guns do no damage and they have no interesting effects. the combat reminds me of mass effect. but without the polish, or ability to change gear. you cant choose your playstyle, you have to play as starlord and be completely incompetent. i did a liitle melee at the end (because i had no choice, shooting is really bad) and its a much smoother experience. The main cast is great. the supporting cast is great. with one exception. the antagonist of the game is the raccoon. you might not see it at first, him being on your team and all that crap, but without him there would have been no story because nothing would have gone wrong. And he never accepts his guilt, he just blames everyone else for not supporting him enough. terrible game. i feel bad for the actors who put such good work in to such a terrible title.

its a good premise. really scratches the Call of Cthulhu itch. is it a complete game? no. but, as of writing the devs are hard at work releasing regular updates.

this game is not as described.
there is no exploration. (maps are tiny, you see the entire map as soon as you load into the game)
there is almost no strategy - you can only pick the order you upgrade buildings, and you can max every building very quickly.
its barely a tower defence - defences are pre-selelcted and pre-placed, you cant move them
its barely a top down shooter, you only control your movement, aiming and shooting are automatic, there are no abilities or pickups or inventory.

there are none of the things that make any of those three genres interesting. you cant choose how or where to fortify, you cant do research, or unlock permanent upgrades, you cant decide what towers would be best to protect each approach, you cant place traps, you cant change guns, its like an intro game for people who have never played a game before.

graphics are smooth, controls are super easy.

i cannot recommend this to experienced gamers, as this seems to be targeted at first time players of strategy, tower defence or top down shooter games, because while its easy to pick up and learn it has no depth.

you can also soft-lock the tutorial by upgrading "wrong". it doesn't tell you that you need to upgrade the ship before you are able to start the next wave, and you can upgrade enough other buildings that you run out of credits. A fairly serious bug for "Baby's First Game".

Edit: i have received a reply from the Devs who seem like wonderful people, and they have indicated that they are fixing the above softlock bug. I wish them all the best in this and future titles.

For a modern FPS in a story driven franchise this title really underwhelms. I'm a long time fan of the series but i cant recommend this game.
any shooter needs guns that you want to use, and there are no guns you want to use. there isn't a single gun in this game that would pass standardisation in any of the military outfits represented in the game. they have tiny magazines, no stopping power, non-standardised ammunition, completely unsatisfactory projectile velocity, wildly limited range, and are bulky and unwieldy. Previous games in the franchise used the same weapon designs (with more believable attributes), but made the enemies more versatile and the maps more constricting to create an immersive experience, but in this iteration they made the map a bland open world, and re-balanced the weapons BADLY to create challenge. there is a serious problem when you find pistol whipping enemies to be more effective than shooting them with said pistol.
enemies are bland bullet sponges. especially bosses and "tough" enemies. there are no weak points, no strategies that are more effective, you just shoot at them with whatever guns are lying around, because they soak more bullets than you can carry, and you repeat until they die.

its also a very weird and immersion breaking mechanism that all guns have limitless ammunition, until the MC picks them up. as an example: You pick up a nice sniper rifle (well, nice except for the 4 round clip and extreme rarity of ammunition) and you give it to a squad mate and he(or she) will shoot for hours without a problem, but as soon as you use it, 4 shots and your out of ammo. and if you drop it, its gone forever. even if you find ammo for it later, the gun just vanishes.

The voice actors do a good job (except the master chief, his voice acting is terrible) but it cant compensate for the abysmal story.

I hope the next iteration see's significant improvements.

I am a huge fan of the series, but this title has been a huge disappointment.

the game:
this is an action rpg, you run around fighting bad-guys in real-time, very standard stuff. but there are only like 7 types of bad guys. sure they reskinned them into 7-10 factions and buffed them into bosses (mostly just by multiplying the size of the model and increasing health), it feels lazy. the AI is also horrible, they don't move strategically, they either charge and attack relentlessly or they stand and shoot.

the inventory system is trash, you loot a hundred meaningless items from every crate and barrel scattered around a map where crates and barrels are the only interactive element. there is no movement or life in anything that isn't a crate, barrel, enemy or NPC. I'll come back to NPCs. you can revisit a few areas to find enemies have respawned, so you can farm loot. there are about 60 pieces of equipment in the game, regular gear that can be upgraded (i dont hate the idea of upgrades but the mechanism they implemented is nonsense), and uniques. uniques cant be improved, so after you get a few pieces of upgraded gear the uniques are all junk. which is sad because uniques should be, well, unique. you also cant sell gear. you can only sell the junk you find around the place. you can even buy junk from non faction vendors and then sell it back to faction vendors at a loss. the final straw for me with inventory is that you are still finding loot and gold after starting the final quest when there are no more vendors left in the game.

the world.
there are game walls everywhere.
literally white walls in the middle of doorways that says "you cant access this area yet". how do you access the area? you talk to the NPC who gives you the quest on the other side of the doorway and then the wall just vanishes. this has to be the absolute worst immersion breaking design choice i have ever seen. the maps are also completely static. NPCs stand still. every single npc stands in their spot and has an idle animation. for a modern triple A title that's not even reaching the minimum for world building.

the story.... i don't even know where to begin... at the beginning? it be nice if the game started at the beginning. but no, it just tells you that you were a hero and expects you to honour some dumb ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ who knows he should shoot the maniac about to rip reality apart with his crossbow and instead goes and talks to him for long enough to get stabbed to death for his idiocy. the story is pretty weak. its not helped by a a litany of quests that don't advance your cause at all. its definitely not helped by a hundred dialogue choices that have no impact on the outcome. the main story decision comes really early in what i felt was the end of the first chapter. its the only story decision in the game. everything else depends on it, and its kinda dumb that the wrong decision is the right one. what, trying to save the city and kill the dragon setting the place on fire is the wrong decision?? you should instead try to save the people who are dying because they tried to save the city by killing the dragon? somehow wasting your time playing medic is more important than finishing the job they spent their lives for? that's some seriously weak tea.

the companions are a bit... bland? the grey warden left me feeling miffed. this guy managed to become a grey warden? he's a moody teen with no confidence, that's not grey warden material. The qun was truly cringe, trying to mansplain gender identity to the player? like, wtf? the rest were just... vanilla, no real personality. i didn't hate Harding.

edit: i forgot the skill tree. I shouldn't be surprised, its easy to forget. the first skill you get is the only skill worth using (i was playing a mage on normal difficulty), and while you have 50 points to spend on skills, there was only one skill worth buying, (it doubles the cost and damage of your beam attack). combined with an item of equipment that restores mana on weak point hits it outmatches all other skills and attacks by a wide margin and never runs out of juice. more range, more accuracy (you can actually hit weak points with it) and more damage. your allies skills are on a combined cool-down, of about 40 seconds, most fights last less than 10 (excluding bosses) so they have almost no impact on combat, and your own skills are less effective than just beaming your enemies in the face. i'd love to give it points for effort, but since the skill tree is as bland as the characters and the writing i can see that the problem is systemic.


I expected more from the studio, this is not at the level i expected. Owlbear made an incredible story on a fraction of the budget. Larian made an immersive world you could get lost in for days without breaking immersion. hell, i found myself missing the story and immersion from blizzard and their ARPG offering - Diablo 4. With games like these to draw inspiration and learnings from its a real shame that veilguard has fallen so far.

TLDR: think The Kobayashi Maru

So i played this game, and I gave it a fair go. The game is pitched as a survival/management sim, and at first that's what it delivers, but after the first 15 hours you realise its actually a stress management engine: If your pawns are stressed eventually they will snap, and unless their stress was caused by injuries that will heal, then the stress doesn't go away. they stay snapped forever. snapped pawns don't work, they don't remain safe (they keep wandering into hoards of angry enemies who slaughter them, for instance), and they wreck the rest of the settlement, causing other pawns to snap dealing with the damage.

The AI makes no sense, its job is to add interest, which it does by triggering annoying de-buffs. These de-buffs can and will absolutely ruin your settlement, but not in a fun "that was a nice challenge" way, but in a "now your settlement is in a downward spiral and there is nothing you can do to stop it killing everyone" way. all the AI does is trigger "psychic drones" that raise the stress of your people, or "Solar flares" that turn all of your power. it doesn't matter if your generators are all nuclear reactors buried a mile deep underground, it just turns everything off so your food spoils, your hydroponic crops fail, and all your defence systems go offline. and there is no way to prevent any of these things.
I pushed it to the ending, which took 60 hours of reloading every time my settlement failed, (core game, so the only ending is to build a ship and leave the planet, which requires an insane amount of raw materials and time, and reloading about once per in game week, the game ran for about 30 in game years, and i managed to leave world with my 3 starting pawns, a few rescues and all their kids, 12 pawns in total)

The ending sucked. It was the least imaginative ending i could conceive. i looked it up to see if i'd missed something. I hadn't. They do generously add one additional ending per DLC. They mostly suck. Your value may vary.

Pros:
The engine - 10/10 - the core is very well made. basic controls, interfaces, zones, skills and architecture features are all great
Crafting - 8/10 - this system is fairly mature, it works well. Some recipes could use thought, like food recipes.
Trade - 7/10 - this is a core mechanic, there are things you simply cannot make yourself. even some simple things like gun barrels. like really? gun barrels? I understand some things, like the AI cores and high tech stuff. I'd prefer if you could research an item if you already have one or several to be able to make more at your fabrication tables.
Research - 6/10 - the research system is not bad, there could and should be more options for research, I maxed out research after like 10 in game years? There could be more options to research ways to craft important items, or recipes with reduced costs. Also there are no options to research solutions to very common and solvable problems like solar flares, tranquilizers, Psychic shielding for dwellings, insulation to keep fridges/freezers cold when the power goes down?

Cons:
animals/livestock - 5/10 - needs more thought. random angry iguanas attacking once a week gets old fast. Do something more interesting like breeding/animal husbandry to let you make aggressive/intelligent breeds for warfare and docile/domestic breeds for farming, and have random gene-lines affect the aggression of wandering herds. Maybe add tranquilisers to aid in the domestication of wild animals. would also help slaver cultures capture prisoners without having to beat them half to death before dragging them to a cell. This is primitive technology that has already existed for a long time, it really should exist in the game.
food - 5/10 - uninspired. crafting simple meals cost 10 foodstuffs, luxury meals cost 100 foodsuffs?? that doesn't even make sense. try requiring different types of food resources. maybe herbs and spices.
random events - 2/10 - these make little to no sense. if you live on a world where solar flares will take down your power grid every week you harden your power-grid, its not hard, you just use thicker wires and install power regulators. (a rechargable battery is a simple power regulator in this situation, it drains excess power from the grid to prevent over-voltage). Psychic emitters stressing out your people that a tinfoil hat can prevent? put some tinfoil is the ceiling materials anyone?
Stress - 2/10 - This system is a core mechanic, the whole game is based around it. This system is too undeveloped to be a core mechanic. Snapped conditions need to provide some stress relief while they are active. Allow multiple snapped conditions if a pawns stress is still high. Most importantly minor conditions like dazed or binge eating should not render a pawn completely oblivious to immediate danger. Maybe instead have these effects increase hunger and reduce focus and skill. A mildly stressed pawn isn't going to stay seated at a table eating raw potatoes while 4 Impids breath fire all over them, the chair, the table, and the disgusting food they are gorging themselves on.
Story - 0/10 - there is almost no writing here at all. there are some random side quests that pop up, but these are universally fetch/kill/trade/store waste. Any game needs at MINIMUM a purpose for keeping your pawns alive. "getting off-world" isn't a reason if the fate that awaits you when you leave is to simply end up on a different world trying to survive long enough to build a ship and get off-world again. Even the simplest "you make it to a glitter-world and write novels about your experience" would be better than the nothing that I experienced.

Overall the negatives outweigh the positives, and I'm left disappointed. There are so many sanity checks that fail to pass a simple "does this make sense?" that the experience feels like the developer is intentionally engineering a system that you are forced to fail.

cute game. surprisingly good game-play.

wonderful game, combining resource management, base-building and tech/research with exploration, discovery and top down shooter action.

currently its short (2 hrs or so), but the game play is very good, and the animations are smooth. The puzzles are challenging but not impossible, although there need to be slightly more clues/direction in the room with the banners, there is no indication of what you are meant to be doing in that room. Dev also seems to be releasing updates (as of 7/5/24).

is it finished? no. is it worth supporting? absolutely.

surprisingly complex game under the skin.