Recent reviews by Spinomaks

Go in completely blind.

The Sonic cycle is more or less finally broken.

Emotion Engine makes this experience surreal

Very enjoyable game. Hoping it will receive post-launch content.

I wanted to like this game, but honestly after having finished it I realized how empty it really is.

The writing is very poor. The Legionaries are goody-two-shoes and the Russians (and I mean the OVERWHELMING majority) are backstabbing ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that only seem to commit crimes against humanity for the fun of it.
There was discussion regarding Russophobia in this game, and I can honestly see where it came from. Its either that, or the writers had no idea what to do with their characters.
The Commander of the Reds is a coward and a CoH2-style parody of Order 227 who's entire character arc (there really isnt one) is wanting to murder you.
The Commander of the Whites (This is in the last mission) also wants you dead for no reason except to fulfill some orders that arent even that enforced, resulting in a White vs White combat scenario, whereas 1 minute away from the area there is a Red fortification. Like, which dev sat down and went "Ah yes, this group of Whites will just commit treason and try to help some Czech guys hold off against other whites who will rather fight you than the Reds".

Really, every Russian in this game is written either as a maniac or a victim, and the victims are always random countryfolk who just want to do their farming thing. There is absolutely no nuance in any of this. The game deviates from historical events like the Legions working with the Reds at some occasions, so please dont expect an interesting historical game. This is surface-level at best if you want to learn anything about them. I will get back to the writing issues later.


Gameplay encourages save-scumming extremely, and at times you will be forced to because the game simply does not work. There is one mission halfway through where you need to defend a Gold train against an onslaught of enemies. The game gives you AT weaponry to deal against infantry blobs and vehicles. Here's the catch: the AT guns simply fire through the tanks, missing 90% of the time, meanwhile the tanks will one-shot you. So all you could do is either chuck grenades at the bloody thing while you're being overwhelmed by infantry swarms or desperately try to distract the tank, risk getting insta-killed and still fail to destroy the damn thing because your guns are missing. Late game this becomes no issue whatsoever, as you can just call in artillery strikes to one-shot the vehicles.

The game heavily encourages stealth, however missions are so long and at times so overcrowded with enemies, you'd need to have the free time of Chris Chan to want to play them out that way (I did for about 1/4th of the game before I realized simply setting up MG zones is much more practical and saves you an insane amount of time). Also, scouts can trivialize the game if you unlock the deadzone ability, as they will outrange and devastate MG installations and infantry.
Oh and vehicles in this game suck. They barely function as intended, miss their targets (or fire through them), are squishy, have HORRIBLE pathfinding and the list goes on. The FT-17 (light tank) is by far the most frustrating thing this game has to offer, as it will just stop driving at times because it cant figure out how to drive around the corner, and by the time its there, you're going to be a year older.

Dialogue is extremely limited, and personality traits have next to no influence on the game because those random encounters are super rare. Doesnt matter if your soldiers are communist or nationalist, youll maybe get one tiny comment in the entire span of the game influenced by this mechanic. If anything, it just works to get you more loot in scavenging events on the map, and its just about being a hunter, burglar or housekeeper or something along those lines. Everything else does not matter.

Soundtrack is nothing memorable and youll be hearing the same tracks play over and over again.

On normal difficulty resource management is only an issue early to mid game. I could feed my units full rations every day in the entire Siberia section, and I had around 300 food units surplus. You can do all the missions and you still will lack resources to fully or even half-fully upgrade your train though. Coal is plentiful, had about 1200 surplus, so I never had to worry about running out. Metal will be your biggest issue though.

So yeah, while I loved the premise, the game really isnt anything special. The Frostpunk elements are lacking and I wish I got more, but the RTS was also extremely mediocre and the missions often were just dragging on for too long. The writing is very poor. Hell, there is a point where the game tries to get you to feel bad about you defeating multiple human wave charges by portraying it as a massacre, but how can you feel bad when you've done this same action multiple times before? Especially when all of your enemies are soulless monsters with massive murder-boners? Legit, there were only two "friendly" Red NPCs in the game, and their entire "friendly" bit is them willingly getting their comrades killed because they decide to surrender to you at some random station for no reason except "we regret it and we dont like this ideology anymore". So you go and kill everyone, and all of a sudden your soldiers are sad that they killed 30 more Russians in a minute instead of the usual 10 in self-defense (Referring to the defense segments btw). Also, your soldiers are smug about killing Reds quite often, so this just came out of nowhere. The only character development you get is your advisor Langer, and his entire schtick is developing PTSD, even though he just sits in the train all the time.

Its just... meh. Definitely not worth the price tag. I cant really end this with anything except that it was just a mediocre experience, and the game still needs a lot of time in the oven.

Alright so

It is very difficult. In the base game you could easily get away with every boss fight without dying once. Here however, the average boss smeared my brains over the wall easily over 5 times.

I feel like the difficulty goes both ways. From one side, I love it, as with the new absolute BANGER of an OST you feel like you're actually fighting for your life with every engagement and are using your abilities to the fullest. From the other, you will get obliterated in very unfair situations (like being stuck in a corner and being blocked from moving).
There will be a point near the end of the game where you get put in a large room with an insane amount of enemies. You're either going to hate it, or you will absolutely love it.

I think for 10 EUR this is definitely a good DLC. They will likely patch the difficulty very soon, and the new OST and hype you get with it make the experience worth it.

Change The Economy.

Yes, it is quite janky and buggy, and you will be fighting the camera just as much you will be fighting the enemies, but this game is definitely Sonic's salvation.

They fixed the characters, implemented some great character development, expanded the lore, as well as took the series in the right direction.


The music is phenomenal, especially the Titan boss fights. They were the best part of the game, as they pretty much turned Sonic the Hedgehog into Metal Gear Rising and went balls out on the action.

Is it worth 60 bucks? Hard to say. You'll spend about 13 hours to beat the game at a relatively leisurely pace. There is quite a bit of Sonic Team trying to artificially expand the play time by putting in more obstacles and higher token requirements in the last stage of the game.

The worlds are pretty empty and obstacles can be repetitive, but they basically feel like levels of their own. Cyberspace on the other hand, its a mixed bag. It reuses stages from the old games and the way Sonic handles in them is quite janky as well. Difficulty in getting the S rank completely shatters after the second level, as the first 2 are actually extremely challenging to get an S rank in. After that its more of a cake walk.


TLDR Its the most 7/10 game of all time. It is fun, but it also has jank. It is however, definitely the right step towards saving the Sonic game franchise and redeeming Sonic Team. Speaking of which, apparently only 60 people worked on this game.

The game has a LOT of potential.

As it stands, it does have a number of flaws, mainly being optimization, bugs and certain tools not having much use.

As a seasoned modeller who has been taking part in this hobby for quite a while now, I can say that although this game needs more time in the oven before it becomes a relatively fluent and positive experience, it can be quite enjoyable.

It wouldn't make sense for me to negatively rate the game when it has not even been out for a week. I will continue to observe the development of this project, as well as support the dev team. They are tackling a very huge task that requires tons of elbow grease and commitment.

Would I buy the game in its current state? Honestly, I can't say I would. It needs more time to flesh out its content and fix its issues. But based on what other people have said, they are in love with the game and don't see much of an issue with it. I'd say give it a try and see whether it is for you. There's nothing quite like it out there (at least to my knowledge that is).

Its Touhou but with a sword