Recent reviews by Thalestr

Pretty much the game to play if you love constantly having rape shoved in your face because oh boy will it happen often. I'm not entirely sure why I even played this as long as I did. I have gotten it removed from my account as I do not wish to associate with this filth any longer.

Gonna get into the meat of this right away: If you are planning on buying this to play with your friends - don't. The multiplayer system this game uses is very bad. Any time anyone in your game wants to move to another island to gather materials for crafting - YOUR ENTIRE party has to come too. You can't set up a base and build because your entire party has to leave the island when someone needs to make a run to get building supplies. Does someone need to travel to another island quickly to get a few gems to make something? EVERYONE COMES WITH YOU. There isn't even any affirmation or anything... every single player is suddenly forced into a loading screen if anyone in the server initiates a load.

This single issue nearly completely breaks the game if you wish to play with other people. You end up just lugging your crafting tables with you and crafting on the spot instead of doing any actual building.

Other issues:
- Loot is just generic potions and crafting bricks.
- It took me 4 hours before I finally was able to make a new weapon due to shortage of materials. That is way too long.
- Every enemy in the game is beaten by spamming dodge-roll.
- The islands don't really hide any secrets or treasures. Just really short dungeons (if you can call them that) which contain a chest containing generic potions.

The "Not recommended" Refers to the game at the pricepoint at the time of writing ($60CAD). I would check it to "Yes" if the game was maybe half the price.

My issue with the game is that almost nothing comes premade. You're expected to make nearly everything. Each shop/restroom/etc building only has maybe 1 or 2 premade layouts and they're very specific in their visual style. If you want to make your own building, the game gives you the 1x1 block for the actual storefront and you have to make the rest of the building yourself, by hand, piece by piece. As I joked to a friend: You will spend more time making your toilet stalls than you will actually making coasters. It's teduious and frustrating. Coaster stations have nothing on them either - they are literally just a metal platform with a few gates. You can't even fence-off the platform so vistors don't fall off because there are no fences in the game. You have to find a suitiable replacement and meticuously place it piece-by-peice around the entire station. Good luck getting this to line up properly if you didn't start your entire park with snap-to-grid turned on. Planet Coaster does not have any premade visual gates or entrances for rides like RTC had and it does not automatically fence-off ride platforms. It looks terrible.

On top of that: There are very few thrill-rides, an OK selection of coasters, very few transport options and nearly no gentle ride options. Several rides don't even have premade options so once again you have to make everything yourself. Even the most modest of parks in this game is going to take, no joke, over 10+ hours of your time because everything has to be placed by hand. Placing a ride and it's gatesin RTC would take you all of maybe...5 seconds? In Planet Coaster, to make roughly the same thing in a smilar style, would probably take you over half an hour. No thanks.

I haven't tried anything other than freebuild because that's what I enjoy the most in RT games. I can't speak for the managment gameplay but I heard it was weak at best. That would make sense as it doesn't seem to be the priority here- buiding is.

This is more of a creation-kit than it is actually a game...and it's a kit that doesn't have very many tools to work with. Not worth AAA-prices.

For some reason they thought that it would be a good idea to make the starting crafting station require surprisingly rare materials to actually build. This resulted in me doing literally nothing during my playtime but wandering the landscape looking for these extremely uncommon materials only to either not find them or to die and lose all my starting supplies. The one time I actually made it to nighttime, the creatures of the night ripped my robot to shreds and destroyed it and nearly killed me while I tried to defend it. This was with reduced enemy AI setting.

Apparently there are cool buidings and vehicles in this game. Couldn't tell you, as I can't even build the starting crafting table/forge/station.

Refund submitted.

Update: After doing some reading around, apparently extremely long resource grinds are common in this game. If you want to build even the most simple structure then you will be doing a LOT of smacking at rocks. I stand by my refund.

The first portion of the game where the player is unarmed is hands down the best portion of the entire game. You have nothing but your brain and legs to solve puzzles and there are some very clever world-warping puzzles for you to solve and navigate through. Some pretty good head-scratching stuff here which had me going in circles for a while before I figured things out. Sadly this doesn't last. You eventually start to pick up "guns" which let you manipulate blocks in different ways (depending on the "gun" you picked up) and this is when the game really falls down. You go from the clever world-bending mazes to what are essentially point-and-click block puzzles. Some of these block puzzles make good use of the bendable world but the majority do not. The majority of these puzzles that I have seen are nothing more than a panel on the wall with sliding blocks in it or slots by doors for you to stick blocks into. While these are technically still puzzles they are neither fun nor clever. After the amazing first-section of the game I expected more from the later portions. TotalBiscuit's PAX interview with the developer had the dev saying that he wanted puzzles in which the puzzle was finding out what you needed to do rather than immediately seeing your goal and then the puzzle was actually completing it. Every single block puzzle I have seen so far has been the opposite of that. I can almost immediately see what I need to do but getting it done is very tedious, finicky, and just frustrating. Yeah I can complete the puzzle but there is no enjoyment or WOW-factor in doing so. I have free games on my Android phone which shares similar concepts to some of these block puzzles. I guess I expected something more from what is known as a very prestigious and award-winning title. The second point I would like to raise is that the game has a serious problem with not actually telling you key information. I understand the game wants to be the silent type and let you figure things out for yourself and I can kind of respect that many games have issues with holding your hand. This game, on the other hand, completely withholds information about mechanics which are absolutely mandatory to continuing further into the game. The end result is that figuring out the mechanics is more of a puzzle than the actual puzzles are. I'm supposed to use the tools I have at my disposal to solve the challenges ahead but half the time I don't even know what my tools even do. This doubles the frustration and halves the fun of what are already not very enjoyable puzzles. I honestly think that if they just stuck with the basic game as seen from the beginning it would truly be a much better game. Either that or maybe the basic non-upgraded block manipulator gun. The game goes from abstract mind-melting puzzles to slide-square-blocks-around and I feel it really harms the game. Shame, really