Recent reviews by Victoria, Angel of the void

Sorry, I tried playing this but everything is so...-

Imagine playing homeworld 1, right? But it's main character is less interesting, and less fun gameplay in general.

Also live service games need to stop... In general.

I waited years for this game to come out, and I hate to say it's just not up to snuff. At least it's pretty I guess?

I really like this. Good physics sandbox, with features I don't often see. It's rare to see a physics sandbox with proper gear physics.

8/10

Tell you what. I sank enough hours into this to say it's a fine game for a cheap asset flip...

But I'll not recommend it till you fix crystal enchanting. It's not working, was working fine, and after the last update which we realistically didn't need it isn't working.

While you're at it, make Damascus actually comprehendable to the human brain please.

Fix those, and I'll give a positive review. (And probably a lot of other people might too.)

Unfun. I wouldn't spend $5 on it, let alone $60.

Just buy and play EDF 5 or 4.1. Much better games, built better, and generally feel just...

Better.

As a person who plays a lot of similar games, knows how to use LUA code (The primary language this game uses in creating things), and has a distant interest in the mechanics of engines and such other things...

I can say this game tries very hard to pretend to be accurate and pretends to be realistic.

It is nether of these things, and because I don't have the patience nor time in my day to spend the next 28 hours explaining why... I'll go down some bullet points for everyone who bothers to read this.

- All engines are diesel. All engines act like petrol / gas engines. This is a mildly infuriating thing for me, but forgivable.
- The custom engines are... Not fun. The over-complication of some things combined with the over-simplification of others makes custom engines just not worth using. Fuel / air mixtures specifically irritate me beyond my ability to explain through words. Especially being a 'petrol engine that hasn't had it's bottom surgery yet to be a proper diesel' since the perfect ratio is PETROL'S ratio. (Around 14.7 on average if you didn't know.)
-Building is pain. It's clunky, slow, and rotating blocks is absolute trial-and-error even with the silly and 'in the way' UI tips.
-There's very little decoration blocks. No venting, grates, or anything that isn't used for something else. I bring this up because I want to make a tank. Specifically a tracked transport vehicle with a rear mounted engine that has a big radiator in it and I wanted it behind a vent. In order to do that, I'd have to seal the whole engine compartment with no way to actually circulate air out into the world. I'm not 100% sure, but I believe that doesn't work in game... but moving on.
-There's no QoL features for if you want to move specific blocks/parts or make group sections such as specifically wanting to move the engine a single block up or down, or changing the rotation of wheels post-placement. Even from the depths allows this, and I find it absolutely hilarious that this game doesn't.
-The coding. Oh lord, the coding. There's a basic lua feature called math.clamp. Math.clamp is used to clamp a value. Simple, and easy. There's even gates in game that do this, but in the LUA editor... Math.clamp doesn't exist. This isn't a big deal, since you can make your own functions to do it, but the issue for me is THIS BASIC FEATURE DOES NOT EXIST NATIVELY?! Yeah. Okay.
-The basic way gates, coding, and other logistic things are done is total ass. Complete ass. I can't explain it well but the visual UI for micro-controllers is bad. Using physical in-game gates is too clunky (and also bad) and using the lua blocks in the micro-controllers is, you guessed it, DONE BAD. What kind of game doesn't allow Ctrl-Z in a coding interface?! And don't tell me that it isn't a feature because it'd be too hard or something... It's a feature in the building menu, so why would you not make it a feature in the coding interface?

Now for some actual gameplay issues...
-No real creative mode. I can choose custom game, which is as close to creative as it gets... Which still has natural problems, and mission prompts which maybe I can turn off? But whatever. I just want a flat world, no big obstacles or tidal waves, or earth quakes, or meteor strikes, or whatever have you.
-Classic campaign has NO explanation what-so-ever. It has research, but I don't know how to do that. It doesn't explain it. And generally isn't great.
-The new campaign has a tutorial, and I get it (mostly) but the payout is terrible, the game slogs if you do too many missions without restarting periodically every few hours or 20 missions, whichever comes first. And the building in the game is so not-good, it's actively impossible to get far without having played thousands of hours in it to finally get a vehicle that actually functions well without a full wheel setup and/or a flight stick / yoke.

There's so many more things I can point out and much more I can elaborate on... But as of right now, the TL:DR I can give is just don't buy this. There's plenty of better games for gameplay, and much more cost-effective block based / part based games that do this exact thing but better.

If you like sea and boat stuff... From The Depths does engines, boats, and simulations better if you have the PC to handle it, which if you can handle this, you can handle that 100%. Hell, FtD also does land vehicles too. It's all around a more complete game with more to it than this in a very similar way.

If you like to fly around and be speedy and fast, without the desire to build, Simple Planes has better aircraft and car physics with a larger library of downloadable vehicles. Not to mention if you like building things, Simple Planes is just great for that too. Allowing some pretty amazing and creative designs with ease.

If you like on-the-road ground stuff, as weird as it sounds, Garry's Mod has some amazing building tools in it to create full, very accurately simulated vehicles for ground stuff. While I don't like suggesting a game to be modded from the start, the spirit of Gmod in this case is focused on that and there's no real way around it... But there's a lot of amazing tutorials on youtube and stuff to get you started. (Unlike stormworks, amirite?)

Also just generally ANY simulator game for air, sea, or land just does physics better than Stormworks. So... There's always options. Anyway, thank you for reading this, those of you who read this whole slog of a review and I hope that some day I can come back here and say that things improved.

I'm not holding my breath though... I hear bad things from the dev team on this as well. But that's none of my business to go into with detail.

Time for an update to this.

Do I like Empyrion? No. I've played a bit more now and have come to the conclusion that this game is a hacked together mess. The jank has finally overwhelmed my ability to look past it and the AI, I can't believe I'm gonna say this, feels WORSE since one of the April updates.

Building system is really bad, and feels awful to use still. I'm done trying to rationalize playing this... It's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

I am a flesh automaton animated by neurotransmitters.

We really need more maker-pen ability. Including programming chips with freedom and the removal of in-room token transactions. I'd prefer not being forced to spend $2 on every room to have anything at all to do.

Physics are also extremely questionable and would benefit from an overhaul.

To top this off, the community is QUITE toxic and full of under 13 year olds screaming at everyone. Address these issues and I will consider changing my review. Thank you.

Great physics sandbox. Not a fan of the automotive mechanics so far as engines don't simulate so good.
However the physics are fairly accurate. The graphics are pretty. Gamemodes can be fun (given you can deal with some pretty bratty kids time to time.)

All in all, I'd say it's worth the cost.

UPDATE! - 2/12/2023

The player-base is some of the worst I've dealt with now. Physics accuracy has dropped since my last review, and the bratty kids have only spread like a plague across all game modes. I'd recommend against this unless you do pretty specifically singleplayer.

I think I've made up my mind about this.

Would I recommend this game to people?
Yes... And also no.

Yes I would because the game is well made to a degree. The game is pretty optimized and runs pretty good on most PCs. Before I got my new PC, I was playing this game on a major toaster and it ran fairly well. Very playable. The devs are fairly talkative and open to suggestions most of the time and put a lot of love and care into their game.

No I wouldn't recommend this because the game isn't balanced. This game favors a single play style... Big ship. Lots of guns. Ignore anything that isn't a long range laser. Ignore ores entirely for mining because mining is a waste of time and effort. Simply pick a faction and just blast their mining bases apart for literally endless ore and materials. You can easily muscle your way into 'winning' with a simple bum rush of stations, slip under their shield and blow the guns on one side off. Once you can do that, you can easily steal the base for parts and build a dreadnaught capable of tanking ANYTHING. The devs added new weapons too... They're useless. They added hangers (A suggestion I proposed at one point.) and they're useless. Shields are a pain in the ass to deal with because they aren't size adjustable or conform to the hull. On top of that, better shields are larger and if a small ship goes under the shield, they can shoot right into your hull blocks. (Which by the time you have to worry about that... they're not even worth the thought.)

The game's balance is nil. The player can either do the path that works or die trying anything else. NPC interactions are nil. Trading is useless and pointless. I found myself only trading because I filled a dozen of the largest boxes in the game with trade goods and needed to make space to craft stuff. And being the ferengi that I am, I never drop trade goods I can sell.

Let me touch a bit in depth on some flaws...
Weapons. Weapons are either overpowered or entirely useless. Any and all beam weapons are always my go to because they just work the best and are absolutely amazing. Anything ballistic based is absolute ASS. Inaccurate, slow, short range. They pass through shields, but at the range they're good for? Useless. I can obliterate any shield well outside of ballistic weapons range AND kill any ship before they're in ballistic range rather than trying to close the distance and taking a barrage of laser fire from them the whole way. Torpedo based weapons are... Uniquely useful sometimes. I only use torpedo based weapons on stations when I'm bored. They don't do enough damage to be useful but for what they are they do more damage than I expect. I feel torpedo based weapons should be larger and do more damage at longer range... But that's my opinion.

Some of the ideas the devs have said for the future are... bad. I remember talking to them about weapons and the subject of beams that pierce shields came up. They talked about something with nanites and whatever non-sense... I thought this was a terrible idea and excuse for shield piercing weapons. The minute you bring nanites into any game, you essentially have a "end all / save all" device. This absolutely ruins story and plot devices and makes for just... bad gameplay mechanics. Anyone else remember Red Faction: Armageddon? Yeah, me nether. Nanites were the problem AND solution to everything in that game as far as I remember.

I dislike anything with nanites though so this point may be subjective...

However another thing the devs don't want and as far as I've heard WON'T add. AI controlled player ships.
THIS. IS. A. TERRIBLE. THING. TO. NOT. ADD.
Period.
This is a horrible choice, devs. Rex. Seriously hear me out here. Without AI controlled player ships you're limited to ONE SHIP. That means you're influencing the player to be a single large massive thing. I hate this. Especially with the way hangers work. If hangers were modular and not weird, absolutely absurd shapes... This wouldn't be an issue to me. But in the very least add an auto-targeting computer block! SOMETHING! Something that makes my ship fire back at AI attackers while I'm not near my mothership or something. I'm not asking or saying you should add fleet mechanics and RTS mechanics. I understand how you want the game to play and feel but we need AI ships. We need these bad. To point out a game that did this right... Avorion. Avorion did and does the idea of AI ships / stations amazingly well as well as docking and all the mechanics I've ever mentioned. Avorion's falling for me the way the game feels and plays, but this is a review for space impossible so I digress...

I guess long story short here, I feel this game is good enough for me to say yes, it's worth the money...
But if the devs do what I think they're going to do I'm going to rapidly shift to a fat, bold cased NO[u/] [b/].

I'm still watching development on this, and will update this later if need be. I appreciate the view this small indie team wants to see through, but for the sake of gameplay... Not all ideas are good ideas.




AND ADD REFINERY LABS. I'm sick of having to queue 10 sets of refine orders in 6 slots for 3 hours. (Yes. 3 hours actually.)