I went in REALLY wanting to love this game, but honestly, it’s hard to place this on the recommend/not recommend scale. I’m barely marking as recommended with a very very heavy wait for sale warning and also you might despise it before it gets fun. Its not really that the game is mid, its more that its one of extremes. The good bits are extremely good, but it’s marred by bad bits that made me want to uninstall on multiple occasions.

Art Style/Design:
This game looks incredible, both in graphics and brutalist art deco. Each area feels distinctly handcrafted, the world is vast, and it does a great job of hiding secrets within each of these spaces. If there’s an instance where you think “I wonder if I can fly up to that balcony 10 floors up”, chances are you can.

Which is a shame because you’ll be utterly lost. Despite how vertical the area is, they decided to go with a barebones top-down map that makes it impossible to distinguish which floor an exit is on and whether or not the route you’re taking is blocked off. This is exacerbated by some really bad fast travel placement. Just figuring out where to go became so infuriating that I had to Youtube directions to the next quest multiple times and would still wind up lost in the final hours of the game for areas I had been through multiple times. This game needed a layered 3D map in the menu.

Gameplay:
The combat loop starts out shaky until you start to get extra gun forms and especially the main abilities. Once you have these things improve enormously as you go from relying on cover to sheer agility and mixing up your abilities. Now, take this excellent baseline, then add some of the most nonsensical design adjustments imaginable.

Imagine you’re playing Half Life, you can carry all weapons and cycle through them. Control is like that, except you can only hotkey between 2 weapons. You have like 5, they could be mapped to the number keys to switch on the fly like Half Life, but instead you have to go into your inventory in combat and select which 2 you want to switch between. It’s such a stupid design choice, and I just found out there’s actually a mod that adds precisely this option into the game I wish I’d seen before.

Add to that an RPG style weapon & character mods system that is probably my least favourite part of the game. Almost every enemy drops a mod of some form. Most are useless, e.g. “+5% damage”, “get energy from being hit”, so on so forth scaling up over time but very rarely giving actual decent stuff. You will spend an absurd amount of time doing inventory management because you can only carry ~20 at once and will get ~5 per fight, when this stuff could have been a weapon tree upgrade at checkpoints.

Oh, also just to note, I’ve completed the entire game & DLC’s, and have not once used shield. It is the most useless ability in the whole game despite being one of the first few you get.

Story/Lore:
The game starts out pretty ominous, but honestly, I feel like the lore and story gave way to aesthetic. The main quest is pretty dull for most of the game, there’s not much in the way of character engagement, and then when you get into the later stages of the main story things all of a sudden ramp up in quality, and just as you’re getting engaged for it to build to the final act it just suddenly ends in an anti-climax. Honestly thinking back on it very little actually happens the whole game.

Maybe I’m unfairly comparing to SCP, but the lore feels incredibly shallow by comparison. None of the items are as interesting as those of SCP, the overwhelming majority of them are just random object + random effect and that’s it. There's none like SCP-7122 that make you go “holy ♥♥♥♥ that’s so well thought out but so messed up”, its all just kind of samey.

The DLC is equally as mid, nothing really outstanding about either of them. Oh, and side quests range from forgettable to utterly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awful, like seriously some of the worst I’ve ever played.

Don’t bother with Expeditions. You unlock them mid-game, but even the easiest one is borderline impossible without maxing out all stats, getting some of the rarest mods, and selecting really specific builds. Its probably great for people that like the gameplay but by the time I got to the point I could feasibly do these I was pretty much burned out with the other crap in this game.

TL;DR:
Best art style and world space in a game for ages, core combat loop is insanely fun after early game, but both are undermined by terrible map directions and RPG mechanics. Story is mid, lore is inferior SCP universe.

If they make a sequel that trims out all the fat though, it will probably be excellent.

I went in REALLY wanting to love this game, but honestly, it’s hard to place this on the recommend/not recommend scale. I’m barely marking as recommended with a very very heavy wait for sale warning and also you might despise it before it gets fun. Its not really that the game is mid, its more that its one of extremes. The good bits are extremely good, but it’s marred by bad bits that made me want to uninstall on multiple occasions. [b]Art Style/Design:[/b] This game looks incredible, both in graphics and brutalist art deco. Each area feels distinctly handcrafted, the world is vast, and it does a great job of hiding secrets within each of these spaces. If there’s an instance where you think “I wonder if I can fly up to that balcony 10 floors up”, chances are you can. Which is a shame because you’ll be utterly lost. Despite how vertical the area is, they decided to go with a barebones top-down map that makes it impossible to distinguish which floor an exit is on and whether or not the route you’re taking is blocked off. This is exacerbated by some really bad fast travel placement. Just figuring out where to go became so infuriating that I had to Youtube directions to the next quest multiple times and would still wind up lost in the final hours of the game for areas I had been through multiple times. This game needed a layered 3D map in the menu. [b]Gameplay:[/b] The combat loop starts out shaky until you start to get extra gun forms and especially the main abilities. Once you have these things improve enormously as you go from relying on cover to sheer agility and mixing up your abilities. Now, take this excellent baseline, then add some of the most nonsensical design adjustments imaginable. Imagine you’re playing Half Life, you can carry all weapons and cycle through them. Control is like that, except you can only hotkey between 2 weapons. You have like 5, they could be mapped to the number keys to switch on the fly like Half Life, but instead you have to go into your inventory in combat and select which 2 you want to switch between. It’s such a stupid design choice, and I just found out there’s actually a mod that adds precisely this option into the game I wish I’d seen before. Add to that an RPG style weapon & character mods system that is probably my least favourite part of the game. Almost every enemy drops a mod of some form. Most are useless, e.g. “+5% damage”, “get energy from being hit”, so on so forth scaling up over time but very rarely giving actual decent stuff. You will spend an absurd amount of time doing inventory management because you can only carry ~20 at once and will get ~5 per fight, when this stuff could have been a weapon tree upgrade at checkpoints. Oh, also just to note, I’ve completed the entire game & DLC’s, and have not once used shield. It is the most useless ability in the whole game despite being one of the first few you get. [b]Story/Lore:[/b] The game starts out pretty ominous, but honestly, I feel like the lore and story gave way to aesthetic. The main quest is pretty dull for most of the game, there’s not much in the way of character engagement, and then when you get into the later stages of the main story things all of a sudden ramp up in quality, and just as you’re getting engaged for it to build to the final act it just suddenly ends in an anti-climax. Honestly thinking back on it very little actually happens the whole game. Maybe I’m unfairly comparing to SCP, but the lore feels incredibly shallow by comparison. None of the items are as interesting as those of SCP, the overwhelming majority of them are just random object + random effect and that’s it. There's none like SCP-7122 that make you go “holy fuck that’s so well thought out but so messed up”, its all just kind of samey. The DLC is equally as mid, nothing really outstanding about either of them. Oh, and side quests range from forgettable to utterly fucking awful, like seriously some of the worst I’ve ever played. Don’t bother with Expeditions. You unlock them mid-game, but even the easiest one is borderline impossible without maxing out all stats, getting some of the rarest mods, and selecting really specific builds. Its probably great for people that like the gameplay but by the time I got to the point I could feasibly do these I was pretty much burned out with the other crap in this game. [b]TL;DR:[/b] Best art style and world space in a game for ages, core combat loop is insanely fun after early game, but both are undermined by terrible map directions and RPG mechanics. Story is mid, lore is inferior SCP universe. If they make a sequel that trims out all the fat though, it will probably be excellent.