Recent reviews by Erlian

Mechanics / puzzles are kinda jank compared to other titles in the series

This game ain't quite my thing / wasn't what I expected, personally, but that doesn't mean I won't recommend it to others.
+ Highly recommended for folks who are into building custom bases / aircraft with an intricate level of detail. You can build almost anything and it's glorious. Lots of great tools to make building a little easier, but also a LOT to learn.
+ Fun to build and pilot different land vehicles, too.
+ Pretty interesting exploration & environments.
~ Not much of a story / campaign last I played, but what little there was, was pretty fun - there might be more to it now.
- Not much to the survival aspects of the game.
- Tech tree was a bit bloated iirc, sizable learning curve overall in part due to that.
- New player experience isn't the most intuitive or fun. More of a slow burn as you gather game knowledge.

Great game at an excellent value. Fun to drop in with friends, or you can play solo or with a matchmade group of 2-4. Variety of potential builds / upgrades keeps each run interesting. Gaining additional persistent benefits add even more variation to the gameplay. Different difficulty levels if you want more of a challenge, at the highest difficulties especially it requires some teamwork to make it through! Developers seem committed to making improvements based on community suggestions with weekly updates.

Many hours of challenging, spooky, slightly toxic fun with the base game, plus even more variety and depth with relatively affordable, totally optional DLC. Get it on sale, and get the leatherface DLC for bbq and chilli to make the progression quicker!

I was looking for a fast-paced scifi dogfighting game that focused on the action, mechanics, and weapons more than the nitty gritty details. This ended up being perfect for me.

The game in general is a lot like Elite Dangerous, especially for combat / weapons - you have multiple weapons you can cycle through, various subsystems you can employ, limited energy that can be spent on weapons or subsystems or afterburner, etc. Basically takes everything that makes Elite Dangerous great - omnidirectional maneuvering, engaging combat, and rewarding exploration, but speeds it up and cuts out the boring stuff. Landing and taking off from hangers is quick, picking up items is quick and easy. Each system is relatively small so that it can be explored within a small time frame before moving onto the next system, which can have a different evironment / hazards / enemies / loot, keeping things fresh.

Speaking of items, the crafting system is excellent. You gather or salvage various resources, then find blueprints and create new weapons, subsystems, consumables, and upgrades. Blueprints and earned "credits" persist, and credits can be used to purchase perks that persist. The feeling of progression as you become better equipped and more familiar with the ins and outs of the various hazards and enemy types each run is really satisfying.

Some may say the game is a bit repetitive/grindy (it's roguelike btw), but I've found the wide variety of possible loadouts makes it easy to switch things up even after acquiring a lot of the persistent upgrades. I haven't even tried out the 3 other ships besides the starter - they'll add a great deal of replayability, too, I can already tell.

Pros:
-Lots of content for a game that's still early in development. Many weapons carried over from Depth, some familiar PUBG-style items, but also some totally unique gear + tactics to employ.
-Having sharks in the redzone forces players to multitask + target focus, it's a pretty cool element that's likely to be defining factor of the game.
-Faster paced than PUBG but still also allows time for getting better gear via exploration.
-Dealing damage and getting kills is the main focus over being the last one standing, and it's reflected in the scoring system. Camping/hiding is un-fun so it's good to see that it's not incentivized.

Cons:
-No way to communicate ingame besides map waypoints - at least having text chat abilities would be great.
-Sharks in the red zone are weak until extremely late in the game - early on, you can take them out with just your knife without suffering too much damage. Players that stay in the red zone should be punished more over time in my opinion. Last game I spent 5 minutes in the red zone during late game, suffering minimal damage, and only had to leave because I was running low on ammo.
-Long wait between matches - not just because of a somewhat small player base. Loading up, waiting 60 seconds to deploy, and actually deploying takes ~3-5 minutes. Reducing the 60 seconds to 30, making the main ship carrying the pods even faster, and maybe making the base swim speed a bit faster would improve the pace of the game imo.

Those are my main issues, it's in early development + I can't complain much given how fun the game is even in such early stages.

So much more than a reboot of Strike Vector, EX has a lot to offer with continued updates continuing to bring more to this awesome idea for a game. This game really lives up to the action and fast pace it promises. Better still, now that I have the right cable I can play it in 144hz.. it runs like a dream.

You can rename your cities hilarious things.