Recent reviews by Chip

The content updates since early access have mostly added flashy late-game tech, but seem to have done little to improve a tedious core gameplay loop and poor traversal tools.
Honestly, just making all the planets smaller would do wonders. There isn't much variety in terrain generation, so there's no real benefit to stretching it out to such huge spaces.

I appreciate that the game's challenges for the most part have a low skill floor, but mechanics nonetheless allow for a high ceiling. It seems the game wants to give you things to do in between plot beats, but is generally not interested in preventing you from advancing the story when you're ready to. Plenty of fun, tough challenges that are designated explicitly as side content. I think that works well here, and is honestly a good model for all games with a strong narrative you don't want to miss out on.

Enough folks have already said why you should play the game, so instead I offer a bit of advice to incoming players:

I've found that it's imperative for you to learn the different character's abilities before you tear your hair out in versus matches. In the beginning, my friends and I were baffled at how much damage other characters were able to do to us, but when we used those characters ourselves it became clear that we were just going at it at a wrong angle. Characters with seemingly broken abilities always have something to balance them out. Clunk's self-destruct does heavy damage in an area, but has a long cooldown that can easily be baited out by more agile characters. Derpl Zork has a slow-moving nuke projectile, but he can only use it while in turret formation. It's also worth checking out what upgrades a character has access to, as your strategy for fighting them may change depending on what upgrades they have.

And, if you don't have a character unlocked and they aren't currently on free rotation, there's an option to test them out in a small practice arena. It's a good chance to get a feel for, at the very least, how their abilities work.

(Note: Some of this may contain spoilers, and some of the issues listed may have since been remedied. This review was written somewhat shortly after release.)

Like many, I first purchased the game while it was in early access. As it were, I did the usual thing I do in games like this and established a decently-sized farm, and I came to discover two glaring issues: One, the only method of irrigation available beyond watering cans involved dumping water from above using a complex wiring system, and two, it became rather obnoxious to acquire more seeds for certain less-common plants. As such, when I came back to the game in 1.0 I preemptively installed two mods to remedy those issues. One to make watering cans much easier to use, and one to make seeds craftable from produce. However, I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that you can craft sprinkler systems using the upgraded foraging table. They water a huge area around them with the only cost being the materials required to make them. In addition, once I got into colony building I realized that tenants sometimes pay their rent with seeds from the planet type they inhabit. So, essentially those issues are now null and void.

Now onto my issues with the current game build. While I like the concept of food rotting (thus, giving you a hurdle to get past in the form of acquiring a fridge), I feel the system would benefit by being a tad bit more descriptive than "This should last a good while." In the base game there's no clear indication as to how long something ACTUALLY lasts (which is why I installed a mod that tells you the exact time in hours and minutes before a piece of food rots). Additionally, it's quite cumbersome that perishable foods no longer stack. Design-wise, it makes sense in that two carrots with different levels of decay have different data values, but I think Don't Starve handles that very well. Just average the decay levels of the foods when they get stacked together.

And finally from out of the blue, my third issue with the game as it stands is that there's still hardly anything concerning the Novakids. I think they're mentioned in a codex somewhere and there's one Novakid colonist available, that's about it. I heard somewhere that their lack of prescence is "important to the story," but I played through the story. They ain't mentioned nowhere. Granted, it's stated that they are somewhat nomadic and never write down their history for lack of attention span, but you'd only know that if you read the wiki page. I feel that the prescence of the internet is no excuse to leave out important information from the actual game.

Issues aside, I still love the game, and would highly reccomend it for anyone who likes to explore, build, farm, or any combination of the three. I suppose the purpose behind most of this review is to state that while the game still has flaws (in my opinion), they've fixed my past gripes and are still working on improving the game today. As such, I predict that it'll just get better from here.

While I do feel like they went a bit overboard trying to have completely separate multiplayer and singleplayer styles, I just can't dislike this game. The general style of the game is so intriguing, and the personalities of the characters are quite the step up from the cardboard I've seen in overwatch. If you're like me and can generally stay entertained by interesting visuals, witty dialogue, and a boatload of achievements that unlock CHARACTER LORE, get Battleborn.

I'd ESPECIALLY reccomend it if they end up adding more content later on. I know they've got 5 more characters planned for a DLC, but some more maps would be swanky (then again so far all I play is overgrowth).

ALSO especially if it goes on sale. 'course that's a rule of thumb by this point.

Most of the criticism pertaining to this game complains about how the in-game tutorials don't really teach you enough to be notably successful in the game's campaign. And I'd say that's about accurate at the moment. For now, the best solution is to just watch an LP on youtube or somethin'. Though, once ya get past that you've got a solid, complex ship builder/fleet commander.