Recent reviews by Ayer

WARNING: THIS IS A SANBOX MODE REVIEW. I HAVE NOT PLAYED ENOUGH CAMPAIGN AND LEARNED ABOUT EVERYTHING FROM SANDBOX.

This will be my first review after waiting 2 years for this game to come out. Possibly the most important thing is: DO NOT COMPARE THIS TO THE FIRST ONE. That will be a death sentence.

The game takes a few pieces of the first and molds them into something completely different in this game. If you want to somewhat compare it of something, it has some similarities to Mount and Blade. Mostly due to factions and recruiting captains and such.

A lot of people will give the game ♥♥♥♥ for its slower pace and the big change it made, but I think it's for the better, but that's just another opinion. At first, I hated this game for the first few hours because it felt so different, but then things changed bit by bit over time once I started to understand more and learn about a whole new game.

I will first list what I find to be problems that should probably be fixed soon, then I will list pros.

First: I feel like the early access in this game is more than just for multiplayer purposes. There are a few things that I feel need to be changed, one of the biggest issues being the extreme lack of REZ in the later stages of the game. REZ is used to have your ship move faster. There are 3 available movement options ranging from slow to fast. Slow usually takes up 0 REZ, but later takes a little bit due to heavy amounts of goons and weight. Normal takes a low amount of REZ, while fast can consume 3x as much REZ (If not that exact amount). I only played the campaign for about 2 hours, so I can't say if it lacks as much, but it is a big problem in sandbox for the time I've played it. Your ship ends up consuming much more REZ than you can find and you'll often find yourself sitting around watching your ship slowly move to areas.

Second: Ramming in the later stages. (Didn't know about it early on so not sure if it's good there) When you build up a tanky enough ship, you can just ram the ever living ♥♥♥♥ out of people. This is super fun, but absolutely annihilates hulls. It's not so effective on shields, but when you have your shield up and ram an unshielded target, you can quite literally 1 shot them depending. You can also ram starbases to destroy them quickly, which is somewhat annoying but I like the mechanic a lot.

Third: The AI are stupid. Now I don't mean when you're in a battle; they just do what they can to fight you and I don't find it to be an issue. But the AI on the starmap; they are stupid. After building up a base of my own and recruiting my own captains it showed over time that they don't exactly have the smartest mind of their own. This is mostly because they're one dimensional as they will see someone from their team being attacked, and quite literally every single one of them will rush to their aid, but when the battlefield is full, they'll go about their usual business. OR they will all rush to another target that's being attacked, and the cycle continues. This is mostly an issue when you have a somewhat bigger faction of your own.

Fourth: The choices you can tell your captains to do. These are extremely limited. You have Set Wingman, which will have them follow you around all game if you like no matter what you do, and that's it. You can't tell them to raid a starbase or attack/distract their leader, only to follow you or stop following you. You are also limited to 1 person following you at a time. Which is a good thing, because if you were running around with 2 allies at a time, you would probably win every single fight.

There are a few other minor things that I don't think are really worth mentioning, so on to the positives. These will be a bit more quick than the my semi-detailed cons.

Pros:
-Variety of parts is great and making your ship while figuring out how you can optimize or make it interesting is fantastic.
-I only played normal and it seemed well balanced for most of the game (until I just got way ahead of everyone), so I can only imagine what the harder mode is like.
-Ability to start from scratch when you die for the hardcore and masochist players out there.
-Very good "takes time to do things" system. Want to salvage things from the enemy you just killed? It will take some time and you may be attacked by someone that doesn't like you. Want to ransack a REZ deposit in a faction's territory? It will take some time and you'll probably die to the areas owner!
-The zombies are fun, but can be overwhelming if you're not prepared for them.
-You are meant to struggle, take risks, and hope for the best in the early game. Not taking risks will slow your progression heavily. I enjoy this concept although you CAN abuse auto save and quick save to try and get the best outcome.
-Trading is great. Everything will be more expensive in places that don't like you, and things will be cheaper for people that do like you. Equipment will be much cheaper when you buy it from your own faction or the faction you create.
-Also on trading: Replacing parts of the same slot requirement will replace that part automatically, as long as you sell that part with it. Example: I want a subcore system to be replaced but it's in the very freakin middle of my ship and I'll have to tear my ship apart to add the new one. Not at all! As long as you select the subcore you want to buy and the one you want to replace, it will replace it once you trade.

My overall impression of this game for the hours I've played it is probably an 8/10. Definitely recommend it as an overall game, but if you're here to re-live your SPAZ 1 life, don't bother.