Recent reviews by polarpandah

It's been a while since I've played a new TW game, but I've got to say that this feels right at home with the classics (e.g. Medieval, Shogun & Rome). Battles are solid, the campaign is challenging but not overwhelming, diplomacy is actual diplomacy (though exploitable), and it feels like there's always something big happening in the game until the end game where you're too involved with everything at that point so you are part of the big things happening.

tl;dr Do NOT buy this game under any circumstances, it is unfinished and the developers do not follow through with any of their promises. Additionally, you should also avoid Reign of Kings, the devs' other game and any other games they may develop. They are essentially scammers.



Let me start off by quoting the discussion board of Starforge's official wiki page:


"Starforge is perhaps one of the WORST games ever to release early access on Steam.

The game was falsely marketed. The game was sold incomplete with none of the promised content.

It also jumped from Alpha 0.7 to Full release in one update..?? How..?? I would like to add since the 1.04 update Starforge is UNRUNNABLE on midspec pcs even when the resolution, detail, aa settings are all turned to minimum/off and it seems to very quickly overwork and eventually overheat computers it is running from.

Furthermore the developers of Starforge are banning any of its player base who states that this game was not sold as advertised. And no, because of the Steam TOS, we do not get a refund for a non playable game."



This is an unfinished mess that I have had made the regrettable decision to buy back when this game had initially come out. This game is an incomplete sandbox game that was SUPPOSED to offer so much and promised everyone that purchased in early access everything from gun customization to a vast variety of biomes. When it was first announced, everyone though that this would be too good to be true, but everyone jumped on the bandwagon, believing the developers' passion and their commitment. Now fast forward just about a year later and I will tell you that this game is still unfinished and abondoned.

I understand if there is too much for a developer to take on. If they have to fall back away from their initial view of their game and let their buyers know, then I would be pretty understanding, but the developers never explained why this game was never completed or why they never notified their buyers of their abondonment of the game.

Now, I'm sure you're wondering how I know they've abandoned this game? These developers are also the same exact devs designing Reign of Kings. The game that had more traction with Youtubers and other players of the survival genre. I can't say for sure why the devs wouldn't let buyers know about them giving up on this game, but know for a fact that this game is not worth a single penny in its current state and will NEVER be unless the developers go back on designing this game and actually fulfilling at least half of what they've originally offered.

If this type of action is intentional, there is no place for that in gaming. Gamers put a lot of trust into developers that how they portray/describe their game is accurate and not misleading, especially since the decline of usage of demos (which is understandable, but not an excuse for misleading anyone with or without it), but telling people all these things you plan to do, not follow through, and THEN not inform your buyers and hope they forget? It's absolutely despicable. I hope that eventually Steam will offer the option to rate not only the game itself, but their developers so that people recognize developers that do not follow through with their promises on previous games or have shown that their business strategies are toxic to the gaming community as a whole.

For a game that prided itself on being the spiritual successor to the original Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six, this game is nothing like those games. It is an incomplete FPS game that had some really great ideas but executed them terribly. The movement is far too slow, feels clunky and only makes the game drag on. Weapon customization doesn't seem to do much, except for the situations where the bullets hit the environment and those moments seem to be very scarce in a game. Everyone dies from a single shot to anywhere on the person, which does not feel realistic at all since a shot to the arm would not immediately kill someone and also the fact that the main reason a person dies after being shot is more often than not blood loss, unless the person was shot in the head, which would lead to brain death. The customization menu does not function efficiently and it is a hassle to select every little option when you have to click left and right for each one and often times it is near impossible to know what certain options do for you and whether or not they are actually doing what they claim to do in game. Weapons are clunky and recoil doesn't feel real. Additionally, the controls feel weird, though I cannot explain why, and the tutorial does barely anything to help players understand how to use certain gameplay mechanics such as the breaching charges. The only thing that the tutorial said was that a certain door was meant to practice using breaching charges, but never indicated how or who can use them and honestly I still don't.

I know I am being very picky, but I am a huge fan on realism in FPS games when it is promoted as such. For a game that had put so much effort into marketing its realism and tactical approach to the FPS game, I do not see anything different about this from other modern FPS games like CS and CoD other than some negative pointers, albeit the game does denote signs of its influences of the tactical FPS genre.

In conclusion, this game had so many great ideas and the developers definitely were working towards making a good tactical FPS game that could be proudly considered a spiritual successor of Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six and even SWAT, but it falls short in every aspect and truly feels like an untested, unfinished mess. Since seeing Takedown: Red Sabre on Kickstarter I had high hopes for this game, but I can say that this game was extremely disappointing and was nothing like what I had expected at all.

I purchased Payday 2 with a friend during it's Early Access and played it a lot up until a few weeks after release. It was a lot of fun with friends, but the developers released an update that essentially killed the feeling of making any kind of progress by lowering the amount of money and xp you make on missions. It will take you forever to get a new gun, upgrade, skill or even a new mask because of the unbalanced payout.

Other than that, it is a great game and very enjoyable, but until they fix the balance of earning money and xp in missions, I would not recommend this game to anyone unless you're willing to put in hours and hours of gameplay just to get one new gun and a few skills. If I could get a refund on this game that would be great, but at the very least I can warn everyone that's on the edge of purchasing this game what to expect.