Recent reviews by Zalanore

Worst tutorial I've seen in a game, especially one this complicated. When I googled how to do a basic task that the tutorial explained poorly, the devs literally replied to someone asking the same question with: Go watch this hour long YouTube video made by a fan of the game.

All I want is a relaxing train management game where I get to watch cool trains do their job. This game doesn't even have a follow cam. What kind of train game doesn't have a follow cam? It's like the trains don't even matter.

What happens if you help build one of the most successful video games ever made? You get fired.

Netease just laid off the entire American development staff of this game despite making over $1.3 billion in two months, because that will save them money.

This game is an interesting concept poorly executed. The idea of an old-school Zelda like where you can modify the code of anything is cool. Except you never actually modify the code, you instead change the values of a limited number of variables. That in itself is fine, except 2/3 of the way through the game they suddenly switch from giving you a list of variables to modify to giving you a lightly redacted (why in the world is 1 in every 10 lines of the code you're not allowed to edit removed?) version of the full code in an obscure language (it's not hard to read, just obscure). Also, there are no significant tutorials. So what this means is to play this game:

A) You must already know how to code. If you don't then don't even bother installing this game.
B) You won't get to use your coding knowledge.
C) You can only solve problems the exact ways the dev intended.
D) If you don't solve it the exact way the dev intended the game hard crashes. I tried to clean the lake for the 2nd time (because they heavily imply you should), but doing this just breaks your game.
E) All the jokes are 3/5 and even then require you to already understand coding. There was literally only 1 joke in the entire game I thought was funny, and it barely got a chuckle out of me.

If this game wasn't so short I would say it was a waste of time. Maybe buy it heavily on sale if you already know how to code, but even then I don't suggest it.

A small group of people will love and adore this game. It's story driven, but your choices rarely matter, and when they do you won't find out how they affect you until several hours of game play later. Expect to look everything up on Reddit and guides, because this is a wiki game without a wiki.

Overall, this game isn't the worst. It's just not amazing. The story and voice acting are pretty good, the world is beautiful, and everything else is 3/5 or worse. The combat is possibly the worst I have ever seen in a game before. Many people say that's by design, which I understand and enjoy the start weak become strong later. But being overpowered late game is a crutch to compensate for fundamentally bad combat. However, the world building is really good, and I find myself invested in finding out what's going to happen.

Sound design is bad, the AI is garbage (my companion sometimes decides just to sit out fights until after I'm already dead), re-loading a save doesn't reset your backpack. Moving platforms don't move you and will move out from under you, and your character is VERY slow and clunky and makes massive turns, so you're guaranteed to fall off (instead of fixing this they decided to make moving platforms a trap and there's actually another way around). They don't explain that Elic (I spelled that wrong) and Shards are the same thing (currency), but then ask you to choose between 300 of one and 100 of the other. Characters are all single note (like the woman who ends literally every sentence by complaining that she doesn't have food supplies).

Many core game mechanics are never explained. Like how your attacks MUST be timed to have an effect, or how lock picking is supposed to work (it has false positive feedback, so good luck guessing the mechanics), or that you're not actually supposed to be able to fight anything until you are level 15+ despite the fact that the game has you running around everywhere past tons of high level enemies. While some of these aren't themselves fundamentally bad, the lack of any explanation is what makes them inaccessible. And unlike the some other games with similar design where people argue this is good, there's no wiki for this game to explain anything. Running away is easy, because you're supposed to spend your first 4 hours running away from everything. And if you're a Darksouls pro who plans to dodge and parry the game says no and enemies get massive leap attacks, don't get stunned, don't have stamina like you, and despite being level 6 I still can't equip the first shield to try blocking.

Yet despite all that I'm still enjoying the game. We'll see how I feel in a few more hours. I would HIGHLY suggest if you play this do it on easy. The game is on hard mode no matter what you select, so the lower difficulty just ends up making it less annoying having to run everywhere.

Voice acting is BAD, no auto save, tutorials are BORING but mandatory because everything is obtuse, and there are lots of was to softlock a save. I literally just accidentally clicked on the wrong option while in a station elevator and boarded a freight just as it was leaving with literally zero way to get back to my ship. The only possible solution is to re-load, but remember this game doesn't have autosave. This shouldn't be possible. Space is 2D for some BS reason, and when you try to rotate your ship fights you (even if you turn off auto rotate to level). Story is very meh so far. They throw ships at you right off the bat, but this feels like bad game design. I should have the opportunity to earn them, but just be given everything right away.

There are 1004 equipment slots in the game. You start with 4. They must be purchased at a rate of 10 equipment slots for $5...

This is the literal definition of pay to win.

TLDR 2/5, paint by numbers Warframe that despite failing to stay inside the lines still charges you $100s of dollars just to get access to more crayon colors.

The story is absolutely terrible, the voice acting is horrendous, the music is non-existent, the gameplay is mediocre and repetitive, they're shoving micro-transactions down your throat at every turn, the game is still buggy and crashes, it's HORRIBLY optimized, the menus are hot garbage, managing your inventory is a pain in the butt especially since you have VERY small inventory limits for the 12 or so different upgrade types, the tutorial is basically non-existent, the one guy who is supposed to teach you things doesn't speak words and his text disappears before I can read it (and I'm a very fast reader), they regularly show you doing cool stuff in cut scenes that you don't get to do yourself, the game is already full of stupid cosmetics (dinosaur suits, really?), and it's just not good. I would be willing to forgive the complete and blatant rip-off of Warframe that this is (no really, they literally copied Warframe and put an anime skin on it), but Warframe was better than this 5 years ago, and isn't trying to steal all your money.

Farming new characters is intentionally as impossible as they can make it to get you to buy them, there's a battle pass, TONS of cosmetics, pop-ups to remind your there's cosmetics, more pop-ups to remind you there's a battle pass, and notifications every time you open your menu to remind you there's a cosmetic store.

EDIT: Changed review to not recommended. The water in the new update is literally giving me panic attacks. Games should not give panic attacks. Subnatica didn't give me panic attacks, I loved it. But this game... just no.

This is one of the best games I've ever played.

SCP meets Half Life. This game is amazingly fun single player and even better with friends. The story is fantastically well told, the horror is just the right amount of creepy without using jump scares, the crafting is fun, the skill system is very well balanced, the combat could be slightly better (stand further away than you think and you'll be good), and there's a few minor complaints (like military weapons not being worth the effort), but this game is a model of what a Beta should be. Basically bug free, feature complete for the first 4/6 zones, very minor balancing that is getting regularly patched, and just an overall amazing game.

Please buy this game and support the indy dev team. They deserve your support and you'll get a great value product in exchange. Because they, like the rest of us, have all got larva to feed.

It's like Ark: Survival Evovled but without the mods that make it fun, and all the money that could have been spent making interesting content was instead wasted on big name movie actors. I don't care about better graphics (they still look bad), or fancy menu animations, or a TV show, or pay-to-win micro-transactions being shoved down my throat every time I open the menu. The game is still laggy and poorly optimized, based off the floating assets EVERYWHERE the map was pretty clearly thrown together without much care (despite just being a copy of a years old map) and the lack of Steam mod support means running a modded server for my non-tech savy friends (who couldn't even afford this game) would be a nightmare and a half. Go play Survival Evolved or Palworld, or Conan. They're all this but way better.

Glad I played during a free weekend and didn't waste any money on this cash grab of a game.

2/10 go play Survival Evolved instead.

They fixed the game with only a single major patch. I'm honestly surprised how well they listened, understood people's complaints, and made the game so much fun.

* Combat feels really good.
* The new boss fights are fantastic.
* The build limits being increased is wonderful.
* The new schematic unlock system is fantastic.
* The hand crafted storied realms are absolutely amazing.

The hand crafted realms I think really help highlight the strengths of this game. It's always been beautiful, but with a hand crafted realm they really were able to take full advantage of that. They intentionally place flat building base areas overlooking all the best sights. And even little announces (like cliffs not having a path up them) have been taken care of. I do kind of miss the extreme complexity of the old crafting system, but I recognize I'm the odd one out there. And honestly the new crafting system is much more accessible while still being deep enough to be fun and interesting.

At this point I cannot recommend this game enough. There are still a few minor bugs that aren't a big deal (like how large characters shrink when you emote, then change back at the end of the animation), but after having completed the first storied realm and boss I have yet to have a single moment of being annoyed or wanting to stop playing.

If you are even remotely interested in this game, buy it. It's a 9/10 now with more updates coming that will make it a 10/10.

Edit 2: As of September 2024 the devs have finally done it. They finally sat down and REALLY listened to the complaints. After the most recent update the game has never been so much fun. Yes, it's a little bit easier overall, but I'm willing to accept that because now every weapon is viable and fun. I've been using weapons that were garbage tier and I disliked before and they're fun to use now. Despite all my previous complaints as of right now I give Helldivers 2 a 10/10. (Sony still gets a 1/10 for keeping the game out of countries without PSN.)

Edit: For all my complaints the devs put in the effort to try and make this game better. Slowly most of my complaints are being patched out. The game is still buggy, and some of the decisions the devs make I soundly disagree with. But, with friends it is fun, and the devs are doing their best to make this game worth your time. (Oh, and the frequency at which they release new mini-battle passes and their low cost makes them pretty fair. I would now say they've earned the right to monetize.) 4/5

Old Review:

Everything this game does dozens of other games have done better. I don't understand why this one got popular when the others didn't. Second Extinction was fantastic, but barely played. Ghost Recon Breakpoint was amazing and also under appreciated. Remnant 1, 2, and Darktide are some of the best games I've ever played, but no one seems to care about them. I'm glad people are having fun, but I only play this because my friends refused to play all the other co-op games with me and insisted I get this one.

Summary: only fun with friends, all guns are locked behind battle pass, technically pay-2-win but on the least egregious level. (Yes you can get them by grinding, but I don't have the 200 hours required to do so, and I know it takes 200 because my friend did it.)

Anyways, I give the game a 3/5. I don't think it's earned the right to monetize on top of costing $40 USD (despite what the developers have claimed). It's repetitive content with minimal game-play variation. The devs are HYPER anti-meta (I didn't use anything they nerfed, but man did they get nerf happy), and at the same time they were telling people to not use meta weapons, and nerfing the meta weapons, they ramped up the difficulty WAY too much. I can still complete missions, but it's just not fun.

Also the jokes are highly repetitive variations of the same core joke so it wears thin pretty quickly. The dialogue and writing really wasn't good to begin with.