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This game is... well its hentai, high quality pixel art with something for everyone (but without filters that can come as a double edged sword at times). The gameplay is a slightly deeper take on classic Link/Zelda games on handhelds, but with a ton of tools, equipment, skills and the like. It also has a bit of Crusader Kings elements to it with reigns, factions, but very very simplified. It also has dating mechanics, quests, side quests, is a sand box... this game has so many moving parts most of which are dug into to make them compelling enough to make a game where you always have something to do. Even if the feature or the aspect is not super deep, you can move on to something else, and there's always something new to discover.


The combat is simple but satisfying. You can change your characters out for your princesses for certain abilities that are either optimal or necessary for specific scenarios. This encourages you to "collect" new party members... either through convincing princesses to leave their entire kingdom to elope, finding willing parfty members, or makin' babies and raising them to be your frontline soldiers. There's also town/city management if you go with the Kobold Princess path, diplomacy elements, a simple but effective simulated economy and military might which you can regulate and keep princesses form wiping out one another and... abduction and, a lot of stuff. It's Crusader Kings if it had top down adventuring and RPG elements and relationship elements.

... it's complicated.

The pixel art in this game can span from sorta generic to GREAT! The animated pixel art for the "scenes" is fantastic and varied and there are HUNDREDS of them. Some of the towns are super cool and well made, some of the environments are super well done... but some assets are a bit dated it feels? Or hard to discern from other RPG maker projects. The overworld for instance could maybe use more visual effects/particles. But all in all this game stands above the vast majority of RPG maker pixel games.


Sound is good, above average at a "solid" 6.5 The way score things 5 is average and decent, 6 is better than average. It is a simple but limited sound track, though sound effects are really good and the chatting noises for each princess adds a lot. It can really give you an immediate read on the personalities you are going to deal with, it's a nice addition.


There is a surprising amount of depth, nuance, and tact in some of these stories. The Kobold princess runs a gamut of emotions and themes which can go from dark to wholesome and fun, or dark to even darker to vanta black... all depending on your choices. Villains on the face have silly and cartoonish motivations, until they don't and you learn there is a surprising depth and careful forethought and thinking behind the motivations of the villains. There's more effort here in considering why people what to do what they do in some mainstream big games.

There's cute stuff here,t here's morally grey, and then there's uh... yeah, vanta black dark themes. It can be fun to be an absolute bastard in a fantasy environment like this and this game fully and completely allows you to be that absolute bastard.

• Living breathing world
  
• Surprisingly deep characters
  
• Simple active combat works well
  
• So much content!
  
• Always something new to discover
  
• Pretty nifty hscenes.

• While there's a ton of content, some of it is shallow
  
• Some kinks etc exceed my tolerance and no filter
  
• Maybe more of an OST coud have helped?
  
• Some areas look a bit generic

I cannot recommend this game, enough! This is a fantastic and fun adventure, a big adventure with near endless replayability and content. Some people I have seen with 200+ hours and they still discover new aspects to the game. That's incredible. So many of the characters are charming, cute,have great stories... if you want to be a force of good in this world it can be alot of work but you can actually feel like you are making a difference and improving things. That's pretty unique! But you can do this in ways you may not expect.

For instance, there might be a super evil, big big bad princess... who is wrecking stuff up for ZERO reason! But then you get to know a little more about the state of the realm. You discover more about her, and then you get to know her directly and you learn there are other solutions to their issue that might drastically upset/disconnect you from other relationships but might be a better solution overall.

This kind of situation happens often in this game. Everyone has a motivation and a backstory... it's not like that trashy hideo kojima style writing where someone is evil because evil is good for some roundabout half assed explanation. Everyone in this game have clear and realistic motivations. That's pretty unique, and this game is very special.

Early Access Review, things are expected to change and improve from this point on, these are my initial feelings on the game, though. I've been through quite a few missions now and extracted in most of those missions, sometimes with loot worth extracting, even. And I have to say...


The experience has been amazing so far. This game is unlike anything anyone else has made so far. You are actually the underdog in this game, every other game that claims that is fluff. This game is a terrifying edge of your seat experience between moments of eerie and lurid calm.

The world and atmosphere of this project are unlike anything else out there beyond a few isometric CRPGs like Death Trash, but no game nails these Nihei (BLAME!, Biomega, Aposimz, Knights of Sidonia) vibes like this does.

As it is early access the gameplay is rough around the edges, but it is already a challenging and fun gameplay experience. And it is a real early access title, this is not just a demo repackaged into an early access game.



The gameplay loop is singularly unique, and in a way that is shocking no one else has done it so far. Tarkov will not prepare you for this, GTFO will not prepare you for this, CALL OF DUTY will not prepare you for this. A couple big youtubers whinged whined and moaned about this game while trying to play it like COD, it is not that game. You are "not that guy,"

The game is manageable, even in this early access state. Gunplay is punchy and hard hitting, but quickly you will find yourself facing enemies that are far beyond what you are capable of bringing down without being armed to the teeth... which you can do, you CAN wipe the map if you approach the game appropriately and smartly. You need to understand that some of the enemies are nightmare fuel in this and it's not just a bland COD shooter fest... they will overwhelm you if you are not utilising your entire brain. COD youtubers need not apply...

There is crafting, questing, extraction and a myriad of systems to keep you engaged and forces you to push more and more... so long as you know when to bail and mind WHERE to bail out you should be okay. This game is heavily dependent on map knowledge, and while... there might be too many enemies or the fact Timed Extractions spawn enemies ontop of you, most every death I know I could have done things differently or better.

I expect FunDog to balance things as they go, too. Collisions on the map are a bit rough, the heat system could be better described and shown, and some of the guns buck too much it feels a bit artificial. But frankly... all I want is more. More systems, more responsive factions who might allow you to pass through if you have good faction standing with them and prove to not be a threat, maybe let us heal and aid soldiers in the field to be temporarily "green listed" so we can move on by. Fix the match making as it currently does not seem to be working, and just keep adding. The bones of this game are solid, it is GOOD[. very good. VERY good.

Waiting for enemies to engage one another and watching is astounding... but currently the games' LOD is super harsh and animations need to be smoothed out. Once they get this game better utilising more threads than one, should be enough headroom to improve that.


Never have I seen a world in a game or piece of literature that makes me think of the city of BLAME!, Junji Ito, and Giger all in one place... but it all feels grounded. Everything works together beautifully and everything seems to have purpose and a consistent logic to it.

The lighting is amazing, let's just say you should bring a flashlight into your missions... but it is also visually striking and has an artistic integrity so few things have. There are moments where even in the battlefield, the fighting stops, and you just sit and look out over the area realising the daunting task ahead.

The fire and VFX are incredible. Fire looks better than any game I've seen before, including Cyberpunk 2077. It is seriously intimidating and scary to have to approach and walk around/near flames. This is easily a 10/10 for art.


From the guns, the running, the footsteps, the radio chatter... or the amazing original soundtrack... this game is solid. I can't think of a way to improve the sound design and the music of this, everything fits. The Exosuits stomping through the distance is equal parts warning and intimidation. I guess the only thing I could suggest are tanks being louder/noisier like a real tank... they tend to have this tinny whining/squeal to them? Hard to explain. And something like a turbo with a more exhaust heavy diesel engine sound would improve them.


Right now beyond the faction quests and chatter/dialogue all the story is practically visual world building. And its good, it leaves me questioning what things are for in the world, the purpose of them then and now in the apocalypse... the ethos of hope and collaboration is super rare in the "EDGY GRIM DARK OF WAR WHERE THE FUTURE IS WAR AND ALL IS WAR AND YOU SLEEP WAR AND YOU ARE WAR!!!!" There's an actual human element here which takes it from ridiculous GrimHerp to a truly beautiful but terrifying experience.

WIthout that human element... this sort of art and such would be nothing but GrimDerp, like some settings often plunge themselves into. This game, doesn't.

I do wish there would be more though, and there is some... questionable grammar, for such a text light-game. C'mon FunDog, you can give us more writing and better grammar to the descriptions. The characters it doesn't matter as much, it can be written off as voicing. But descriptions? C'mon lol.

• Phenomenal unique world
  
• Fantastic and unique gameplay loop
  
• In early acces this is FUN already
  
• Beautiful music and soundscape
  
• MIstakes lead to harsh punishment
  
• Punishment comes from your mistakes
  
• Unexpected progression system for an extraction game
  
• Co-op PVE focus, no hackers to deal with

• As of Early Access, enemies are a bit too dense at extractions
  
• Odd extraction areas and timed extractions make it a bit tedious at times
  
• Collissions and Geometry in the game world need to be improved
  
• The AI needs more juice/threading to stop LODing
  
• Some big optimisation issues... game is potentially only running on one thread???
  
• Not sold on the water mechanic punishing you for not playing

This is what an Early Access game is supposed to be. It's rough, it's not polished, it's not optimised... there are systems that need to be added and the core is not finished or in its best state. But people are being kind of ridiculous, judging this like it is supposed to be a finished product. It's not. This is what early access is MEANT to be, go read Valve's FAQ about Early Access. A lot of devs use it as a demo and yeah, people now expect it to be as such.

You need to engage with this game in the way the devs envisioned... which might sound weird since I came down on Arrowhead and Helldivers 2 so hard that they didn't understand what the community wanted. But that was because HD2 launched as a fun smash fest at first, and then they tried to make it into a brutal unforgiving anti-fun game by removing all the tools and options the player had to complete the gameplay loop and missions.

This game doesn't do that. You are not supposed to be fighting everything and everyone... But you can. I have cleared out entire fireteams with an SMG, and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ hunter kill teams sicked on me and I had to book it while downing the hunters (which drop REALLY good loot btw.

As a remake of an old, old game, it inherits a lot of what made older games both great but also limited them. But a few options here allow you to cut through the worst time sink issues in gameplay (faster movement speeds, instant movement speeds, etc). Something is lost with charm moving from the 2D sprites to the 3D, though, but it still looks good and they tried hard to preserve the feel and atmosphere of the original game. The story is kind of good, but again, old game... old games like this were written, uh, they sure were written I guess.


This is surely better than just an average 5, it's fun! Above average, a good 7 imo because it does a lot of classic stuff that's just good fun and there's a lot of effort/variety here. Arena mode has a completely different rock-paper-scissors system in it, and the field combat has its own completely different feel to it... but it is dated and very simple. Easily exploited, and you end up building most all your Wanzers similarly. The game also VERY much tries to push you to CQC since it's free retaliations and such... I want to shoot! But yeah. It's still fun though, I personally feel a seven is appropriate, but 6-6.5 would be more appropriate for people who don't love this kind of gameplay. You'll know if you'll like this kind of game well before you read this.


The graphics are... good. Well above average, but you do lose a lot of charm in the environments, Wanzers, etc. The preserved sprites are GREAT! But then they didn't do much with the different towns when you visit them... in fact they are all the exact same copy of each other as per shop, bar, etc. That'd have been one of the cool areas they could have used new technology to introduce variation.

The in mission stuff is all good, each level has been LOVINGLY recreated in an absolute 1:1 manner. It's actually shockingly accurate to the original game, the team really went above and beyond with how true to the old game they tried to be. But... it lacks a lot of graphical technologies that could have pushed this game, likely held back by the fact these graphics were overhauled for the switch which has about as much graphical capability as a graphing calculator at this point.


The old sounds work GREAT. The old songs are okay, repetitive as heck as they are short loops but they capture the old spirit of the game. The team here actually took the old tracks, and REDID THEM COMPLETELY while making them sound similar. It was intelligent to do so, updating the sound a little bit to have more complexity was very smart. They offer both versions though so if you prefer the old, they are there still.


So... it's a nintendo game. With Nintendo game writing. It's not exactly offensive but it's nothing to write home about. Some of the characters seem like they could be cool/interesting characters, but you get about 6 lines of dialogue with them each. It'd be a 5 if not for the fact it did try and say a message and it stuck the landing at the end, really cool ending in this game's main campaign. It'll make you smirk.

But otherwise, you get so little dialogue and character building beyond Royd and... the pilot of Primrose, I forget her name. In fact I forget pretty much everyone's name in this game, there's SO LITTLE dialogue in this game. But there are some cool payoff moments with the... pilot of Primrose, wtf was her name... the blonde woman, the colonel's daughter. Royd's dead fiance is one of the worst and most boring aspects and was hamfisted in. You get zero time with her and the character mopes about it the whole game and there's absolutely no healing or growth from that event so it sort of ends up in that weird area a lot of Japanese games end up with, with a brooding character who never advances and feels stuck the whole time. It's supposed to be a literary device to establish a clear motive to drag the character through the story... but we're beyond that these days and you SHOULD have better motivations.

It kinda ends up having Royd feel like a background character in terms of depth when he is... the main damned character. But the crew is likeable enough and leaves me wanting more story, more content, etc. THere's just a severe lack of story and development and dialogue... makes it hard to care for what's going on.

PROS:

• Retro fun gameplay
  
• An honest and accurate recreation
  
• Good graphics
  
• Completely redone soundtrack that sounds like the old one
  
• Multiple game play modes
  
• Retro sprites are amazing
  
• The ending has a cool satisfying moment
  
• The crew sticking with you is cool

CONS:

• Music that while good, is repetitive
  
• They didn't update the store/bar/arena locations in each town to have separate art
  
• Some of the charm is lost in translation from 2D to 3D
  
• Characters are shallow (though likeable enough... I guess)
  
• Story is paced too short and too little earn its massive twists/payoffs

All in all, enjoyable and a very well done remaster/remake. Honestly this is what SQEEEEEENIX should have done for FF7. The old fans are happy, small updates service new fans and make things more digestible. They worked hard to keep this true to the original and I respect it... leading to what I'd say a 7.5, which is a SOLID rating for me. Well above average which is 5, and 5 can still be an enjoyable game just... average. This game is much more than just palatable and the team deserves a good rating. It's a definite buy.

This is gonna be a short review. There are some neat ideas here, some fun gameplay potential... wrapped into some of the worst absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mechanics I have ever seen in a game. Constant staggering, constant stunlocking, you won't understand the stunlock meta when starting the game and the more expensive premium gundams have 3-4 stun stagger weapons on them. You can equip as much stagger/resistance items as you want and it doesn't matter. Whoever stuns the other person first and has enough weapons to continue stunning them wins. That's it. That's how this game plays. It took the most hated mechanic in any game and made it the ENTIRE gameplay loop.

You might get into a match or two where this isn't being cheesed especially at the lower cost levels. But those are few and far between, and with each match taking anywhere from 10-50 minutes to find... yup. Good luck.


Also, the "cost" system that keeps you from bringing certain OP mechs to lower cost matches or lower tech matches means you are constantly changing mobile suits out so you can never fully learn one.


When the game works, it works and its fun. I normally love mech games, especially slower ones with acceleration limits and turn rates. Things that make it feel like a mech and not some floaty arcade shooter. I have had two or three good matches where I held my own or got top score, while people weren't cheesing premium mechs and stagger. I have had several more matches that were nothing but stunlock fests where my entire team was mogged in about the first 5 seconds of the match and then you get stuck into stunlock constantly. I have literally spent entire 10 minute matches spawning into almost instant staggering as soon as your invulnerability wears off.

This game has cool ideas. Get out of your suit to capture beacons and such, neat idea... blow up the enemy base as a pilot, neat idea. Cool intro that has your customised pilot run into your specific mobile suit. Very cool. It even has crouching and prone! Which you will NEVER do because you will be instantly rushed and stagger locked. If you are not moving you're going to be staggered. Even when you move, you do end up being staggered most the time. Easy Anti Cheat is... terrible.

Also it takes FOREVER to find a match. Holy jeepers.


The sound effects are good, everything shoots and such like sounds from the show. It's what you'd expect, but at the same time... guns etc lack bass and oomph because, well, they are from an anime in the 70s. As nostalgic as they are they didn't have great folley.

The soundtrack is awfully boring. It's... the most generic boring loops of songs from the anime cut to repeat every 10 seconds. I'm CERTAIN the show had to have SOME full length songs? I know it had a lot of 10 second loops for combat etc because... again, anime from the 70/80s... but one of the gundam licensed shows they had access had to have some full length songs that could be used in the hub or at the start of combat or even in the missions? 10 second loops are fine in an anime, but in a 10 minute match looping over and over?


The suits etc look good but... the graphics are dated. Which is funny because despite having a 4080super and a 7900x CPU, if I turn anti-aliasing on I get EXTREME frame hitching in the hub. The matches themselves are fine, but this has to be one of the worst-performing ports I've seen in terms of its graphical fidelity. Everything looks generally nice enough, good enough... but it performs awfully. An otherwise neat and immersive hub area is rendered frustrating and annoying with all the stuttering.

This is a shame because the hub area is really well made and cool. If it didn't perform so poorly I could see it being a huge highlight of world building and immersion.


There is no story so I can't rate that. But there are characters, and they ALL have great design and solid voice acting.... they don't have any personality or good writing, but they are nice looking ant fit the setting well. It's a multiplayer game so... 5/10 seems fine. It's serviceable. The mechanic gal is awesome looking, and the battle simulator dude has good design. There's random PMU characters standing around to flesh out the world, a guy and girl bickering at a white board etc... a little world building here and there but nothing stellar.

PROS:

• Some good ideas
  
• Immersive world design
  
• Good controls and weighty mechs
  
• Brief moments of fun gameplay

CONS:

• Awful performance
  
• Awful staggering based gameplay
  
• Premium mechs outperform anything you can get
  
• Unexplained staggering meta means a steep learning curve
  
• Uninspired and annoying soundtrack that loops
  
• Matches that can take 10-50 minutes
  
• The cost system means you are changing mobile suits a lot, never learning one funny

In conclusion, i cannot recommend this game what-so-ever. I love mechs, I am not a huge gundam fan but this game taught me it has a tone of mobile suits that don't look like silly garbage. All made by GM btw. Most the zakus are fine... but this game focuses on the worst most garbage mechanic in any live/realtime game. Staggering. Not slowing which would be fine, outright stagger where you stop moving, flinch and stand on the spot while they infinitely stunlock you.

A lot of Visual Novels end up being... well, just that. A visual novel! Which a lot of people like, fine, but they aren't for me unless they are doing something that sets the digital medium apart from reading it on the page. Knightly Passions does just that. It also has fantastic art with a cohesive style and a production quality that's fairly rare. The story has some serious punch in certain moments completely taking me by surprise and going into directions that Erotica typically doesn't. It doesn't overly rely on slapstick comedy. There's actual heart and emotion here.

And it has amazing Erotic Appeal. Knightly Passions bucks the trend of so many other in this genre and offers the whole package. A compelling story, great characters, gameplay, while engaging in the erotic nature of things in a complete package.

It might sound strange starting it off this way for a visual novel, but I would like to get it through first... and it has a lot more going on than you may think. The game has a card-based battler system which is PUNISHING at first, and it's a fun system too! There's a lot going on. Sadly by the time you get all the cool skills you are overpowered. Otherwise dramatic and awesome set pieces and story events that should have you fighting and surviving by the skin of your teeth end up trivial due to the fact it doesn't level scale. Even on hard.

Aside from that there's more content! Little chase sequences that are really well animated holy heck! Side on chase sequences that are pretty normal for VNs, but then there's top down chase sequences too? Oh and then there's old fashion dungeon crawler/avoid enemy puzzles!? And YES, there is fishing! A wise man named Yoko Taro once said, every RPG needs fishing. This game has it!

The soundtrack is all original, already it's far beyond a 5 (Average/Good/Fair) but Knightly Passions has some 10/10 amazing tracks mixed into a limited but effective score. Some tracks are so effective at setting the mood and presence of this game. Emotional scenes have hit me hard due to the amazing combination of music, art, and writing. There's a moment with the elf that caught me emotionally, and the score hammers it home.

There are a lot of more generic tracks that are good, but I wish there were more varied tracks. So this is soundtrack with some good ambients that I'd rate a solid 6, but then a few specific tracks that in their context are actually a 9, maybe even a 9.5.

They chose silent erotic scenes which, I get. Silent scenes are far preferable to bad audio... and bad audio is the norm. SFX and Folley is all good, feels good, nice sounds. Nothing amazing but it's all good. UI is mostly silent which I don't like, I prefer GUI SFX.

The art direction here is fantastic. If you like the style of the art you see in the previews, it's that, all the way. [/i]All the time,[/i] it is rare for an erotic VN to be so consistent in its art style. Many rely on multiple artists to separate the gameworld and animated scenes, cutscenes, etc... as a game dev I can attest how hard it is to make sure art styles are consistent across different artists. Feyada accomplishes this and kept all their art-styles consistent.

But not only is high-quality consistent art, but there's also daring and challenging art here, they do unique and interesting things. They put effort to not just be a generic fantasy adventure in terms of what they show you... there's bold and cutting use of colours, contrast, set pieces and designs. You'll walk away from Knightly Passions seeing things you have never seen in a similar game before.

Now we get into it. Knightly Passions' story comes alive mostly in its characters. Alive is the way to describe how the characters of this world feel. There's an expansive cast of amazingly bright and full bodied characters. The nuns surprised me a ton, I had no idea some of the twists with them. And the main character is loveable, a thing so many of these games outright fails on.

Hunter is playful, intelligent, a bit naive at times... but he can pull some fast ones too. He is an outright positive force in the city and offers more than just being a self-insert blank character. This makes the interactions and relationships with the cast of the game world so much better.

There are twists and turns not even I saw coming, and I'm known for being able to figure out a story from very little information. Some writing gets by me by making stupid and complete nonsense twists. Knightly Passions doesn't do this, its twists are meaningful and have actual lead-ins to them. It's weighty, meaningful, and leaves you questioning what comes next.

This main story itself is simple but a clear motivation for Hunter. But through the side quests and ancillary things, his journey gets wrapped in intrigue and conspiracy.

PROS:

• Solid engaging story
  
• Vibrant and loveable cast of characters
  
• Amazing consistent art
  
• Unexpectedly fun gameplay
  
• Effective sound track

CONS:

• Good, but limited tracks
  
• Combat does not scale, you become OP too fast

In conclusion, I absolutely recommend this game. Not because the team are friends of ours, but because the content is fantastic. The game has been made by talented and passionate devs (pun intended). It's worth the buy, and I wish Feyada the best of luck.

EDIT: Hot Fix 01.001.001 - The Buffening


Helldivers 2 launched extremely broken, buggy, and barely functional. It was a nightmare, I tried to refund it, even, after spending 7 hours queuing just to get into the game... valve denied that refund, because valve do be that way.

But they got the game semi-working and it was a TON of fun. It felt like playing StarShip Troopers Roughnecks Chronicles, an elite unit of people running around wiping out insurmountable odds by the skin of their teeth and expertise. It was great! Then they ruined it completely by nerfing everything with this weird game design ethos of anti-fun... driven on by an insanely cultish discord that encouraged them to do so. The game was terrible.

But now, after flip flopping, lying to the community... mocking the community, and losing almost its entire player base, they listened! For now, at least... be careful with this game, because this studio has talked out both sides of its mouth on wanting the game to be "strategem" based, attacked fans for playing it wrong, mocked people etc... all while saying they wanted the players to have fun and they valued their players, and were listening to us. While balncing it based on nothing but data.

Buying this game IS A RISK. This review is for the exact update number I put here. Arrowhead might ruin the game, again... my money is that they will ruin the game eventually, again. I have zero trust in this company.



This is a solid 10 in terms of gameplay. It's frenetic, it's chaos, it's intense... it feels like when I go down it's due to a mistake of myself or the team I am with. I am a force of nature in this version of the game. But I am vulnerable. There is a lot of risk, and one mistake can lose momentum and lose entire missions.

The controls are good, the weapons FOR NOW feel punchy and impactful. I feel like I have a fair chance at dealing with every situation I am presented. But sometimes... I push it too far and get taken out. This is the way the game was released and it was amazing, and it's the way the game plays as of 01.001.001.



This game looks fantastic, foooor the most part. It has a really good solid deisng and the lighting can look great, some textures are a bit washed out and repeating, and you fight on the same battlescapes a bit... too much. I wish there were more biomes or more variation to the ones we have. A planet across the galaxy should probably have some unique plants or colour pallet.

Lighting, while dramatic and gorgeous... can be a real enemy. Frankly, it can be the most dangerous thing in the game, flashlights way too short of range and wash things out a bit too much. Like its a contrast beam instead of a flashlight.

The explosions and VFX look incredible. The game is gorgeous, it lands on a solid 8. It isn't cutting edge but it is fantastic.



Everything sounds good, serviceable... nothing unique or standout but it all sounds good.[ There's not much to say here, it just sounds good.


It's average. There was some interesting stuff with the game manager and such and potential for a loss of super-earth etc... players let super-earth fall and, nothing happened. There are a few neat events like black holling a planet, that's cool and all... but the story isn't the focus here. It's just set dressing for the gameplay. Nothing egregious, nothing bad... the community's head cannon is way more fun than anything Arrowhead put into the game. The community makes the story bits more fun than they have any right to be.

PROS:

• Extremely fun gameplay [As of 01.001.001
  
• Nice punchy sounds
  
• Weighty and interesting player controller
  
• Fantastic VFX
  
• Appreciable graphics

CONS:

• Untrustworthy studio
  
• Story events aren't super compelling
  
• Super Earth's loss did nothing
  
• I'm fighting on the same 4 planets over, and over, and over.

This is a super fun game held up by its unique and engaging gameplay. There is nothing quite like it on the market right now, nothing combines this gameplay with vehicles, gunplay, infantry, ships calling in orbital strikes on hordes of enemies... this is incredibly fun and cool.

But at the sametime, Arrowhead is not a trustworthy studio. They ruined the game before, they insulted their fans, they banned any and all criticism even if it was constructive/police on their discord.... are they going to backslide? Probably. Their former CEO over and over stated that he was listening, he didn't want to ruin player fun... while his other devs called the players idiots, bad at the game, while it turned out NONE OF THE DEVS PLAY ABOVE DIFFICULTY 5. The same devs who were insulting us, could barely manage to finish a Difficulty 5 mission, in fact they failed and just barely extracted.

The devs were literally balancing the entire game by looking at what players used most, and nerfed those guns... instead of understanding those guns were the only things making the game any fun. The devs claimed that we were never supposed to use guns and just use strategems, while some planets had modifiers that removed 2-3 of your 4 strategems, increased their cooldowns by 80%, and increased their calldowns by 50%. Arrowhead are just... not reliable. They made something super fun but they have zero understanding of why/what made it fun, and they likely will never understand why the original game was so fun at launch either. Because they have a completely different understanding and idea of this game fed to them by their original vision and their discord fanatics who gunt guard the game from any criticism. The sad thing is the devs can't even manage to play the game at a mid-tier level, and thought we players who were regularly running 9's were incompetent.

So... this game is great as of 01.001.001. Expect it to be bad in the future, though.

One of my favorite arena shooters... back in the day. Now a confusing and overpriced single-player game with patrol modes and loot grinding, and a cash shop that confuses the ever-living heck out of me. It went from a hard-hitting weighty mech sim to now a nauseating floaty arcade shooter where it's darn near impossible to tell wtf is going on at any point in time on the screen.

Readability is... so bad in this. The vast majority of the time I have zero idea what I am shooting at. Enemies have the EXACT SAME lights as buildings in the background/environment. Everything is made with the same materials settings. Turning particle effects down is NECESSARY to tell what is what. I honestly cannot tell the difference between anything I shoot at and even when things are moving it can be hard to pick them out from the background. Readability is AWFUL in this game. Realistic milsim games like ARMA etc are FAR easier to read what's going on at any time, same with Tarkov. Hawken... it's impossible to see what is what and everyone I know who has played it says the same. I don't think they can even fix this without reskinning EVERYTHING, redoing the lighting model, and giving things different textures. I am an armoured core player etc, and yeah this game everything visually is a jumbled blue/grey mush. Sometimes brown... with green visors on infantry being the only thing that distinguishes them from the background.

Combat is... I dunno, it's hard to judge with how hard it is to tell crap apart. I can basically just wade into every situation and win, but I have no idea what I am shooting at and feel zero satisfaction. I actually had a KDR of 30:1 in the original Hawken... so I am not bad at Hawken. This game though, is not Hawken. It's nowhere near as challenging, satisfying, and tactical as the original. Hawken's float around and the mech turns SO FAST holy jeez why do they turn SO FAST? Hawken originally had some acceleration to its controls etc so the mechs felt responsive yet a bit heavy. Here it's like... quake turn rates.

Also... you can't step on infantry. Wtf, I am in a mech. Even boosting over them, no squish. ALSO THE CASH SHOP! Holy jeez, it has a DAILY ROTATION. This is a single-player game, 505, what are you DOING!? If you want a cash shop in a SINGLE PLAYER GAME have EVERYTHING available all the time. This isn't even co-op PVE, this is single-player PVE!!!

Crafting is disgusting. I fumbled around trying to figure out what I was doing, collection points for materials are vague and you get basically nothing... I actually beat the story and got level 8 and I only managed to CRAFT ONE WEAPON, and that was a TUTORIAL weapon. I made a mech, the Apex MK II. Accidentally, sort of? No idea. I have a dirth of some materials and a complete lack of others and they are insanely slow to collect. Upgrades, craft new, etc... yeah ok I did upgrade my mechs but even that system isn't intuitive. Can I downgrade my upgrades? I fully upgraded my shield, and then put some into walk... but I wanted to remove my walk upgrades as there are limited slots on your Hawken. But I can't? Maybe? Can I? I have ZERO IDEA if I can. I was one of the Ravens' Nest top 10 in armoured core, I literally got 6 parts BANNED from online play I was so good at building ACs. That is one of the most complicated mech customization systems out there! My Mech Lab in MechWarrior 4 TRIPLED the amount of Clan Jade Falcons' mech designs and people universally used my variants in the W!O league CJF and HunterSupreme. If I can't figure out your mech customization system there is a SERIOUS problem.

The story... is like, there, I guess. The character having no ability to outwardly communicate could be pretty cool in theory but nothing is done with it other than to make a silent protagonist and avoid the amnesia trope. I have zero idea who is who, the game throws you into these factions all fighting each other and expects you to figure it out quickly. All these people have bad blood with each other but I have ZERO introduction to who is who, why they hate each other... one faction hates trees? Why? They are huge beautiful maple trees. Who in the heck hates those?

PROS:
- Sound Effects are pretty solid...
- Shooting feels... okay? Maybe? I can't see what I am shooting at so it's hard to tell.
- I like the southern girl, she's fun to talk to I guess... the like, 3 times she talks.

CONS:
- Zero readability
- Graphics are confusing
- Cash Shop is unrewarding and expensive
- Cash Shop has limited daily options
- Crafting things are painfully slow.
- Crafting is confusing... no idea wtf is going on at first.
- Collecting crafting material is a crap shoot if you will get what you want.
- The mechs feel floaty and weightless.
- Stor is... not great, it's not entirely offensive. Some okay ideas but largely bad.
- Mech Customisation is boring
- Weapons come SLOWLY

505... my gosh, 505 games, like. My gosh. What did you do to your baby? Hawken was FANTASTIC. Also, why are you renaming Hawken's to "Axes" Wtf man, why is Hawken someone's name now? The mechs are Hawkens, 505. This COULD have worked, a single player Hawken COULD have worked. Remove this stupid patrol mode and make singular instanced missions on unique maps similar to MechWarrior 4/3/2, Armoured Core... all of them etc. Curate the story better... maybe hire some actual writers to plan and plot out your narrative.

Make the combat WEIGHTY. Use different textures and materials for your world/terrain and the buildings, AND the enemies. Sure you can camouflage things but do it in a way that makes sense, you literally just used the same concrete materials for infantry as you did everything else in the game world! How did you think that would work!? Don't spam spawn in enemies, make them set pieces make them approach, make them spawn in off screen and actually come to you or have them ALWAYS up in their location and clear out after you clear them out. The portals are dumb, the dumbest way to spawn enemies in.

Yeesh...

A very satisfying and fun PVP/PVE shooter.

I am reviewing the Early Access right now, but so far... the core mechanics and architecture of this game is great. This is a Ukrainian studio's first game as a team. And it came out AMAZING considering this is the first project they worked on as a team together and that's mind blowing.

TTK is nice and low, gameplay is fast, and the abilities actually add to the experience instead of becoming the ENTIRE experience. If you are looking for a comparison think of Valorant as it would be the closest arena shooter. But abilities in Shatterline are a lot more profound with each character having their own utility, and each CLASS having it's own utility.

Recons can scale walls, exosuits can bust down doors, troopers can... troop I guess. And medic's have a ton of utility in keeping their team (and themselves) going. This leads to a dynamic and interactive map that opens up more and more with each class. But at the same time this is extremely balanced since if you are being harassed by a recon up in a tower you can typically push an object to vault up and climb to them as any other class. It's really cool!

One of the best aspects is no role-locked Primary/Sidearm. There are benefits for using your role's specific gun (charges your ultimate faster) but you are free to use whatever is needed at any moment. It's a really smart way to design a game like this!

So that's PVP... but this game has Co-op PVE too!

Classes really open up here and it is a rogue-like experience compartmentalised into 10/20/30/40 minute long excursions that give more and more rewards for how many main missions you finish! 4 in total, with horde modes, king of the hill, unique mechanics... boss fights! It's really well done! Addicting as heck!

Recons and Exo's do their thing in this mode too, opening doors to secret loot areas where you can get abilities, perks, new weapons... scaling up areas to kick down boxes for other's to climb up is the Recon's forte. But at the same time certain troopers and recons have skills that let them access the doors/areas of others and let others too! It's really cool.

The graphics look pretty good. I could do with some more fancy lighting, but it has been optimised as a competitive shooter so they have made some concessions to make sure everyone can play this game. It's also pretty early on in development and from my talks with the a few developers from Faglabs, they are looking into fleshing out every aspect of the game. They seem to be nice people by the by!

The story is... interesting, if a little on the nose. The setting could be really interesting, but we don't have much of it yet. The expeditions feel a bit to adrupt and it sort of feels like 2 ish hours of story are missing to introduce us to the expedition and characters. I hear there is more story coming though! The "seasonal event" of "The Red Lake" shows the team has some really good voice actors and they wrote a pretty decent bite-sized scenario. I am interested to see where their writers will go and I want to see more. The setting could be VERY cool with the two antagonist factions and the fact they are fighting each other at the same time, too.

Pro:
+ Fast frenetic satisfying crunchy combat
+ Looks good! Graphics are nice
+ No pay to win... nice!
+ Early weapons are good (sometimes the meta even)
+ People disagree on what the "Meta" gun is, meaning several are viable
+ Neat Setting

Cons:
+ Instability as of writing this (2022/09/17) but it's early access
+ Story is a bit abrupt, I hope it is delivered in a more permanent manner
+ Tad buggy, but again, early access.

This game is a bit unstable currently and you will run into bugs... but the dev team are making this in the middle of a warzone right now. Literally. It is not so unstable or buggy that it is unplayable, but sometimes you will run into things you will need to close out and come back to the game. I hope they can address the issues quickly. The vast majority of my time on the game goes smoothly, but it can be frustrating to have a bug mess up an expedition. Not a big deal in PVP but PVE can be very inconvenient if you have an issue.

All in all I absolutely recommend this fun, frantic, addicting F2P shooter with something for everyone! Unlike Warframe... both PVE and PVP are both FANTASTIC.

Quite a good game for a team's first, a couple fun minigames and okay combat. But the aesthetic, setting, and world is amazing and easily worth the collectors edition I picked up. Character's are good and I ended up actually rooting for most the characters! The story gets a LITTLE bit anime, but is good even if it moves too fast sometimes. All in all... a great game!

Pros:
o Amazing art style, setting, and world.
o Fun and enjoyable characters.
o Combat works, isn't the strong point, but services.
o Interesting exploration.
o I was left wanting more.

Cons:
o I was left wanting more...
o Combat is okay, but could use more combos
o I really wanted more!!!
o The fast pace of the story doesn't flesh out ancillary characters

The pros greatly outweigh the cons... but the game feels extremely short despite getting a good amount of gameplay out of it. Most of your time will be spent traversing areas and combat, which is what a lot of people want. The combat is a little bit too simplified, I wish there was more going on attack-wise. But there's a good variety of enemies etc.

The real issue for me is the fast pace of the story. It dumps A LOT on you randomly, not only that but it introduces a ton of characters that should have way more building. For instance Anna's dad, he is a zaney interesting character... with all of like 6 minutes of content! I like him, but its so short? I learned a bit more in text logs but he, her sister, and her brother were way too underdeveloped. I think the story could have benefited from 30-45 minutes of character building for friends and family. Even some of the enemies felt like they have WAY MORE going on, but not really delivered on.

It leaves me in a weird space where I still like these characters and I feel they are effective... but they left me wanting more.

Now more on the pros! The characters, though underdeveloped, are all enjoyable and have clear motivations and wants. Except the main antagonist you run into. He falls to "anime villain syndrome." But the rest of the cast have clear goals, motivations, side antagonists ABSOLUTELY have good motivations etc. The highlight though is Anna and Ayane. I thought Ayane would be annoying and cloying... but I shamefully started smiling whenever she did her antics, even chuckling! She's cute, sue me.

The story itself is pretty good in general. I am left with a lot of questions about the state of the world, but satisfied with the ending! The "organisations" in the game completely took me by surprise by their nature and some of the things they were doing, their purpose... it really broke it out of "bad guy big company" mold into "super interesting and kind of unique morally grey organisation."

The art style... my gosh, it's beautiful. The music is great in down moments and slower times... combat I could feel could use a punchier more aggressive sound track. But the sound of the cities and the calm areas? Perfection. Actual, literal, perfection. 1-2 hours of my gameplay is me just wandering and looking around towns. All the amazing details and really clever western media references. From BladeRunner to SCP... I really didn't expect those references! The voice acting is super good btw, the actors did a fantastic job.

Some of the side missions are pretty darn interesting by the by. murder, question of memory and what is consciousness, fighting tournaments... there's a lot to do! Heck the bartending was kinda fun and also a way to just farm a grotesque amount of money.

Buy the game, honestly, it's fantastic. If you are wondering if its a full price worthy game... absolutely! I just wish it had more. The movie randomly moves so fast that it makes me go "Wow... I wish I knew more about this character or could spend more time with them."

It's a rough game still but it's extremely fun... it's not an easy game by any means and sometimes it will turn into a very slow slog fest building to building, bush by bush. Uniforms as they do blend in with one another pretty well and you need to really know how to pick the uniforms out from one another or you can end up pounding into your own at a distance before name markers pop up.

But honestly that's how it should be. It's an insanely intense game with amazing sound design.

I have to mention how amazing the sound design is, airstrikes might not be terribly useful but they force you to scatter just becauise of the amazing sound design, get good headphones for this! (not ♥♥♥♥♥♥ raycons/beats/sony etc, something like HifiMan Sundara, BeyerDynamic 880 600ohm with an amp, etc)