Recent reviews by Gryer

There is understandable discontentment towards publishers monetisation practices. The outrage has been taken to the extreme in the case of this game, which is wholly unaffected by their presence. The performance could be better, and has already been addressed, so hopefully will be improved sometime soon.

Judging the game on it's merits, they have done a lot to improve the formula compared to the first game. It looks nice, the large monster fights are even more engaging and epic then the first one. The combat interactions in general have a more weighty feel. The game world feels very large, and greatly rewards exploration and being thorough. The addition of pawn quests is a welcome one, seemingly replacing the numerous notice board missions from the first game as they are absent in this one. The main story is a lot easier to follow, and more interesting/intriguing then the first one which struggled a bit in it's direction.

It is still just as hard to find side quests and important people, if not potentially even harder than the original due to the sheer size of the map, and a lack of overhead markers indicating mission relevant individuals be it during an actively selected mission, or when there is an individual with a mission to offer. The game instead triggers an interaction upon entering an area or coming within proximity of a person who has a side quest available. Due to the nature of how the game works with the progression of time, you may often have to double back to previously explored or cleared areas to determine whether more missions have opened up in that area.
It would have not been an unwelcome addition to me for the quest givers to have some kind of marker on the map, or some kind of courier system to inform the player of people needing help. In general I do prefer zero markers over the approach in other games like Skyrim where it's just a game of following the mission markers, however in this case the game could do a better job of informing the player in more setting appropriate ways.

About the only point of discontentment I have found with the game so far, aside from desiring better frame rates like everyone else is, let's call it the lowered complexity of the combat system in one specific way.
It is fair enough that they split the Strider vocation into two with the Thief and the Archer, I don't have any particular issue with that. The issue for me is that every class (Warrior aside, who actually is better off) has also been robbed of two active skill slots.
In the first game there was always 3 skill slots available on both the LB and RB buttons. In this game you only get 4 active skill slots, all on the LB button, with the RB button being a vocation skill. The effect this has, just for an easy example of the Fighter is that the vocation has fewer defensive options if you also want to slot your best offensive skills. In the first game, all your offensive skills were on RB, and your shield skills on LB. So you could have your full retinue of 3 shield skills, and block on LB, then your full offensive set of 3 on your RB.
I just personally found that system to be much better, and I'm not sure why they felt the need to alter that in favour of vocation skills they could have just as easily made intrinsic to pressing the button (block, or aim in on bow), or a core skill of some kind in the case of the Warrior's shoulder bash thing.
I'm not sure that anyone else has hit on that being a shortcoming of the game in comparison with the first, or if it's just me being too familiar and comfortable with how things worked in the first one and I just have to get used to the changes.

Judge the game on it's merits, the MTX being included had no impact on the development of the game or it's systems. I don't see how it's any different from any other game that has deluxe edition extra content crapola. You gotta be stupid to buy wakestones and port crystals besides.

Game had potential, but unfortunately I can't give it a pass for having left early access with so many bugs and issues. There's a game breaking bug I encountered all the way back in July of 2021 which, just watching the bug reports, someone had reported happening to them still to this day. This is a hard pass, just play Stardew or something.

More than 24 hours in the play tests...

It is unfortunate there are crashing issues and whatnot right now, however that does not reflect the quality of the game and justify it's poor rating (of which many negative reviews will not be removed or changed after the issue is resolved)... The game itself is great, and I'm confident with my experience of these devs so far that these issues will be resolved quickly.

Some of the justifiable complaints in regards to the game itself I've seen in reviews are fair. Such as the game generally needing more content like maps, guns, and attachments, or potential improvements to the ambience and other cosmetic concerns. I am sure many of those concerns will be alleviated over the course of the beta.

Some negative reviews are outright laughable for the style of game that the reviewers in question purchased, or are just a general dislike of some of the design decisions in the game which are not likely to change. As with any PVPVE looter shooter, the game is definitely not for everyone. It's not even for me, some nights, it's just how it goes with these sorts of games.

In general I think that this game holds a lot of potential in a fledgling genre that is going up in popularity. The game you get when you buy it right now is a solid hardcore pvp shooter that is only going to grow into it's space and improve over the course of the beta.

Edit: For context, this review was posted at a time where the overall review score for Marauders was at 44% mixed, and I wanted to put in my two cents to respond to some of the silly criticisms.. Turns out that those of us who purchased the game outside of the Steam platform do not even have the privilege of our reviews counting towards the overall review score of the game... Those of us who have had the most experience with the game, it's trajectory, and developmental history... Make that make sense in the context of this game.

10/10 would KO a batter again!

This game is one of the most surprising titles I have ever picked up on Steam.
I got it under the assumption that this would probably be a super simplified game with the bare minimums by how it looked and hoped for the best...

What I ended up buying was not only an amazingly fun and addictive baseball game, but a game with one heck of a lot more depth to it than you would assume by judging this game by it's cover.

=== Gird your loins ye who read the full review below ===




The batting in this game, completely on point. The physics feel super tight and even in higher difficulties you don't feel like you're getting cheesed when you ground out or pop the ball a mile high. If you swing on that pitch down in the strike zone and haven't reacted quick enough you know damn well you're going to ground out. Everything feels very organic and proper as far as how the ball reacts. There are two different types of swings (plus bunting) : power and contact. You are also able to check your swing with both styles.
For the most part the same can be said about the AI as far as their hitting goes; If you make your pitches and place them well you will get your outs and K's. Again, feels very realistic despite it's cartoony graphics and light-hearted attitude.

The pitching, my favorite part. You have a plethora of pitches (8) to choose from, which is way more than enough considering every pitcher has the same choices. The pitches available are: 4 seam fastball (so-called Meatball), Cut fastball, 2 seam fastball, Slider, Screwball, Curveball, Changeup and a Forkball which is like a split finger fastball or Sinker as far as the movement goes. You perform the pitch by first aiming for the spot you wish the ball to begin it's trajectory and then following the break of the ball. You attempt to come as close to the break point marker (which appears after you start your windup) with your aim marker. The closer to that spot you get the higher quality a pitch you perform. As with batting you have two different pitching styles available to you. Normal pitching and Power pitching. It is a very well done and fun system which I find more interesting than the common methods found in other baseball games like power sliders and such.
As much as I appreciate and love the pitching in this game, I also feel it is an area of the game that has a lot of potential to be made better. Not so with how you perform your pitches but that each pitcher should have their own set of pitches. Along with that system it would more easily open the doors to having upgradeable pitches for each of the pitchers as well.

If you're familiar with baseball games and the game of baseball itself there is not much to go over with baserunning and fielding so I will not say much here.
The fielding feels good but I can see people getting a little frustrated with how quickly (or slowly in this case) your fielders will move. It feels very laborious at first but it is something you get used to and everyone's on the same playing field in that regard for the most part. You can make awesome diving plays if you time it correctly as well as jump walls to reel in those homers you'd all but given up on.
The baserunning, less to say here than the fielding. Pretty much your basic baseball game here except you cannot be picked off on base by the pitcher. The game uses an adaptive method, if it notices you are stealing a lot of bases it will start to give your runners less and less of a lead off. That is one point of the game where it is lacking and unfortunately simplistic.

The depth.

Yes, depth! In case you haven't been convinced so far that there is more to this game than meets the eye, hopefully this will make it a bit more evident.

As you play the game with your team in season mode you will be able to hire staff to help your team on their way. Each member of staff you hire will have 3 modifiers to offer your players in four different categories. Gear vendors, Trainers, Coaches and Stylists. Your players will start out with a few slots open and available to have modifiers placed in and their stats will improve according to the type of modifier you set. Each player can have up to a maximum of 7 slots for different types of modifiers that will be made available as you play through your seasons. Any extra slots and bonus modifications you have done will persist from season to season with that team and you will eventually be able to make your players superstars, for lack of a better term.
There is a bit of strategy behind this feature and you will also see the opposing teams players' improving in the same way as well. In some cases even quicker than your own players if you did not approach the proper staff or applied your modifiers poorly. For this part of the game I would recommend looking at SMB websites forums for a more in-depth description of the system itself just for a better understanding.

There is also a decent amount of statistics in the game including (but not limited to ;) ) BABIP, AB/HR ratios, walk and XBH percentages, OPS/OBP/Slugging, Total Bases, etc. And if by chance you don't know what any of these actually mean it is described in game.

One more thing that adds to the depth of this game is the highly adjustable and customizable difficulty system, called "Ego".
You can adjust the difficulty across the board, or you can go into what's called Ego mode and adjust the difficulty based on the positions you're playing. For example, you could have batting and pitching at 50 Ego, but fielding and baserunning at 80 Ego so the game doesn't hold your hand as much for those bits. It makes it very easy to find a difficulty which you feel comfortable playing at and that gives you a good run for your money sometimes. The difficulty goes all the way from 1 Ego, through to 99 Ego. Anything above 60-70 Ego (once you've gotten comfortable with how the pitches look and move) will give people who are familiar with baseball games a good challenge while at the same time feeling like it's a proper competition.

An unfortunate truth that has been a big disappointment to many about this game is that there is no online multiplayer, nor is there plans for there to be in this game. With any luck this game will have a sequel, which, from what I hear and have understood, online multiplayer will be one of the priorities for that as it has (quite understandably) been one of the most requested things by the community.
If by chance you happen to have friends within couch distance the game does have one of the most fun co-op playstyles I have seen for local multiplayer and a baseball game in general.


If you have stuck around to this sentence and read through the whole review I have written up, I commend you, and hope that this has given you a good idea to make a well informed decision. This game and the team behind it truly deserve all the support they can get for this game. It has amazing gameplay somewhat hidden behind it's cartoony facade.

Thanks for reading. :)