Recent reviews by Draknus

This DLC would have been good except for a few glaring issues. Let me cover the good first because it does have some good. Oh, and spoiler warning, I talk about some things revealed through progression in the DLC and main game.

They make an entirely new system/planet for you to work with, and it's got new biomes, a very interesting depth-based biome set (similar to the surface, caves, mantle, core of the main game, but so much more immense and intense), and they even make it so that the difficulty related to finding materials scales properly. The balance there is honestly really impressive. The design of the new flora is really beautiful, and at one point it brings back that feeling you first got when you broke into the mantle on Sylvia for the first time and saw the immense mushroom trees when you first played the game. The writing for the story in this is good, in my opinion, and creates a compelling narrative that you want to actually focus on, though I'll explain how that kinda undoes itself below.

Now let's look at the middling aspects of the DLC: the only materials that are new are effectively researchables and pieces to puzzles. The sountrack is limited and honestly not as good as the original. The planet is scaled really large, which would be great if it encouraged you to explore, but instead just adds seemingly unnecessary monotony thanks to some frustrating interactions between the story and the setting. And I'm not sure if it's just my save game or something, but there seems to be a lot more loading lag on this than in the main game.

Now, for the ugly, and I have way too much to say about it because, for me, it was exceedingly frustrating.

First, it sets you up thinking you're taking a save with you, not showing you that you're actually starting a new save game until you exit, which leads to some uncomfortable moments when you realize that everything you had on you, as well as any custom game settings you had in the save you started with, are all gone.

Second, the plotline for this is really well written, but the way it's laid out basically makes what for many players, myself included, makes the game most enjoyable useless; instead of getting time to explore, enjoy, craft, make the more efficient systems you can to get through things, the writing makes it seem urgent at all times to go as quickly as you can to the next goal (the implication is that in-universe people are going to die and your save/existence is going to be deleted as well)

Third, the instructions given are poorly written and demonstrated. They did some really good work with cutscenes, both in this and the main game, but they don't use the cutscenes in this to show you what you need to be doing when that would be really useful. The final stage of the game tells you to go to the center of "storms", but doesn't show you which storms so you can end up wasting a lot of time manually running around the planet to get to storms just to find out that the storms they wanted to you get to were much closer, but they didn't have the camera bother to pan over them, at least not that I saw, which would have fixed everything with that particular section. Earlier, they give you instructions you can't actually follow without using a system they don't explain was replicated from the first instance in which you dealt with it, or how it's replicated (if you're wondering, it's by depth. The Alpha one is on the surface, the Delta one is deeper down, and the Zeta one is much deeper down)

And finally, the one mechanic that I've seen consistent issues in this game, which have been present since this mechanic was added in early access, is screwed up during the final section where it's made clear that you're not merely running out of time, you ran out of time, and the best you can do is mitigate the damage being done, so if you actually care about the story the way the authors intended, you're desperately trying to get things done when you can't control your movement anywhere near well enough to pull it off, because it's all in the broken twisted gravity of the core, and because they cut out the entirety of the galastropods and made it seem so urgent that you couldn't take the time to get the nanocarbon alloy necessary to make qt-rtgs and portable oxygenators, you have to deal with that, a completely lack of materials in the core to actually build with, and a tether system that doesn't work because the twisted gravity makes it so they don't attach to nearby surfaces they way they're supposed to.

I really wanted to like this, and there's a lot of good in this DLC, but the execution for this as a continuation of the story that the devs have done so well building and helping players along to care about is so frustrating that I cannot in good conscience recommend this to people who love the base game. It feels like it was made by a team who wanted to make an off-shoot combat adventure game rather than a DLC for Astroneer.

As a side note, I do like how the devs set up the ability to start new games in the new system/planet, but it would be really nice if they'd included the ability to at least unlock custom game settings on it too. I hope they add that in soon because I could see myself having a lot of fun on the new planet especially with friends if it wasn't set up to make everything seem so urgent all the time and if we could just enjoy exploring for a while between phases, or at least after we finished the plotline.

Sony has been hacked like 7 times in the last 15 years, making tens of millions of users vulnerable by allowing their personal information to be bought and sold by criminal groups. There is no way I am going to sign up for such an account. I don't like third party accounts in general, but *adding it in* only after the game becomes popular is an absolutely horrible move.

I've played around 89 hours according to steam, and I haven't really gotten into all aspects of the game yet. I've done a lot, there are a good number of systems and mechanics I've gotten to try, but there's still a good deal more already in the game, and they're updating it relatively soon to add more. I'm honestly pretty impressed by the actual mechanics of the game. It gives you plenty to be active with, and it gives you plenty to be passive/idle with. Overall, it's a solid idle game.

I love the setting and art design. The entire thing is very humorous, and that earns points in my book. Just the idea of some random farmer spending years fighting a potato rebellion is hilarious.

Now here's the stuff that may bother some, and it kind of bothered me a little: the "clicker" aspect of this game is extremely limited. You can click to increase attack speed by up to 50%, and that effect is very temporary. There are mini-games and other aspects that keep you busy if you want to be busy, but the label of "clicker" doesn't really seem to fit here for me. It's not like Cookie Clicker or Time Clickers where your clicking is the primary mechanic at some point in the game, it's just a small buff.

Still, if you're looking for more of an idle game than a clicker game, which I do enjoy, this game is a solid choice.

I got this because I really enjoyed Freelancer. It has a lot of the same basic gameplay as Freelancer, but so much more. The biggest ways in which it's lacking (compared to Freelancer) are story and voice-over, but to be perfectly honest, that doesn't really hurt the experience. It's infinitely replayable without mods, and the community designed ships, turrets, and mods add even more to it. Yes, it's early access, and yes, there are a lot of random bugs, especially if you're playing with mods, but it's still probably one of my top 5 games of 2019

It's a pretty nice clicker game. Nothing super amazing, just fun.

The game is updates pretty regularly, and has gotten better since I first bought it. Great mixture of survival crafting and zombie survival mechanics. Well worth trying if you enjoy either of those genres

Great game, lots of fun, strong fanbase. Looking forward to Torchlight: Frontiers.

Everything about this game is fun. I love the soundtrack, the combat, the open world, it's just all great. If you enjoy games in which you can choose to focus on trading, hunting down criminals, becoming a criminal, or a few other fun activities, you have to try this.

I've played this game on PC and Android. I've played it over and over, and it's just simple, fun, hilarious JRPG magic.

So let me put this into perspective:

You slaughter zombie pigs, with bullets. That should be all the perspective you need.

But for added fun: you can have friends join you in your bacon creation.

Just... do it.