Recent reviews by ZS-Ügynök

First and foremost I would call this game.. unique. I consider Hearts of Iron, EU4, UG: Civil War, and even The Great War: Western Front games relatively easy to understand, and utilize different strategies. Rise of the white sun is anything but.

The UI (even in it's improved state) is a lot to take in, tool-tips are wrote like if my half drunk friend would try to explain it. Altough the casual style is fun, it doesn't help much in understanding the concepts, or potential exploits etc. The game concept is really great, with un-shared resources, that are bound to characters.

The fog of war with unkown army composition is a great addition, as you cannot see straight up what the AI is building. Bandits are a pain, but undestandable pain. Town management is really branching, but effects or ideal compositions are unexplained.

My experiance with such large 4X/war-games are that every tooltip, option, button etc. needs to contain any and all detail, unless it's a story addition or "suprise" (like AI tech in Stellaris).

Overall, the replay value is in there, the historical era is previously unexplored, so this is a great indie addition. But don't expect high value UI or information.

Kudos for supporting after launch!

This game is a gem, really. The vibes are a lot akin to Disco Elysium, with the storylines containing twists, turns, and hard-hit feelings. Calling it immersive would be an understatement. The first 6-7 hours of the game, I played in one go. Didn't even realise a whole day went by me... So my advice, get this game, lots of choices, fun gameplay loop, amazing universe in SPACE, a sci-fi drama really.

Just get yourself a wristwatch, Sleeper.

Played it a while back on a PS4 when it came out, decided to play it on PC when it discounted, hoping the bugs would be ironed out by now. Boy was I wrong.

Quest objectives compleatly missing, companions shooting the ground menacingly. I couldn't complate one of the planet's main quests, because one angara was talking into a box - never mind that the fact she was talking inside a box via intercom facing a wall is in itself quite immersion breaking. And guess what, you can only talk to NPCs when you face them directly...

There are just waaaay too much missing QOL features, unfixed bugs, and oh, your choices, the stuff Mass Effect revolves around, they don't matter. At all.

Steer clear.

Truly the best vampire fiction I have seen so far, either in books or games. The combat takes getting used to - you will have to fight a lot whatever path you choose. The most interesting story choices require you to sacrifice a lot of XP, which is already hard to come by, if you don't nibble on the city's residents. Other than that, this is one of my favorite RPGs. Highly recommended!

Devs rushed to the bug-smashing stations, after a vast amount of players experienced unfixable technical issues.

And voilá! Frostpunk 2 runs great now. The UX/UI was improved tenfold in a few months, making the game much more approachable.

I also feel like Frostpunk 2 doesn't put you under as much dread and pressure, as you experienced with the original, but the managament and city-building aspect of the game, as well as techs and society's revolving conflicts are really represented well, and have been improved in every aspect.

Frostpunk felt like a dreaded, terrifying survival - Frostpunk 2 is a colonization and sociaty focused graphical marvel.

There are like 8 different ways to "open" a door

I just found out that you can rotate with the right mouse button

A true gem for this amount of $

Improved upon the concept of the Kingdom games and made into a 3D clash, with special features for each biome.
Your troops and defenses are cannon fodder, and each and every building rebuilds at the end of the night, which makes it into an interesting strategic balance between economy and military.

It even has light RPG elements. What are you waiting for at this point?

I'm fairly confident, that Far Harbour, in itself, is better than the base game as a whole.

Quests:
Almost all quests can be approached in multiple ways, and the island-reaching quest line itself is a truly unique take on the various factions in the fallout universe. I found nothing generic about it, it was absolutely full of intrigue.

Atmosphere:
The music incorporates Fallout 4 strings, but turns it into it's own thing, making it mysterious, and also melancholic. The ever approaching fog, distant howls, ambushes and abondaned camps really make the whole island an immersive experience.

Have to love the legandary gear left all around the various locations, which also contain enviromental storytelling - a very welcome addition indeed.

Settlements could've used a few more items, but they are fine as it is. You basically get a reskinned version of the warehouse buildings.

Oh yeah, the puzzle part was an absolute unneeded menace. Figured it out, but it could've been just a 20 minute ride, not a 2-hour-long one...

Fair warning:
Beware the anglers.

UPDATE
Almost all of the bugs and soft-locks have been fixed in the first "major update", hence I now can give this game a positive review.


Old review:
A truly great game, with perfect atmosphere and an interesting story, but currently after release, it's full of bugs, that are sometimes game-breaking. I somehow managed to get -1 ammo (one of the on-mission resources) during mission 02, that soft-locked me, because I couldn't pick up any new ammo to shoot at enemies, or destroy barricades, because apparently my ammo is full somehow?
Constant pathfinding issues makeing my marines stuck in crates and debris, not able to move further.

The last one was on mission 03, when my sergant couldn't be healed, because she was "interacting", whilst standing in place. Stop order didn't change it, resting didn't change it. If you early extract it can help, but in the long term you mess up your own game, because with every mission left early your game becomes harder and harder.

You can also access buildings early, that haven't been unlocked, when you click on notifications for them, also locking yourself out of progression... not even speaking about the flickering of your soldiers eyes and flesh during equiping them, or cutscenes lacking any sound.

I also find it weird that researched upgrades need even further resources spent on each and every mission deployment, they don't 'stay researched' like in X-COM, the game this one really tries to copy and surpass.

It is a true gem, that was failed by the lack of QA. I really hope they will patch these things out, because the constant bugs you need to find workarounds for are really immersion breaking for me. Hold back for a discount, or game updates.
(I also got the DLC for free after purchase but the armour doesn't show up only the cat? Well, whatever.)