Recent reviews by Brent

THEY RUINED IT WITH THE END!!!!!!

This game is 95% PHENOMENAL and I would have recommended it to anyone at the first mention of it's name. I even purchased a second copy for my son to play it with me now that it's full release. I absolutely love everything about it. The setting is nice, the story is good, the grinding isn't bad and the decorative options are nice. How much food and water you have to consume is ridiculously high and my 5 year old daughter can hold her breath longer than the protagonist, but I still loved it. Then...

They completely lose all of my support with the last section. Without spoilers they took a game about crafting and exploration and took a wrong way left turn at Mirror's Edge drive, adding a very unforgiving parkour section while their 1st person movement... isn't great. They then sought salvation in the Legend of Zelda parking garage to finish it all. Combat is also really not a strength in this game. In the end everything started to feel phoned in once I hit the newer content. I'm very sad that such a good game came crashing down. Get it on deep discount.

This game is absolutely fantastic for multiplayer! I think. I don't know for sure as I haven't played multiplayer. The devs definitely designed it to be multiplayer and I believe that is where you will likely find the most fun with it.

This is a Solo Player review.

First things first, I have a discussion that I put up to answer a couple of common questions about playing solo. This review is really going to be less descriptive and more biased.

DEFAULT SERVER SETTINGS SUCK! They kept me crawling along and hating half my playtime. I increased everything in regard to me by double and it made it a lot more fun. And honestly more fair.

SERVER SETTINGS CANNOT BE CHANGED AFTER STARTING! I still can't fathom why this is. Don't let yourself be miserable for too long before changing a setting. It's not worth it. I waited 16 hours. Don't wait more than 2.

REQUIRES AN INTERNET CONNECTION FOR SOLO PLAY! I'm guessing easy DRM protection. Still shouldn't be this way, but I have genuinely had no issues.

IT'S GRINDTASTIC! I increased resource collection damage (odd choice) and yields by 5. I don't spend an hour trying to build a room onto my castle or a spear anymore. It desperately needs a resource tracking option as I'm looking at online tools to find out were to go for things.

IT'S FUN TO BUILD! I seriously miscalculated how much I would enjoy building my castle. A good amount of options and a variety of each option in most cases. I'm decorating rooms and building gardens. It's awesome.

TRAVEL SUCKS! You get a travel form pretty quick on, but it needs a huge buff. Yes, you can find horses, but they're not in the starter zone and they handle terribly. There are default waypoints, which are too few and must be discovered, but you can add more once you unlock the recipe. Make sure you can build maximum castle hearts so you can add what you want. Up to 5 though.

ALL ASPECTS OF BOSSES ARE IRRITATING! You have to track them. Tracking goes away once you are in range. You have to go back to your base to turn it back on. It should turn off when I turn it off or when they die, thank you. They respawn. They don't drop loot really, so this is just to annoy you after you kill them. IF you can kill them. Be ready to run, a LOT. They are all a pain in the patootie to fight and non-summoned adds are almost guaranteed (summoned is common) and sometimes those added are another roaming boss.

HEALING IS A CHORE!! There are no proper potions with instant healing and what there is are borderline pointless. I know this because I forget to use them all the time. Every form of healing is over time, the most effective one channeled, and they go away if you get hit. The best one that will be used most often heavily drains your blood.

BLOOD SYSTEM IS COOL! But feels lacking right now. Also isn't very well explained. Your blood abilities change based on purity and type. Check your orb tooltip often.

YOU GET SERVANTS! These are almost absolutely pointless in solo play. They are given quests that take 23 real time hours to complete. Your server shuts down when you're offline. Quite the egregious oversite and further proof of multiplayer being the devs preferred method. I lock them in the room with the rats and skeletons. They farm those ok.

CRAFTING IS FUN! Almost everything is automated! Fun magical animations for almost everything. Makes me feel like Merlin.

IT'S FUN TO PLAY! Really, I don't want to write this, I want to play. It's a lot more fun than it is frustrating with my settings, though those moments come. It feels like WoW, if that helps you decide, and most things are very intuitive. Be ready to remap your controls. And yes, you can remap everything!

IN THE END: It's not something you should be on the fence on. It genuinely is a fantastic game and if you are interested, get it! You need to tweak some settings and learn the ropes, but it gets really fun when you do.


For anyone who wants to start waxing about how it's early access; THIS is an Early Access Review!!! Cool huh? It's based on current merits, just like the devs wanted! Its exciting to think about where it's going to go next! No I'm not lenient!

Additionally, they made a whole bunch of extra cosmetics that you can pay extra money for. That work could, and SHOULD, have gone into getting more things right.

Early access is being used as a shield by fanboys far too much these days.

I am a fan of this game. Not a fanboy.

This is a pretty straightforward survival game that has an absolute arsenal of things to do in it compared to most early access games. I highly recommend it to any Subnautica fans and leave a general recommendation to everyone else.
Oh, and add 40 hours to my play time.

First, the bad;
It can be a bit repetitive at times. Considering the subject matter, this shouldn't be much of a surprise.
Build high. I wish the hint messages came a lot sooner, even this particular one being an initial message. Moving my base was annoying, but could've been worse.
There are no enemies beyond the environment. This may change, but it's honestly not really a problem.
I hate the maps system. I want to carry one, not make thirty bases.
I wish there was a recipe book for everything so I don't have to dance between crafting stations.
Game play is pretty standard. Most everything works well. They do need to add a crouch or a make asteroids non clipping as sometimes it can be a real pain to gather from them or work around them.
I would like there to be more snapping options for buildings to foundations and the like. It's not much of an issue, and the base building freedom is good, but trying to center a living quarters on a foundation is not fun. I also don't like the floating buildings that keep happening.

Enough of that, the good.

All of the rest. Really.

Don't be on the fence. Try the demo and you'll know if it's for you. If you're reading this, it's probably for you. I can't give this a better recommendation. Every time I turn it off I start thinking about it again.

How did they make a game about terra-forming a planet so engaging? All of the story is pieced together from snippets of emails and then looking around. And the story is freaking fantastic! I just found something that literally made me gasp when I figured out what it was. I am excited to see where this story goes and the stops along the way. It's really fascinating thus far.

While it seems repetitive to have to gather, set up, repeat, it's presented in such a way that you want to keep working. There are obstacles that you can only get by with proper terra-forming processes which keeps you motivated. The environmental changes are the immersive indicator of your progress on making these changes. I like how the sky box changes while you progress, though the land needs a bit of work. But, it's early access.

On that note...

I personally believe early access shouldn't be a thing. There are too many scams or forever developments. There are few games that should ever be allowed in early access.

This is one of them.

Someone help me!! I can't stop playing!!!!

So I saw this on a suggestion from steam and it was on sale so I said why not? Well, the reason why not is it has fantastic gameplay, good mechanics, infinite replayability, and just enough difficulty to keep it from getting boring. I highly recommend this game if you have a few hours of your life you need to squander. Against your will.

I'm going to stop writing this so I can play again.
Seriously, buy this game or run from it.

IT just wasn't worth a AAA launch title price. $15-$20 and I would have given this game a good review. The misrepresentation and false advertizing is why I have to give it a negative. I enjoyed playing it, but it is not what was paid for.

This game is terrible. It kept me up until 4:15 a.m. I can't do that!! I have adulting to do in the morning! I have an 18 month old to feed and laundry to do! I can't have some game pushing itself into my life with its fantastic base management, fun story, and engaging gameplay! A colonist got attacked by a rabid squirrel and it almost killed him! The structures on the map have secrets in them, resulting in my having to break into them and get murdered by deathkill-bots! I have played this game 15 hours in the first 24 of owning it!

Stay away! Life matters.

But, I think I'll go complete my chicken coop. You know, just to see if that works...

Everyone talks about how it's early access, bugs, blah blah blah. If you're reading this review, you know about all that. I recently realized I am a huge fan of survival sandbox games, and I have played quite a few in the last months. Here is my personal impression of this one.

Graphics are incredible. I know everyone has said this, but it needs repeating. On the lowest settings, it still looks awesome! Some clipping and such, but it never really bothered me much.

It's very fluid (no pun intended) to get into it. I agree with most other reviews that recommend no using guides and such and just jump into the deep water (pun intended) and learn to swim on your own. It's a very friendly interface that gives just enough explanation to make you feel like you can do it on your own, but not enough to make it boring.

Edit: I forgot the most important part (to me at least.) The metabolism for food in this game is very nice. In plenty of other games like this you have to eat every two minutes or face death from starvation. In this game, keeping hydrated is the issue. While this is rather ironic while being surrounded by water, it makes a lot more sense. I get away with eating once every day or two depending on my activity. Dehydration keeps me drinking daily, but not constantly. Considering dehydration kills you faster than starvation, I feel this is the most realistic representation I have seen in one of these games thus far.

Here is what any new player needs to know:

Expect it will hurt you until you prove to yourself that it can't.
Explore. Even the dark and scary areas. They usually have the best loot.
Storage cubes cannot be used indoors (as of the writing of this review.)
Predators are everywhere and you are not one of them. If it can eat you, it will.
If it can eat you, it's usually in a scary area.
You WILL get snuck up on and jumpscared.
Give it at least an hour before you start looking up stuff online, and once you do, do it very sparingly. Discovery is an awesome feature to this game and the more you have to figure out, the more valuable this game will be.

Found a bald eagle mount.

Got in a fist fight with a horse.

Yeah...

Impatient, non-readers can scroll to end for TL,DR


I jumped on this bandwagon about two years ago. I was excited about what they were doing and hoped beyond hope for a game that truly was more Dungeon Keeper. I participated in their discussions and made suggestions. I watched their videos and read their reports. I was all about this game... For about 6 months.

In the following months, I became very bored with this game, I admit. I actually felt that things were rolling out too slowly and was concerned that I had bought in to yet another "early access" game that would actually be "forever alpha access" instead. About a year ago I uninstalled the game and moved on, chalking this up to another learning experience.

Yesterday, I noticed it's full release. I have no idea why I went to their page and ultimately installed the game to try playing it again (I really had given up on it) but I guess I was bored enough? I braced myself for disappointment.

I think that having so many other early access disappointments really made me far too over-harsh on this group and what they were doing. I was giggling in the first mission and I was hooked in the second. This game is exactly what they said it would be. It's DK without major publisher taint all over it. It's DK's successor.

Is it perfect? Nope. No game can be. Is it broken? Nope. Everything is playable and fun. Is there a learning curve? Yep. But if you played DK, you have completed the basic tutorial. Are there bugs? Yes. And the team is already all up in that.
I don't approve of people giving this game poor reviews due to the multiplayer not being in full function (at time of writing) or because their system can't handle it (I have a decent system at best and have had very little lag when my dungeon was huge) because that's not what these reviews should be about in my mind. DK was mostly single player, and the single player game is awesome.

My only real complaint (and it is easy to remedy) is the voice acting for minions can be a little repetitive.

Having seen where they started and looking at where they're finishing, this game did not fail at it's task. If you miss your DK and the other dungeon manager games have fallen flat, then this is what you've been waiting for. You won't be disappointed.




TL,DR

Yes.




...What? You skipped the rest of it so I figured you wanted a short answer.

Go on. Have fun.

Two words; brutal and exquisite.

They don't make games like this very often anymore.

Out of 5 stars, I give this game 6.