unquestionably one of my favorite games of all time. Followed it religiously since 2018, back when it was just "The Cycle" and was a very different game.

Absolute travesty that it got canned because there is literally nothing else like this on the market. Such a unique game. The story behind this games development is pretty tragic,with odds constantly being stacked against Yager until it wasn't sustainable anymore. Them losing their new, effective anti-cheat to a buyout by Roblox that made it proprietary was the nail that ultimately killed this game, coupled with an extremely expensive development history and the ability to generate premium currency for free in game just led to constant net-loss. They were literally too generous with the monetization.

Absolutely beautiful artstyle, tight punchy gunplay, incredible, memorable map design,, great weapon design and one of my favorite sci-fi aesthetics in recent memory. Bright Sands was one of my favorite maps/areas in any PVP shooter I've ever played, and is a place I will always remember literally every inch of. Love that map to death. I thought the 2nd map, Crescent Falls, was one of the weaker parts of the game, and clearly wasn't as well thought out as Bright Sands. Tharis was an absolutely fantastic map and I really regret not being able to spend more time with it, but more on that in a bit.

What consistently stood out the most was the near flawless audio design. Every gun, every creature, all of the environmental effects, the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ THUNDER. My god the thunder man. It was mixed in such a perfect way, you felt your body rumble like there was an actual thunder storm. This lead into the storm which shares the same level of quality. Everything about the audio was perfect

I could gush about this game's audio design forever and will continue to do so. All the weapons have distinct, layered sound effects that perfectly define them, the environmental and ambient audio sells the immersion, the directional audio was always solid, distant gunfights were precise and made the maps feel lively. Roars of distant monsters to remind you that nowhere on the planet is safe. It was some of the best I've heard, and I obsess over audio in games.

The music was also really surprisingly good. Each faction had their own music, the station had a really nice theme, extraction had some great music. I still frequently listen to the soundtrack to this day. ICA theme is easily my favorite. Really solid work

The progression system was incredible, the flow of gameplay, especially endgame, was some of the most fun I've ever had in a shooter. Calling down mining drills and defending them from other players and creatures, cracking open caverns to fight what were effectively raid bosses and selling their corpse, the exploration in maps that would lead to places like this.The balance between PVE and PVP was better than any game similar to this, it's such a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ shame that they didn't get to expand upon this more, and with how the maps were set up, you could tell they had so much cool ♥♥♥♥ planned, especially with Tharis Island, the final map, which unfortunately nobody got to see the full extent of because it wasn't fully finished/released.The main thing Tharis introduced was the Forge, which was hidden deep underground in the map and was quite the trek to get to. The Forge could be used to add perks to guns and armor, like higher jump height, faster run speed, etc etc. which was a really unique idea for a game of this genre, if not a little overly-ambitious. Was just another thing that added to the gear fear, and considering how ludicrously expensive some equipment could be, the Forge was an extremely high risk location. Fun idea that I would've loved to see expanded upon.

The potential of this game was staggering. The secrets they were teasing on maps, the hidden areas, and the unique mechanics like the Forge, really showed just how ambitious and passionate they were about the future of this game. It's so depressing, and I'm sure Yager was devastated that they had to close the doors on it. I could get into the games flaws, sure, but I find that unnecessary because it's not like i can sell anyone on a game that doesn't exist anymore. It had flaws. Plenty of glaring flaws, balance absolutely being the biggest one that was never even close to being solved.

Most of my playtime was on Epic games since that's where this game started which is why my playtime here is relatively low, but trust me, I am in love with this game and would still play it very often if it was around.

One of the greatest modern shooters to come out. Hopefully Yager recaptures the magic of this game with their next, which they said to be the same genre, so that's promising. Hopefully they take everything that the Cycle did so well and refine it into an even better experience (though without this games artstyle and aesthetics, I don't think it'll be as good, hopefully it's at least similar). Hopefully their sound team is still there as well. I do worry if Yager even has the money to make a game like this, because TCF was extremely expensive, but all remains to be seen.

This is as game I'll remember for the rest of my life, and I still cling on to hope that it'll maybe one day come back. If Gigantic can, anything can...

I will preface this by saying that this is genuinely in my top 3 games of all time, if not my favorite period. It is a masterclass in combat, progression, exploration, narrative, presentation, music, lore building, character design, pacing, everything. It is a masterpiece, There's almost nothing that the game itself gets wrong. Even if you're not a starwars fan, you will find enjoyment in this. I seriously couldn't recommend what the game is enough.......when it works.

Which is never.


it seriously pains me to say, but it's just not acceptable to release something like this, Period. I played the entire game at launch, did a bunch of side stuff, and started a bit of a NG+ run. While the game is actually relatively light on bugs and glitches, I think there were maybe 5 total instances in the game where I got a stable 60+fps (usually these were dungeon-like areas underground, or the challenge fights that you load into a small arena for) and stable is a key word here, because even if you WERE getting 60+fps, it was almost never stable. Beyond all else the frame-pacing is atrocious. Its FSR implementation is particularly bad, more than usual by FSR standards, which are already real low. Some graphics settings just flat out don't do anything, the ray tracing across the board is barely functioning and isn't worth the performance drain, the GPU and CPU utilization is completely broken, it is never at any point properly using any of your hardware no matter what you change. The game seems to just straight up lie about its "shader compilation" at the beginning of the game, which it does every single time, something that I have rarely ever seen, especially in modern games. Even in doing this every time the game still suffers from some of the most unbelievable stuttering I've seen in recent memory. It's just unacceptable.

it isn't even it just being a bad PC port. It is, obviously, but the game runs even worse on the consoles. The performance mode on both PS5 and XSX is a complete joke, almost never retaining 60fps while frequently lowering the resolution internally to 720p. This game didn't get the polish it deserved anywhere. It's one thing to have a terrible PC port, that's been common for 15 years now, but for the console version of the game to not only also be busted, but somehow be even worse?. Respawn clearly wasn't given nearly enough time, and that 6 week delay seemed like a goodwill stunt more than anything, because nothing changed. There is currently no version of the game that is ideal to play, with the console versions being borderline unplayable most of the time, and that's just shocking. especially since they've just left the game in this state to rot with radio silence

There is a masterpiece of a game under this, truly, and if inconsistent framerate and poor frame pacing, constant stutters and generally horrible performance across the board is something you can tolerate (which I usually can't, but this game was an exception due to its quality) then absolutely by all means play it. The patches have made it marginally better, but it's not enough to change the experience into a positive one. I have no hope or expectations that this will ever be fixed, one would just hope that, for preservation's sake, the game could be brute forced with stronger hardware years down the line, but this is extremely unlikely given that it isn't even using your hardware properly now, so i don't see how bruting it would work. Maybe some modders will figure it out. Who knows.

I'd recommend at least trying it. Buy it, play it for 110 minutes, see how your experience is, then decide if you want a refund or not. It's worth that much. Actual game is a 9.5/10, but with all its issues, I'd struggle to give it above a 4/10. (5 being an average game, not 7 like IGN would have you think, so slightly below average)

played on---
*RTX 3080 10 GB FE
*I7-11700k
*1440p 144hz
*32GB 3600mhz DDR4 ram
*5500mb r/w 2 TB NVME


UPDATE* - It's negligibly better, and patches have fully ceased development. There's one mod on nexus that marginally helped, and coruscant runs significantly better than it used to. Other than that, it's more or less the same old mess. I think Koboh for me was getting a handful of frames more, going from 48-50 like at launch to 60-65, but those extra frames are meaningless when the frame pacing is still this bad and it is never at any point stable, constantly stuttering and hitching. Animation playback is still broken. Refer to this for everything further. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsskwVyPoxs

Console players can rejoice i guess, because the 60fps mode was completely fixed and now it runs extremely well. We're left with whatever the hell this mess is.

Many such cases.


EDIT. Now have a 4090/7800X3D, performance in the new patch is better, but the fundamental issues of the game remain. Stuttering is hardly better and performance is still largely terrible, but it is *technically* better,