Recent reviews by dErPy

This comes from someone who enjoyed first Subnautica from the time of early access.

Storytelling is just SOOO bad. You aren't solving mystery here, but trying to cope with all the DRAMA caused by some WOKE culture.
ffs I don't care who sleeps with whom. I don't need to be constantly pointed that this strong independent woman fighting capitalist masculine super corporation on her own. I don't even care what gender is main character. First one was about mystery and survival. This one is about how to not get fed up and uninstall. Oh and a funny thing. Went on a planet to save her sister, not even mentioning her to the "alien", but constantly going into philosophical "oh i am huuuuuman"

The "cold temperature" mechanic had a lot of potential, yet it's hardly developed beyond "oh icebergs are boundaries of the map and you can die out of cold".
New vehicle train can easily stuck and I would love to have seamoth\cyclope as an option.

Honestly, if you haven't played first subnautica go check it out instead.

Don't! Unless you are looking for MMORPG kind of stuff. It's as early access as one can imagine.

First thing that threw me off is graphic settings. Can't find gamma and brightness settings. Without them the game looks like generic MMORPG from 2000s where all the environment is bland as hell and I can't even mask it with lowering gamma.
What else? Water looks like it was taken from premium shelf of your fav supermarket shell. Way too clean. Not even clean, transparent.

Second thing devs couldn't figure out which inventory system they should do "tetris" one or just numbers, so you would have to live with abomination of having both at the same time. Sometimes you see all those squares, next thing you have to input numbers and there is no easy way to just say "ok max it out" or "use the half". Type the number or do the hella lotta of clicks.

After like a 3 years of silence publisher decided to add a 100mb+ launcher instead of fixing actual issues with widescreens.

Updated (6.09.24):
So the game setting is that you should be safe during day in your base. First night ends, some "coilheads" still wanders on my property near the entrance >:( Moreover they seem to be capable to dismantle barricades during day. Cool.........

At least save\load was added.

Old one:
To be honest I expected a little bit more from Early Access. I can't even call it alpha stage, it's pre-alpha.

I like the overall idea which is kinda similar to Darkwood and I can tolerate bad UI choices (e.g. backpack\inventory management), but not releasing the game without even save\load feature.

Glory to Arstotzka, Comrade!
Oy wait! bl*d! Don't shoot, Comrade, I've meant Akarist....

So I've invested 51 hour into it. It's marked as 1.0 at the time of this review and here are my thoughts.

There might be some minor spoilers. TLDR: if you've finished subnautica and want something more casual for a weekend you can give this one a go. Personally I think it's more like 70% done and as of 1.0 version is still needs some work to be done on it.

What I like:
- from mid game it's less grindy because of mining possibilities and drones
- planet condition changing (wouldn't call it terraforming cause you can't change landscape that much, just "nature" part a bit)
- once again, unless you go for a certain ending it's doesn't give an impression of constantly crafting same things manually.

What I don't like:
- jet pack. The most annoying thing in this game. Other games just use space and control to go up and down. This game forces you to look into direction of where you wish to fly and use "w". It's frustrating, especially if you made some platforms in mid air for your base.
- platforms clipping into terrain\rocks. Second most irritating thing. Sometimes it doesn't allow to place a platform, but if you wobble your mouse a bit around it will allow placing at the exact same spot. This inconsistency is kinda bad.
- story MAJOR SPOILERS resembles first subnautica a lot (even some gameplay parts and structures + colors). also not a single good ending... life is life... coordinate systems on points of interest kinda ruins the immersion. how do you like to find out text on ancient macine "100:200:300" which means x=100 y=200 z=300? At least having some machine for deciphering otherworldly language would be way more interesting to see.
one of the endings was to locate 10 keys that just scattered for no reason across the map. And you need to craft a special module to be able to seem them when you are close enough. I don't see any fun in that. If it at least made some noises or you had like to make some radio wave tower to get approximate positions. wait... why would they just hide keys across map for no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ reason at all?! this just doesn't make any sense at all
- wrecks investigation if you go for smugglers ending you would have to grind a bit of credits. Best way for me was through 5-5 portals. And to open it you basically have to throw two 1-5 dices and hope for 5 on both. I would rather have a selector scan for light\\medium\\heavy wrecks near\\close\\far from me and don't have to click 15 times to get 5-5
- trading needs some rebalance. Only 3 things booster modules found in portals felt worth of selling in late game.
- i don't really get why i need to look for more seeds when i already have some growing at my farms.
- meteor showers are just irritating from mid game. give me at least a blaster cannon turret to shoot them down. the mess they leave and shaking while i am trying to build something is just pissing me off. Not to mention all the mess from resources lying around EVERYWHERE.
- i would love to see some mechanics like sand storms (slow or blow away player) or acid rains (damage health) in early game
- building underground or inside terrain in general. Seems like every other person crashed on the planet was able to do that, but not me.
- some sort of balancing and dependence on each other for flora and fauna would be nice. Imagine having 1000 koalas and one bamboo. How would an ecosystem survive that? Maybe even degrading biosphere or slowing down at growth least.

so overall it's kinda ok and have some potential, but if you haven't played subnautica add 3-4$ more and go for it instead. otherwise it looks way too similar and lagging behind.

Honestly... I am struggling to see "positive" parts. I gave this game more than 3 chances. I took several years breaks between them and it is still as frustrating as it was before.

- UI: you have just 6 quick slots. Any other game allows you to go from 1 to 9 at least. (i know that you can alternate those 6. it doesn't help)
- Combat: Fine, you gave me infinite ammo, but my favorite would still be those throwing spears. It's massive pain that you have to wait like 4 seconds or something between attacks.
- Combat(again): No you can't just throw right away you need to wait those 4 secs after switching from torch... why?! Imagine i switch to bandage and now I have to wait those secs again.
- Combat(yet again): getting knocked off the platform by ridiculous amount of bats and fall to death. fun.
- Gameplay: you can carry 10000 logs but you can't carry a 100 potatoes??? honestly i like the idea of filtering inventory, i don't like the idea of split sections of inventory.
- Gameplay: no, you can't stack cooked food. F U.
- Gameplay: have you set up a base on a first planet? well that's your mistake. Now get used to seeing "beeming" loading screen. Forgot to craft spare spears? Now you have to go to surface, then ship, then your base, then ship, then surface and back to pit....
- Gameplay: somehow found a guy underground who gave me a quest to murder some other dude..... fishy as hell, but ok.... he gave me some sort of bodyguard NPC who died to the first mob because he can't attack at point blank range.
- Gameplay: speaking of fishy things. They call you "protector". Now you as "protector" have to shoot everything that moves cause hell it's not obvious what is aggressive and what is not. Even that cute whitelisting thing.
- Controls: i can't explain how many times i died because of movement controls being ♥♥♥♥.
- Gameplay: in prologue you start by being able only to walk, no running. I had to search the controls for a run button. There is none. Later on you switch to "always run" mode. WHY?!?!
- UI: good luck playing on a big screen\resolution and trying to read any text. There is literally no UI Scale slider.
- Gameplay: Oh dear, they somehow managed to make that old wheelchair "grand-protector" annoying as hell.
- Gameplay: Here is a huge galaxy with tiny as F planets.

That's just an amount I can remember. I struggle to see positive things. It feels like this game is someones science project on how much a person can struggle before he quits for sure.

My fabrics are as much messy as my code at work.
10\10 would make spaghetti again.

I came with hope for a new galaxy but all I got is bugs bugs bugs... bugs everywhere.

It's deluxe edition. I expect it to be patched. But oh boy...

Expect spoilers bellow btw.

Dialogues:
Was it that hard to preposition npc and player to at least face each other? Often i run into situations when I literally face a wall or plant and NPC is behind my back. Combine it with a fact that I can't hear npc.

Graphical issues: Flickering textures, floating objects (plants not connected to the ground).

Game:
At one point game decided to spawn my truck under stairs. Why? Is it that hard to find empty block of space and spawn it into it? It's not aerospace level of programming.

There were bridges that constructs itself when you walk on them. There were floating enemies that died above them. And guess what? They got stuck floating on invisible bridge that I yet haven't walk onto.

Those ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ animations of landing transfering between systems\\locations. They are fun one or two times, but after that it's just boring.

Audio. I got tired of those "cold\\normal\\cold\\normal". Why do you need to repeat them that often? Just make borders look frosty like on ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ normal window during winter. That would be enough. Same goes for other chat messages. Just a timer or queue or stack of used replics in the last 5 mins so it wouldn't irratate me that much to hear same phrase over and over again.

Sometimes npc deciedes that it's time for teleportation... yeah...


Overall I just want to finish it for the story, but I am not going to replay it or go for multiplayer. Better just go what a playthrough on youtube and spend that money on pizza.

TL DR: GARBAGE

I wanted to replay good old Alien Shooter or Zombie Shooter on Win 10, but this one feels like pice of garbage. Developer just want to get money of your pocket for some junk.

- Walk paths can bug out right from the beggining of the game. I remember there were secret locations on map, so i went looking those in first map and i've stuck on sand bags right at the start. great.
- Explosins looks like tiny poofs. e.g. first barrel in garage looks like i just light up a candle.
- In case of scripted scenes of movement (elevators etc) character model can bug out (e.g. legs could disappear)
- Most of the enemies just pop on the screen. I doubght it would took more then a couple of days to add annimation of diggining holes in grounds or something, or make sure they appear when i can't see them.
- Revealing "fog of war" look like turning switch on\off. Dev can't add at least 0.5 sec animation with opacity.
- You can press F to loot items, but can't press same ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ F to interact with characters at HQ and have to click on those chat icons. WHY?!
- Shop iterface looks bad. You can see some of the top guns at start but can't buy them. You guns that are way better then shop cost more then 10 times less to sell. I can understand some discount system and all but, not that much.
- I remember i have to buy ammo before. Wtf?
- Drones... Drones with railguns... Uhh.. is it so much to hire some one for 100$-200$ to draw 2 sprites for shop and battle of futuristic looking drones? I miss old bots.

Overall at least it works on win 10, but what a piece of garbage that is.