Recent reviews by CastelloRuby

First impression is decent, a passion project for sure but it's foundation is solid, the atmosphere is very on point with immense levels that feature absolutely megalithic architecture and a dark oppressive atmosphere. Just like Deus Ex, you have many options to tackle your objectives and exploration is key in discovering said options. You have many abilities that aid in combat and exploration, and by the end of the first level you have a decent selection of weapons to use.

I have a few issues with the game, but the main one is that despite liking the atmosphere that the size of the levels gives off, it unfortunately ends up becoming detrimental to gameplay as the levels are too big, empty and confusing to navigate, which resulted in making the majority of my playtime being just walking around aimlessly and searching places that more often than not had absolutely nothing. I feel like the size issue would be less aggravating if the levels were more dense with content, more NPCs to talk to, more places to loot, just anything to fill some of the emptiness.

I do recommend it, and hope the devs continue developing and polishing this.

peak

The last bit was a bit too cliche, Chase surviving and showing up to help defeat Shroud thanks to Blazer's amulet felt like a copout, Visi taking a bullet for Robert but conveniently only getting hit in the shoulder, the cheesy commemoration. It all kinda lost me a little. Shroud also felt undercooked as a villain, he should have been more present in the story.

But other than that the whole package is great, the story and gameplay while nothing too special are serviceable, but the game truly shines through it's characters, they are extremely charming and well written individuals who really grow on you and they alone could carry the game. The artstyle and animations are also really polished. Overall I loved my time with it

The game has a lot of potential but it's still very raw. I'd wait for the 1.0 release and then probably wait some more.

Pros: Has a really neat hands-on ship building mechanic, you can either buy or use the scavenge from derelicts to continuously build up your ship by increasing it's size and adding on more components such as thrusters, batteries and atmosphere control. Because of this and the money you get from selling scavenge that you don't want or need, there's a decent feeling of progression. Character creation is pretty in-depth with characters having many possible stats and perks including npcs. The low fidelity graphics are decently charming and the OST really adds to the dystopian vibe of the game. There's also a decent attempt at world building with the in-game manuals and occasional lore that's shown to you when you get to new locations for the first time.

Cons: Horribly clunky UI with very little quality of life, you'll struggle with it a lot and it really becomes frustrating after a while, and it only gets worse as you try to assign multiple orders to either dismantle and haul scavenge back to your ship, or assign orders to construct walls, floors and equipment all while dealing with your crew's AI. Imagine a MUCH less efficient and hard to use Rimworld UI (and AI) and you'll have an idea of what it's like.

Despite the attempt at worldbuilding, the world itself feels very dead. Locations which are implied to be massive end up being a small and barren collection of boxes and corridors, such as a "flotilla" of supposedly countless ships welded together that serve as the backbone of crime and freedom fighters of the system that ends up being just a few rooms with only a handful of npcs.

There also doesn't seem to be any dialogue whatsoever, character interactions are done through generic prompts such as "reassure" or "complain about authority", which help increase or decrease the character's various social needs. It's the same thing for quests, you'll regularly be contacted by npcs to do various tasks which all tend to be either to bring them something or to talk to another npc with just one or two prompts, these all also have very short introduction and completion texts, and they make you wonder why you even did them to begin with. All of this adds to the feeling of emptiness of the world.

Bugs are very frequent and often involve the AI, such as npcs walking through walls or spawning outside stations and suffocating to death, running into walls perpetually or getting stuck in airlocks, not following commands and refusing to look after their own needs.

I have a lot more nitpicks towards the game, but I hope this is enough to give you an idea of what to expect.

I really wanted to like this game, and i would have been far more lenient on it if it had come out 2 or 3 years after the first one. But all of this wait just for the game to be an okay metroidvania left a sour taste in my mouth.

The artstyle is amazing, the OST is incredible, but the game at it's core doesn't really innovate on the genre at all for the wait to have been worth it. I'm sure diehard fans of the franchise love it and it does have many good qualities to it, but as just a casual enjoyer of the first game it really didn't impress me when so many other games in the genre have so much to offer in terms of innovative mechanics and satisfying gameplay.

Finally, Spore 2

An absolutely fantastic survival horror RPG with a really unique cosmic horror theme. The artstyle and characters are extremely charming and the game is PACKED with detail and content. A definite must-have especially considering how cheap it is

Ironically enough extremely addictive

THIS IS SICK

Get it on sale as in it's current state it's worth a dozen hours or so of gameplay before it gets stale. It does have a lot of potential as a foundation for a much more complex game.