[u]TL;DR[/u]
[i]Played the free weekend version 2026 09 18th-20th and short review is;[/i]
If you like roguelite space shooter games as a concept, this game is for you worth to try out and see if it tastes good for you.
[h3]Now to nit-picks and actual criticism.[/h3]
I played this in duo only, so my experience won't reflect same experience across all players.
In duo everything indeed felt really suitable, shooting, fixing, shooting & fixing depending how many enemies were attacking. Felt like good balance and risk in lowest to medium difficulties if you play like we did, visiting all the places before completing the mission/expedition/endeavor.
[h3]Difficulty in duo?[/h3]
In duo the limit depends on enemy type and amount really. When there were many small enemies, those could be sniped pretty well with special cannons and main weapons. But if you won't focus on enemy ships, they hardly miss and messes you up in short time. And most annoying parts were with enemy sniper ships and constant invasions of heavy ships who drops constantly radioactive bars into ship and spam tons of missiles every 3 second or so. Topping with the environmental stuff like meteor shower which occurred every 5 seconds. (This depends of the location you travel to within expedition map. Another one was solar shower(?) which wasn't as bad because it didn't happen every 5 seconds.)
So at this point I assume the game is better if you have 1 driver, 1 cannon guy, and 1 to 2 or more players maintaining the ship, if you really desire to go hardest missions which we didn't have time to experience.
(And we played 9 hours straight in Saturday and got only to 3rd level xD not sure what was the efficient way to do expeditions but it sure took a lot of time to explore whole map before completing the mission.)
There is also the robot friend, but it's so useless. If the droid in ship would out perform players, maybe I would allow it to just do all the repairs.
(Which only happens when your starship's health is at 1/4 which might happen in 10 seconds from the battle starts in medium difficulty. And it takes forever for the robot to fix the ship, and it won't even fix it fully. So what's the point of that droid, to remind get friends or something??)
PS. There was also discussions about how the ship took damage during battle even if there was shield still on/active. Not sure if it's because of the enemies; ammo type, ship type, or early poor equipment reason. But I can see why people would expect that haul damage is only taken when shield is down/non-active.
And while we still talk about spaceship, I think the game would be more fair to let players keep the currency/material that allows crafting during mission/expedition/endeavor to another. That way players can prepare the way they want when starting new expedition, or if they run out of the material in harder difficulties, maybe calm down in lower missions and resupply?
Also adds possibility to trade the points into money? Just like how most scrap stuff works. Plotwise too would make more sense since the story only involves couple characters who try nullify the corrupt machines. Like, for who we lose the scrap?
[h3]The foot enemies and weapons against them.[/h3]
The weapons... I only liked SMG that sweeps smaller enemies. And the hunter rifle which was so good against tanky enemies that could 3 shot thick droids.
Damage booster and minigun was fun combo too when clearing area from overwhelming enemies.
During combat I would love to be able to have more stims, or be able to carry ammo crate, expendable shield or damage booster, or the special weapons like minigun.
But that creates a problem, [b]weight limit.[/b]
I understand it... but it's so dumb, since inventory is already limited. Unlike in a game, like Skyrim, where you can pick as many different items you want, but eventually reach limit of weight that cuts off fast travel and running. But in game where inventory is already limited, like Jump Space... it feels like if Diablo games decides that if you have heavy armor and 5 weapons in inventory, you can no longer combat efficiently.
This is where my fun experience was cut off. Why I can't carry repair items, utility items or whatever in inventory in all the slots? Why game decides 1 repair tool, single use minigun, 1 valuable iron bar, 1 fire extinguisher, and 2 main weapons together are too heavy to carry and I have to hop around like crippled bunny and still have 5-7 empty inventory slots?
[h3]Final thoughts and wishes[/h3]
It's definitely better in full squad than solo or duo. Doable but makes you sweat like my nuts during NNN.
List of changes I would like to see;
► More controllable and reasonable environmental crises.
► More organic enemy invasions. For example;
• Cooldown starts from 20 minutes and lowers by 5 minutes after defeating the enemies within mission.
• Cooldown increases from 2 minute with 2 additional minutes BUT enemy types and/or quantity increases the risk of survival during Mission and through out the whole Expedition.
► Balancing weapons.
• I never used assault rifle or shotgun or melee weapons.
• Melee weapons looked too risky to use and made me feel like they don't belong to game at all. (Maybe cut out whole melee weapon thing unless it gives like god-mode or something. Melee weapons never looked reasonable to even considering to be usable. But having crowbar in hand was fun to make meme about Gordon Freeman.)
• So, making all weapons more reasonable in harsh battles is a must!
That's about it.
