Uh oh! I think I enjoyed my time with Battle for Savitar! How can that be? It's an expansion of Kreed, an infamous slavjank shooter that suffered critical lashings due to its incomprehensible story, less-than-stellar gunplay, awkward pacing, and — the big one — the superficially complex and meandering level design that forked off into billions of pathways, 90% of which were dead ends. Does the expansion learn from these mistakes, or do they double down? Here's the spoiler, they learned.
Battle for Savitar is a sub 2 hour ordeal that doesn't throw you straight into the deep end of the galactic space war out of the gate, but instead eases you into its world (at least for about 5 minutes), gradually introduces new and improved weaponry, and greatly lessens the backtracking. There's still some backtracking (though not nearly as egregious), there's definitely still a labyrinthine structure to some of the levels (there's a vent maze here that's arguably worse than any from the base game), and there's still quite a bit of narrative incoherence. You also can't really see anything when you get shot because the screen becomes obnoxiously red and blurry. BUT, they've implemented some much needed QoL features missing from the original — highlights around interactable objects and item pick-ups, a 3D map so you don't get lost (even if it's... not great), and a helpful description page that pops up everytime you pick up something new. And it seems the developers took their time to make sure the levels flow (decently) well, and that you can tell where you can and can't go. I did not find myself getting lost once, which I can not say the same about base Kreed. The Steam release comes with a fan translation patch that includes genuine voice acting from some members of the Kreed community (which I guess exists?) — unfortunately it's not just one guy's voice being pitched-up and down while he belts out "QUIT WINNING!".
Kinda ♥♥♥♥♥ the bed in the final level, where after fighting through military bases, ship interiors, and abandoned mines in a pretty well-connected and coherent level structure, all you're left to do is defend three sectors of a spaceship from waves of enemy Tiglaary. There's no real strategy here, just wait for them to spawn from the same two holes and then shoot them. It's brutally easy and honestly kinda boring, but at least it didn't make me want to rip my hair out. And then it ends — not with a whimper, not with a bang, but a secret third thing.
I think it's also worth mentioning that the protagonist from uberjank supreme Operation: Matriarchy, Paul Armstrong, has the same name as the character we play here. Coincidence, or something more? I'm sure Burut CT and MADia have some employee crossover. I noted their level design similarities in my Kreed review, but knowing that they might be set in the same universe — I don't know man I'm smiling, I like this kind of ♥♥♥♥, and the timeline works out — Battle for Savitar ends in 2269 with some ships coming out of wormhole(?), Matriarchy takes place in 2350 when Armstrong awakes from a cryogenic freeze, and then Kreed jumps well into the future into 2944 — so it'd be real cool if they were apart of a franchise. I mean I think it's cool. I might be the only person who thinks it's cool. Guess this also means that Kreed takes place in the same universe as the Matriarchy dev's flight sim, Echelon. I don't know. I think I'm just saying ♥♥♥♥ at this point.
If you've ever wanted to play Kreed, firstly, why? Secondly, skip it and go to Battle for Savitar. It's much nicer on the brain. You won't want to kill yourself by the end, and I think that's an aspect that should be rewarded.
