RIFTSTORM

Yet another unplayable mess. These things are really curing me of my desire to experiment with small-team indie games. For the first several missions it's fine, if uninspired. Visuals are okay, controls feel pretty good. Progression is steady, although it's really just "number go up" without any real tangible difference. I did notice that you quickly stop being able to spend skill points after you gain a level because of a lack of materials, so you're just sitting on a meaningless pile of them, but figured that was a wait-and-see sort of problem. The biggest issue, I thought, was just the monotony. Then out of nowhere you get hit with a boss fight mission that just outclasses you to a laughable degree, Screen-filling attacks, tons of adds, an HP bar that's orders of magnitude greater than anything else you've fought up to that point. And when you inevitably die, it AUTO-BREAKS your gear. From a single loss! It's the same old story all over again: they don't want you to know there's barely a game here, so they create a senseless grind that keeps you doing what little content there is ad nauseam. You have to re-grind for comparable weapons, grind for the materials to actually make your increased levels matter (although even then, there seem to be some material types that are locked behind that boss fight). It's an absolute joke that will only appeal to no-lifers with something to prove. It also just HAPPENS to take longer than two hours for this transition to happen, and I just happen to be unable to refund it. Total trash. If you're on the fence, give it the hardest of passes.

The game feels so generic and boring and not to mention the bugs. Also why tf cant you pause this game while playing solo what is this always online BS thats probably the single biggest deal breaker. I literally cant get up when on a run in this game cuz i cant pause it who thought that was a good idea?

Like the art & visuals. Backstory & worldbuilding is interesting! Gameplay could be tighter and has weight, but that's just my preferences :)

The gameplay is the absolute best thing about this game. Phenomenal. But the worst thing is everything else. Minimal incentive and reward to farm and play, incredible desync issues....but both of these feed into the number 1, game quitting, worst thing that would solve every other issue if it was fixed or wasn't in the game at all, the abysmal weapon scar system. There is no reason to play the game without the repair mechanic right now. The game is not rewarding you for it or incentivizing you for it. Not in terms of drops and currency received, not in terms of time invested into the game. You can't farm without good guns which you can't get without farming. And you're not incentivized to use the best guns you have because you WILL lose it. But why have the scar mechanic at all? Setting aside that punishing the players for tackling higher level content with the resources that they've spent their time and effort on is just counter productive........Desync issues and game crashes by themselves are forgivable especially in early access but coupled by a mechanic that not only stops your progress but completely negates your time spent farming and building resources? I'm looking forward to the version of the game with all the kinks ironed out but as of now I cannot in good conscience recommend this game. Not even to try it out in early access.

[h3]Pros[/h3] + It can be played. + The devs seem to be working on it actively. + The price is somewhat reasonable? [h3]Cons[/h3] - There is at least one run-ending bug. Others report more but I only experienced a specific one. - The standard game is always online, if you disconnect during a match, it's reset. - The 'scar' system for failing missions is badly designed. - The 'extraction' part is false. The extraction is just how a mission ends. - The roguelite upgrade options are mostly uninteresting stat boosting. - The 'crafting' is just making weapons with spare currency. Might as well be a shop. - The only thing that is technically accurate is that it's a looter shooter. - Character designs suck. It's Concord/Highguard but even less original, sexless modern slop. - The writing is done by people who, if I had to presume, learned English in school under very poor educational standards. (ESL) - The currency balance is awful. - Half of the game will currently be you grinding missions for materials to level your skills. - Said skills are pretty much mostly stat boosts, with one or two exceptions. - Characters all pretty much only want to build exactly one or two ways per character. - Because of the above, the main goal of the game is almost entirely to find gun perks that match your intended build. - Also because of the above, modifiers on maps can effectively make a given character unplayable or obscenely obtrusive. - There is an 'element' system in the game whose, as far as I can tell, sole function is to force some weapons to be less useful against random missions. (strong enemies get barriers of that element that you have to match to kill them, there is seemingly no point to this mechanic beyond inconveniencing you) - Music is repetitive nonsense. It's going for Nier Automata vibes but it's overboard. - Whoever designed this never played many good isometric roguelites, or many roguelites at all. - If they did, they understood little about what made them good. - Most of the game is a raw statcheck, except bossfights... which you can statcheck because those missions can go the longest with the most upgrades. [h2]Conclusions[/h2] It's an unpolished game and I have my doubts the devs will figure it out. It is Early Access (EA), but it feels more like it should've been cooked another month or two before releasing into EA. The discord is full of terrible ideas that ignore the fundamental problems of the game in lieu of convenience and optimisation of existing systems. This review is me being generous, because a friend recommended it to me and I want to spare some of his feelings. 4.5/10.

I unfortunately cannot recommend this game at its current state. Don't get me wrong, The first few hours are okay, albeit extremely generic in terms of story. This game is an isometric twin stick shooter with a slight pinch of being a roguelike, and you don't get to play classes. What you have instead are gender locked characters that have zero personality to them. The problems with this game: 1. Weapon scarring. This is what made me uninstall the game. This is the most awful poorly-designed smooth brain mechanic I've ever seen in a modern game. Your weapon 'breaks' when you fail a mission, get disconnected from a mission, or die in a mission. There's currently no way to repair the weapon, and considering how hard you have to grind to look for a decent usable weapon in this game, you can essentially be soft locked by this mechanic. Truly awful. 2. It doesn't give you the characters you want to play immediately. Instead it gives you this generic chick and if you're like me, someone who can't stand playing girl characters, well sorry. It will take you an hour or so of gameplay before you can unlock any other character. 3. Speaking of the character offering, it's extremely generic and lackluster. Characters get some skills that honestly, I don't feel really matters. Worse is that the first character I chose after the initial tutorial, Botsy, which sounded extremely cool based on the description, is extremely bugged. His primary skill indicates you can summon up to 3 turrets, but in fact you can only summon 1, which is such a massive letdown. The turret isn't really all that powerful either and dies really quickly in boss fights. The other characters don't really sound appealing at all. 4. The game is extremely grindy. There seems to be a bazillion different materials and you have to do the same missions over and over again because even just leveling skills will require specific combinations of materials. 5. The game camera is extremely wonky. I have many times in the middle of a hectic fight, not been able to figure out where my character was because the camera will randomly drift away from your character. I have no idea why it does that. 6. There's a crapton of weapon options but THEY *ALL* SUUUUUCKKKKK. _All of them_. They suck so much. Your best bet is to just find a standard assault rifle with a high magazine count and the least amount of reload time as possible. The weapons are very poorly designed for what this game is. They have sniper rifles for some reason (in a game where you're constantly getting mobbed). Most of the weapon types need to charge, or have extremely low magazine counts and extremely slow reload speed. As much as I wanted to experiment with weapons, 95% of them felt really bad to use because of the absurd reload times of most weapons and the very low magazine counts. The game has potential and I can see the vision, but I cannot recommend it at this point. There needs to be better missions types, a weapon rework, more distinction between the different characters, and the ability to get back into a mission when you get disconnected.

The combat could be better

fix your bugged game. getting refund.