SAND: Raiders of Sophie

With the game besieged by negative reviews made by people who played a couple of matches and left because of some inconvenience they experienced in an EA title, I've decided to leave a positive review. The game actually deserves it for what it is, and most importantly, what it's trying to achieve. Firstly, the game suffered from two major issues which caused the early wave of negatives: -Server instability during first week which caused some matches to crash, returning everyone back to base. This issue is already solved and the servers are mostly stable now. I haven't seen it but there might be some minor issues. Never had a match interrupted for a long time now though. -A cheater wave ~1 week ago. The devs, as with all such competitive games with resource collection (Rust, DayZ, Tarkov etc) are locked in a fight. So far, after the initial struggle, it looks like they got their things in order and solved the worst of the cheating. This game also has potential to be a bit more resistant to cheats simply due to its nature. Most fights are at range and bullets have dropoff and travel time. Wallhack would also be mostly useless. Both issues are under control now and the devs are releasing weekly patches to address the issues. This leads me to an important point about the devs: even if it's the studio's first release, the devs are very active and seem to react to many popular issues quite quickly. It doesn't mean they can solve everything overnight, but this does make me hopeful for the game's development. Just today, they've released a patch with more improvements and much requested smoke shell nerf. Smoke shell topic picked up steam 2 weeks ago tops and they reacted quickly. It's nice to see the devs doing something with feedback, even if it's simple tweaks. As for the game itself: there is no other title like this one on the market. I know there's sea of thieves but it has a different vibe. Unlike other shooters, this one is very focused on teamwork and outcompeting the enemy team with the resources you have and the machine you built. There's different playstyles and they all are based on what you come up with. Firing your broadside on the move? Getting in close with a ram? Boarding? Straightforward shootouts? Avoiding combat and having rear-facing weapons only? All are down to what you want. Asides from that, the game does feel somewhat fair compared to other shooters. Most of the time you'll see your opponents coming from afar. Ambushes and sneaking are rare and done dynamically instead of camping the only chokepoint on the map. Even if you are facing a bigger, better armed trampler - you can always try to run before they get to you, get into rough terrain that's hard to navigate for bigger ships or simply win the fight via boarding. Gear advantage is at it's weakest in close combat. Shotguns are deadly and medium tier armor is the most common. Granted, killing an enemy does not take them out of the game - players respawn in crew quarters as long as they have supplies or the module is intact. Even still, wiping the enemy crew lets you sabotage and disarm their trampler if you are quick at it. So there's always a chance for your team to win as long as you can get up close and board the enemy. This all ends up creating a thrilling experience where you have times of calm as you travel and loot the deserted (no pun intended) planet just to run into an enemy and have the action suddenly begin. Maybe you spotted them at the last possible moment. Maybe you surprised them. Or maybe you just had a chance to rob them and took it. The game has a long way to go. But people acting like the intermittent issues during the post-launch period were some sort of catastrophe really seem to miss the mark. I played during early release and had ~4 out of 10 matches ruined but still had lots of fun. Currently, you can still encounter bugs but it's something to be expected in an EA title. The only major issue that's still unadressed are teamers in solo (people trying to join the same game at the same time to play together). While it is a bannable offence, you can still see them sometimes in lobby. I suspect the devs will also roll out a patch to solve this fairly soon. The game is cheap, has huge potential, and you may have like one match out of 20 ruined. Chances are, in any other extraction shooter, something would make you rage anyway. Buy it, try it. Learn from mistakes and try to think up solutions. I say it's worth it.

Don't play this game unless you want to screw over a friend or get screwed over every run by not knowing the value of everything during loot distribution. A simple fix, assuming, since it tells you AFTER you've accepted your split how much your cut was worth. The game could easily be good, but this glaring issue ruins it for me in terms of group play.

Забагованная xyeтa

I can never recommend this game ever again. We wipe an entire lobby and get killed by no-clipping teleporting rage hackers while trying to extract at dreadnought. A full team of 6 people teaming in trios with cheats were just flying around our ship and cancelling extracting screwing with us. This has got to be the most atrocious launch for a game that I have ever seen. I have given this game every possible chance. It has more cheaters in it than any other game on the market hands down. This is just ridiculous. The servers don't work and they have no anti-cheat. You cannot play this game. They will continue to use the early access as a shield to protect them but the reality is that they have had years worth of opportunities to do something about this and they have refused to do so. They do not ban blatant cheaters even when multiple people provide video evidence. You see cheaters every single game. The game is fundamentally broken and does not work. Absolute nightmare. The game has such a great concept and would be awesome but it will surely die because they will NEVER recover their reputation enough to justify the problems they have by the time they get off their asses and actually do something about the glaring issues it has. Do not touch this game. Do not support game companies releasing unfinished, unplayable, pvp-based games without any combatants for cheating. It is an absolute cesspool and is easy enough for them to fix but it just won't happen.

spawn in excited for a great raid to find that cheaters have vacuumed every single piece of gear off your ship before you can even turn it on. Game is not playable in its current state.

Riddled with cheaters. Matchmaking full of teaming in solos. Incompetent devs who instead of fixing an exploit, removed a core game mechanic entirely for weeks, only to reinstate it without fixing the exploit. I've tried to give this game a real chance, it's not gotten any better since launch. Spend 95% of playtime dealing with ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ only to have 5% of your time where this game does something other games don't.

The gameplay itself is great but the other players absolutely ruin it. Matchmaking is required along with balance because anyone thats new good luck getting steam rolled by people who have the best gear and hackers.

This game is fun and is filled with massive potential. But ever since their anti-cheat update, I can't begin to recommend this game anymore. I have lost so many runs to their anti-cheat system kicking me for disconnect problems/server problems. Which causes massive problems in-game; I have lost hours of loot, money, and time to the anti-cheat system. With zero in-game way of getting things back if you get D/Ced or kicked. You also can get perm-banned if the game flags you so many times. Which has caused dozens of legit players to get banned alongside cheaters. In my last run I legitimately died from just walking on the planet's surface towards a boat and then suddenly got kicked right afterwards. Losing my 3-hour run and trampler full of goodies. The game is heavily unoptimized for some reason. I have a pretty heavy-duty gaming rig and high-speed internet. And the servers just can't seem to handle it. I understand the anti-cheat system was put in to protect the people against people that are actually cheating. But getting D/Ced for a random high ping spike from your servers shouldn't get me auto-killed and then kicked. That is some serious BS. Is the game fun? Yes. Is the anti-cheat a problem? Yes. They fix it, and I will change my review, because, legit, everything else in the game is fun and is a nice balance of PvE and PvP. But the game is unplayable when you get kicked every other match for legit no reason.