Surviving Mars: Relaunched

Paradox is working hard on joining the ranks of corporations/publishers that poop on everything they touch, even their own property, for the sake of more money right now, sacrificing their reputation and future. Here they are re-releasing the same game, "Relaunched", not remastered/expanded. $40 is too expensive for this game, like all Paradox games it is about 25-50% too much, especially considering they will never release free content like other companies do, everything will be a $20-$30 DLC with VERY little content. Would recommend if it was $20 and you like slow atmospheric games. Strongly suggest you carefully read about any future dlc before purchasing.

I somehow convinced myself to spend the twenty dollars and get this "relaunch" of a game I have already played, and loved, in the past. I figured that since there were some new things and I had not gotten all of the DLC with the original game, that twenty dollar price tag could be worth it. Upon opening up the game and checking out some new UI things, I have mixed feelings. The change is nice, but I would not say the appearance of the change itself looks that good. For instance, the new design of resource UI once you are landed looks... cheap. Despite messing with graphical settings, I could never get the icons to not look low resolution and jagged. It just looked bad. Another thing I noticed was how the game somehow ran worse for me than the original game. I could run the original at maximum graphics all day long and maintain 60 FPS the whole time. Now I can't even maintain 60 FPS just zooming in and out with LOWERED settings. This isn't why I refunded the game after only an hour though. That would be solely the game's fault. After messing around, I got landed in a spot I liked and got started properly. Not even fifteen minutes in and the game crashes. I hadn't even created a save file yet, so I was quite annoyed, but tried again anyway. I created a new colony and made sure to save as soon as I landed. Within FIVE MINUTES, the game crashed AGAIN. AND, IT KEPT CRASHING FOR THE MULTIPLE ADDITIONAL TIMES I TRIED TO LOAD THE SAVE. What the ♥♥♥♥?! This game is four months old and is based off of a near perfect game, if you ignore the mess that it was towards the end, and I could not physically play it anymore. I looked through some reviews of the game, seeing if someone had something similar going on... and the amount of people I saw in the just the first page of reviews mentioning all of the bugs they had dealt with should be embarrassing. It reminds me of Fallout 76 at launch, which I remember firsthand. Seriously, what the ♥♥♥♥ is with this game? It is a cheap, unpolished, rip-off of a game based off of a game that only need bug fixes, but now is being priced at forty dollars. Hell, even twenty for returning players is quite hefty. ESPECIALLY when the game is unplayable or barely playable at the absolute best. I read a review about how someone ran through the whole game and was barely able to do so. That is not a good thing. That is not something to be proud of. I almost feel ashamed FOR those who had to "make" this "game". Do not buy it. They do not deserve your money. I do not care if you try to justify it like I did. That money is not going where is should. If you ask me, the only place it SHOULD be going is anywhere else. Maybe just remaining in your wallet.

There are just so many bugs. I wanted to love this game, I did a full playthrough and I enjoyed it, but in the end I just got tired of all issues. I checked online and yes, all the problems I have encountered are well known - both in the original and in this version. I'll revisit this review in a year. Hopefully, I'll be able to Build Mars Better next time.

The game was decent, seemed to run fine. Then i tried to use the naturalists habitat. Broken. Colonists refused to move there, and when forcing colonists to move there i continually got warnings every 30 seconds that colonists are starving even though they had 9.8 food out of 10, and a storage of 200 right next to the building with a plenty of drones nearby standing idle. Late game job assignment system is broken too. Domes with plenty of jobs/vacancy but still getting homeless and unemployment notifications. And then last night, i guess something in my save game broke severely because i was just playing like normally and then the game locked up. Reloaded from an auto-save and played for a bit longer, only for it to freeze at the same point. best guess is it's a bug related to breathable atmosphere, since that was at 90% when the game froze both times. Which is kinda hilarious the main goal of the game breaks the game. Relaunching the game all for what? to fix nothing and just pack everything into one neat little package? Fascinating strategy. I used to love games released by Paradox. but I'm starting to get tired of them constantly spitting in my face.

shouldn't have had to pay to play this game, as I already owned the original ( and identical ) game. at least make it a "dlc upgrade package" ...jesus.. Edit: The game wants me to write another review.... OK! here it is - game has ZERO difference from original game. Dont buy or wipe ass with. may sting after use. full of bugs

At this point I'm not sure I'm ever buying another Paradox game again. Many of the most basic QoL issues i'm already running into within 15 hours of playing the "relaunched" version of this game are the EXACT SAME issues people have been complaining about for OVER FIVE YEARS. Don't waste you money. Colonist management is horrible. RC management is horrible. Even the mods that were made 4 years ago don't work anymore. Steam should refund everyone who paid for this piece of ♥♥♥♥ called "relaunched." This was a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ scam.

Bought this thinking I could upgrade from the original I have on console. Nope. Exact same thing. Relaunched and improved ..yeah.. sure. Exact same thing I have had for years now. Refunded.

Normally I don't leave negative reviews but this was so disappointing I wanted to let others know before they considered buying it. This is literally just Surviving Mars (original) with a menu UI restyle and a new "feature" that simply stretches out gameplay. All "politics" does is occasionally boost a certain aspect while restricting you from a large swath of features (Ex: birth permissions, you literally can't tell your people to not have kids until you get the law for it). As someone with more that 300 hours on Surviving Mars and all the DLC's, this is literally just identical to the first. Adding to the fact that other than the one new feature (political systems), all the other new things cost an additional $20. Not only do I have to buy an entirely new copy of the game but to get any actual features I have to spend $60 ($40 while its on "sale"). You cannot convince me that the development of was so extensive that they needed to price it at $40 when not on sale. It's sale price (currently) of $20 is also ridiculous. There are exactly zero reasons Paradox needed to create an entirely new game for this when nothing in this "new" game couldn't have been added to the original with just an update. This entire new game could've been a DLC as well, I would've accepted that. (I certainly wouldn't have paid $20 for it and that's the discounted price). Also the QOL was just awful. The new RC commander (RC Scout or whatever) makes an obnoxious beeping sound (I couldn't have it in the colony when I tried out this game because it was so obnoxiously loud, I had to send it to the edge of the map to not hear it), and looked nearly identical to the RC Explorer in the pinned bar which made it annoying to accidently send to an anomaly. The new voice acting isn't great and loses the "futuristic" feel that the original narrator lady had in the first game (You can hear this in the video they have attached to it "Warning meteor incoming"). It might just be that I don't like the change from the first game but she sounds like a person telling you stuff rather than a robot or whatever the original lady is supposed to be. There is no new music (that I heard in my hour of trying this out). The way the build menu is now is also inconvenient, originally all buildings you could build in a specific category (like domes) were in a line, but they changed it so now different variations of a certain building (Ex: small and large solar panels) are one icon that you then have to use to navigate. It also often defaults to the small option, like small diner is the default and then you have to hover and select for a regular diner. They also made the space race mandatory and you must have three competitors, you lose points from your score (IDC) and don't get the research credit for milestones if a competitor does something before you. I had the dust storm modifier max and despite fueling my rocket early was unable to launch it while my AI competitors (who don't seem to have the same modifiers I did) were able to launch their rocket. It just makes the game less rewarding for progress that I don't get rewards for my milestones if I'm not rushing to complete them (I like to take my time and actually enjoy the game) and if I ever try to challenge myself with modifiers (ex: max dust storms), especially for a non-optional feature. I'd also like to critique the new feature of the game (the only major thing they changed), the political system. Essentially how it works is that you pick a certain "party" to found you, ex: greens, workers, etc. and that party makes up 10 seats (1/2) of your parliament with 4 seats being your sponsor and 2 seats to each of your competitors. Not only is the QOL bad on this system (it doesn't tell you how picking a certain party affects your gameplay despite each party liking certain actions and disliking others, it is literally just a little tweak to take the descriptions you have in game and put them in the description when you actually choose your party. Something identical would make sense for choosing a competitor / sponsor to see how they affect politics. It makes zero sense to me why my competitors get to make choices on the policy decisions in MY colony. Also why no multiplayer when you've set it up perfectly for this? What is the logic in being able to choose a "party" when my sponsor is also a decision maker. I just don't understand why it was set up like this. Granted, I only played the first political "system" the one you start with before getting a more martian one as you work towards independence. Also, laws aren't "laws" but upgrades. The whole political system is just a more complicated research screen. I'm not choosing between multiple policies like if I should devote effort to mining or something, I'm just getting different upgrades. I can enact a law (if my parliament members support it) but they are like "skip the founder stage" or "buildings require less resources to build". For general / minor changes, I already mentioned the rework for RC commander (it beeps really loud now). It also has a sensor tower on it now (why wouldn't this be on the RC Explorer, its whole point is to explore and study.). They added a new size of wind turbine (called sheltered or something) this is disappointing for a "new game" because the Large wind turbine was in a DLC you could buy for the first game, reskinned certain buildings (like the arcology, it looks nice no complaints), and train stations were reworked (I like that this happened but this should have been part of the FIRST GAME, was there no realization in the first game that something so material intensive to build lost literally ALL of its benefit the second you got the midgame shuttles). Sure they may be some argument for trains this if you transport oxygen or water, but you could also build a pipe since you have to connect your power grids with wire infrastructure anyway. The pipe wouldn't require power at least. Did Paradox not consider trains in context at all when they implemented them? I also noticed the outdoor research lab the outdoor research lab is still a lab but outside the domes (duh) and has less space for scientists to work for some reason. (2 slots per shift instead of 3). It gave a decent amount of research (IDK if this was because they reworked research or if this station is more efficient). However, to uphold laws you spend a constant 100 research. I don't know why laws cost research it doesn't make real sense and if this is a method to stop us from declaring too many laws why is it 100 constant, regardless of what I implement. I also wasn't sure if laws stayed in place all the time as well. I do appreciate that they made moding easier and included previous DLC as base content. TL;DR Disappointing cash grab, if you've bought Surviving Mars and especially any of the DLC to Surviving Mars, you are paying $40 for 1 "feature". Even if you had no DLC to the original, they are hardly worth $40 in how they change gameplay. If you haven't bought surviving mars this could be worth it IF it is cheaper than the original when you are looking to buy. Its not a bad game just virtually no improvement from the first one. I'm requesting a refund for my copy so I can buy something worth my money.