Recent reviews by Kuro

The best RTS

Been watching this one a while but it definitely needs a little longer in the oven. Whilst its beautiful to look at, amazing to listen and the story really seems interesting to after a few hours it just isnt worth the effort to find out whats next. Theres a strong foundation here but for such a unforgiving game it sorely needs some UX improvement. No crashes or bugs that I noticed though so does seem technically polished.

The game does a poor job as to letting you know whats actually wrong or what the next steps are to fix. Voiceover will be telling you your loosing trust whilst the UI is showing +3%? Events are sometimes announced with a voiceover but as theres 100's of flashing icons on screen unless you listened to that VO your ships will be sitting idle until you remember to check on them and assign them to the task..

The tutorial/knowledgebase is also incredibly unhelpful. It will tell you that a food production building produces food but if you want to know how much food, how to upgrade production, nothing. You'll get a mission to assign X Y Z policies or but zero indication as to where you actually do this in the UI. The same goes for most game mechanics you are given a suck eggs explanation as to what the mechanic is but not actually how the system interacts or works in game. Unfreeze cryo pods and you will receive some "non-workers". What do non-workers do? Who knows, as far as I can tell nothing but eat your food causing shortages and then strikes on food storage lol. Pretty much every mechanic feels like this, 10% playing, 90% searching for how it works.

Give this a couple of patches from release and come back. As it currently stands for me IXION is frustrating to play, im sure once you know all the games mechanics and features its amazing but theres so many games out there that wont require you to learn it intimately though half baked tutorials and Google in order to enjoy your game.

If you really need to scratch that itch go play "Cliff Empire", games a quarter the price and is incredibly similar gameplay wise (though much smaller in scope).

Very buggy expansion adding nothing particularly new. The "above" part is sending a rocket to a time limited tiny map to mine some resources, thats pretty much it... The "below" is a bunch of caves with very limited building space with nothing you dont find on the surface anyway. Micromanagement between your main base and your underground or asteroid settlements kills all fun, it isnt worth the effort or time..

Unsure if its the expansion or the update that has introduced all the bugs. All old saves now just dont work, passeges are broken, deleting certain objects and vehicles doesnt work just to name a few. Colonists and drones can get stuck inside resources doing nothing. How was this QA tested (if it even was).

Whilst not directly the devs fault, the new version has caused almost all mods to no longer be compatible so many community improvements, additions, tweaks and fixes are no longer usable until they are updated.

Nowhere near worth the asking price, this isnt even worth it on sale.

Very mixed bag. The game is highly polished, visuals and music are great. No crashes just the occasional performance stutter late game.

The mechanics are very half baked however. This games launch reminds me of Per Aspera where it looks jaw dropping but its as deep as a puddle. It has this mix of ONI, Cliff Empire and a few other RTS's throw in together which results in a cool factory system with your standard power/resource management. The tutorial is long due to this but very much takes a back seat as you progress.

The problem is sometimes you just wait endlessly for a resource to process or a building to be upgraded. Sometimes its completed instantly, other times you can go for food and a drink go to work come back and it might be done who knows. Priority seems to mean nothing to the workers. The UI is also terrible at telling you why/where/how something is stalled, be it not enough workers, resources too far, etc.

Combat is also in my opinion terrible. Clunky is the word to describe it. Multiple ships attack but only 1 target can attack another at once. Ships need gas which means they cant operate or even launch in a no gas area. Occasionally you will probe a base with your ship and it will get instagibed by multiple turrets, enjoy waiting around to get enough resources to remake them. The combat waves also feel like they need tweaking, with turrets dotted around the base the enemies never provided any challenge even with no ships, until waves started hitting 1-2 mins apart for no apparent reason. Currently there is no replay value besides building a big city once you are protected and have defeated the bases.

Hopefully with a few updates the balance and priority issues will be sorted out. Hoping to return and update this review then. At full price it isnt worth it, on sale only if you need something new as you will complete everything this game has to offer in 10-15 hours.

Very much a mixed review.

Whats good is when its working its great, looks great and satisfies that sci-fi builder itch. It has many MANY problems though that hopefully will be sorted with future patches. Worker AI is garbage, especially late game where you can be floating 100's or 1000's of resources yet 500+ workers cant manage to keep 20 or so factories fed.

Terraforming is also decent and much more in depth than other similar games, however advancing too fast can completely break the story mode with no prior warning. Speaking of story its pretty decent with multiple endings but its PAINFULLY slow to progress. Sometimes it will go literally decades ingame with nothing happening because its waiting on you to explore some random outpost the other side of the planet or some random stat to be hit.

Its hard to say buy it now, the price is good for what you get but its so buggy and easy to miss one thing wrong and throw a 5-10 hour save down the drain. If the AI for workers is fixed and the terraforming/story bugs and blockers are sorted you have a very complete package but as of launch its not there yet.

For the devs if you see this! Fix the worker AI to not be so useless with a massive base, the story trigger bugs and the late game lag. These 3 points kill all replayability until this is fixed.


Updated Nov 2021: Game AI still sucks after multiple updates, patches and a DLC. Its an absolute slog to play just waiting endlessly for buildings to complete.

Worth it on sale however little replay value. Game also throws popups constantly. Spore incoming for the 50th time? Popup. Enemy inbound for the 50th time? Popup. Gets real old real fast. Theres also quite a few oversights, run out of power? Cant turn buildings off. Run of of nitrites? Good luck sucker hope you had the buildings needed to make sludge!

Game is limited to 300 buildings (you can turn this off in settings) however late game it hitches frequently i find even before this limit, after 300 its unplayable with hitches seconds long. When compared to games like Cities Skylines, Surviving Mars, Planetbase, Dawn of Man, etc where you can build huge sprawling cities without this issue it really kills the city building aspect for me. Right when your colony gets to the stage it looks after itself and you just want to build out :(

Good parts though it is quite unique, campaign has varied maps with different challenges but it does always boil down to the same build long term.

Pick it up on sale for a few hours of fun, after those few hours you realise every game will play out the same. Hopefully a optimisation update will come. No mod support either which isnt the end of the world but i suspect so many little annoyances could be fixed with a community mod.

Its not a "bad" game by any means, just hampered by little issues throughout the playthrough and then performance dictates when the game ends.

Very fast paced, like really you need to keep moving or your going to die super fast. Quake-like kinda rocket launcher shooting with a few chars/weapons.

Game has a steep learning curve, dont be surprised if you get wiped your first few games but stick with it, its hella fun.

Game has a way to go but in its current state its worth downloading and giving a go.

Short but sweet puzzle game. I completed in just under 5 hours. Would say probably around the same difficulty as Portal 2. Some of the secret rooms get much harder however.

Cant see myself playing this again over and over, however the story and general atmosphere of the game really is something special and its worth picking up on sale.

So this is my own personal review/feedback/whatever on Firefall as it stands right now at release. At the time of writing this, I have clocked 500 hours on the release version of Firefall, along with 62 days since it went. It’s based on my last few weeks playing, levelling lower frames from New Eden and beyond, taking on Titan bosses, campaign, etc, etc. Feel free to leave your thoughts or replies here, but like I said, this is my opinion on the game, yours may differ.

Review was written 9th August 2014, Firefall build V1.0.1793.

Story 6/10

The story and lore behind Firefall is really quite good. It’s not just your standard end of the world survival or fantasy game that 90% of the market seems to be flooded with. It’s a great change of pace, the campaign storyline, be it a little short is engaging and I find its biggest issue is the lack of real character development since virtually every character you talk to once or twice, and then never see, or hear of them again. There are a few exceptions to this, like Aero, your operator for example who you will be with your entire Firefall career and Hobbes from the campaign, The Meddler from ARES Jobs but nothing sticks out long enough, or gets enough explanation to make me care about them, their backstory, it just leaves me thinking what a missed opportunity to dive into the Firefall universe. Sure, we don’t need to know about that one random farmer you helped retrieve a bracelet or something, but when it’s a character, really out of the ordinary, like the Meddler for instance, it really would be good to see their backstory.

As you progress in Firefall, the story changes considerably. You start out as a brand new player in town, so you get the low work, collect this, collect that, etc. Once you start to gain the trust of the Accord and fractions though, you are allowed to move on to higher level work, like sensitive data recovery, target elimination. The story really does do an excellent job of keeping you interested in the world, since unlike most characters, Firefall gives you loads of lore, backstory, etc about the world you are living and fighting in. Moving thought the zones, the story is consistent, and gradually builds up from simple tasks to moving on to fight the Chosen in an all-out war with strikes, kidnappings, ambushes, etc.

I am really looking forward to chapter two and beyond for the campaign arcs, if the first one is anything to go by, Firefalls story is only just getting started. Based on what I have seen, I personally rate the story a 6/10. Whilst it is very fun and engaging, the missed opportunity of lack of character development and very short nature of the Campaign overall is a huge downside, once the next chapters come out, I would very much hope I can improve this rating.

Graphics 8/10

One of Firefalls strongest points is its beautiful world. Coral Forest has vast open beaches to rocky cliff faces, to lush forest. Sertao is a rocky desert with dust storms, mountains and small areas of forest more inland. Devils Tusk is on an island covered with lava from erupting volcanos. These are just the zones that players will travel through and they really give the game a sense of vastness and beauty. Playing on Ultra, this game is out of this world.
Firefall has this very unique art style, I can’t quite place my finger on it but it’s like a mix of Manga and Borderlands and to be frank, it’s something that works really well. This game is not designed to be hyper realistic like say Crysis is, but not completely out of the ordinary, like Borderlands goes for.

My only problem is in some places, textures really are stretched out, ruining and scene. There also are quite a few spots where a texture goes into another, and you can clearly see how one is higher resolution compared to the other. Now this could be down to the way Firefall streams in textures as it needs them, as a player with a slow internet connection, I cannot give the game huge bandwidth to download textures, and there is no way to just download them from a launcher or via Steam.

I personally rate the graphics of Firefall to be an 8/10, the only reason I drop marks for it is because in those patches where graphics suck, it just ruins the experience for me. I would like to think in the future, we can see more detailed models, textures, etc being rolled out and any areas where it is a little off can be patched.


Sound 7/10

Firefalls sound when just shooting, running around, etc is average at best. Pretty much every gun of the same variation sounds the same, no matter how good or bad it is, and most sound assets which you hear early on, you will likely hear again, and again, and again.

What really saves the audio for Firefall is its voice acting and its background music. The voice acting for some is really hit and miss, some characters sound really out of place, but overall they do a great job of sucking you into the world, and it’s really nice to see that a AAA MMO went for full voice acted missions, on every job, campaign mission, NPC, etc. For some, this isn’t a huge issue, but for me I really like to have the story read out and brought to life, this is what Firefall does very well.

The background music in Firefall, or its entire OST for that matter is nothing short of amazing. My favourite piece is from the first campaign mission, Crash Down. Sometimes I will want to go and play that mission just to hear that music again and again! I find that even 500 hours in, I love having background music at full volume still, something on many other games I find myself muting due to its repetitive nature or just average music.

I rate the sound of Firefall a 7/10. Whilst many assets are used far too often, the voice acting and the background music and OST I would rate as a 10/10 on their own. Props to the composers and musicians involved in Firefall! On a side note, the OST from buying a starter pack seems to be missing many of the music scores used within Firefall, very disappointing but with a quick search, I’m sure you can turn up the entire music score online.

Continued here: http://forums.firefallthegame.com/community/threads/kuros-review-feedback-of-firefall-1-0.4770821/ Review too long for Steam