Recent reviews by Fluke

Big number go BRRRRRRRRR!

Build a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ planet. Starts as a lifeless rock that's constantly trying to kill you. Terraform it to a rock full of life trying to kill you. 10/10 would terraform again.

If you like humor that is on-the-nose, repetitive to the point of eye rolling, and game mechanics that get replaced every few hours with different mechanics, then you may enjoy this game. It’s got some aspects that recommend it, but to many other draw backs to really make up for the fun you might have.

-= Pros =-
- The intro and first couple of chapters are fun, challenging, and the decisions have actual consequences.
- There are a lot of easter eggs in the form of collectable items, lines of dialogue, images, and cinematic pieces.
- Space is big. And this game gets big space down.
- The music is good.
- Once you actually get a faster vehicle than your suit, it feels like an achievement.
- Crafting some big space station all decorated and pretty is fun.

-= Cons =-
- The humor becomes stale. There are a lot of subverted expectation gags. To the point you are never surprised by the twist, you just wait. They even point out that this happens in the game dialogue itself. Of course instead of doing anything about it, they double down on it. Then triple down.
- That music I said was good. It also gets repetitive. Then they take it away and you can’t get it back.
-The game changes from a space survival game, to a space adventure game in the middle. All the bits that made the space survival game fun stay though. They make a space adventure game boring. You’re on long trips through big space, sometimes minutes at a time. You’re never sure what resources you may need. But it turns out its not a lot and you can find them everywhere. Still have to craft those tools and stuff at your base. Makes for a lot of pointless walking.
- The materials you need are everywhere, but space is big. It makes if hard to find what you need to progress.
- Speaking of progression. There are many times in the game where you need a specific tool they just came up with, or object to progress, or you have that one tool but you didn’t have it in your inventory. This means getting to the way point, and being told to go back to your crafting station to craft the one thing you need. This is actually a plot point they use, multiple times.
- The inventory is small for the amount of items you need to collect and carry to be successful without frequent trips.
- You will never have enough containers. This game trains you to pick up a lot of stuff for the future. Even without grabbing all the little flavor items you’ll run out of space.
- Get ready to remember every crafting recipe. You can’t check the recipes outside of the crafting station, and you can’t access anything other than your personal inventory from the crafting station. So if you need to craft a part to craft an item to progress the game, you’d better have a good enough memory to remember the 12+ things you’ll need to craft, or everything you need in your inventory already.
- You craft a space station for yourself. In the beginning of the game. Then they take it away from you. Nothing you can do about it. Can’t even make a new one.
- The places they could put tension, high stakes and consequences, they didn’t. Sometimes they actively took out the stakes and made it an on the rails situation.

I killed a bunch of squirrels until I beat the game. Then there was more game! 10/10, would genocide squirrels again.

There is very little guidance in the game. Not an intuitive game. Hate it slightly less than the pun my wife came up with. 'Not a tiny bang, but a fizzle.'

I've been a fan of the Thief franchise for years, ever since I was a young kid. They were a new type of game with a different focus of gameplay and new mechanics. Some added creep factor from the enemies was nice too. This entry into the group was no different. Sure I missed some of the equipment from earlier games, but mechanics wise this game is a solid entry. However, I won't recommend this game for four reasons.

1. The mechanics. Frequently you might mess up, die, fail an objective. That's to be expected, especially when playing on the hardest difficulty. But preforming the exact same action as in a previous save, but yeilding drastically different results in enemy reaction, vision range, detection or the environment just adds to the punishing nature of the game. If the guard didn't see me standing behind that pillar before, there is no reason that he should now be able to see me. I understand that having variable intelligences in your AI can shake up game play, but to often did I fail an objective because something was just slightly off about my replay.

2. Reloading bugs. Several times upon reloading an area an enemy would become alerted, for no reason. Or they would glitch and be stuck in place, staring at the only available path through a well lit area. Or I would check my inventory and find equipment missing that I had moments before. Messing up and having to reload shouldn't automatically make the game harder.

3. Mission objectives. I tried really hard to get the bonus objectives with the DLC addons. The Ghost or Opportunist. Sometimes they would conflict, like "Zero Knockouts or Kills" and 'Three Areial Takedowns." A little annoying, but understandable. What bothered me was alll the times I completed an objective, but wasn't credited. If I "Remain Undetected" throughout the whole chapter, give me the bonuse. Don't block it because I used the environment to do that and that's more Opportunistic than Ghost. And they never explain it.

4. The Story. The story is really well written and I liked it a lot. A shifting antagonist, interesting dialogue to overhear which adds to the realm lore. Even collectable documents which explain things while adding loot opportunities. Garret, while not likable, is at least a little sympathetic. But the ending. The ending sucked. All that hard work and you watch your character standing to watch a sunrise. I mean he as easily could have pulled Erin up, and THEN removed the primal energy. And why was Erin even dangling off the side of the boat in the first place? That was never explained. It's like the writers had a really great story with no ending, and in frustration someone threw a bookend. And they all agreed that was how it should end. A nonsensical bookend like symmetry is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ magical.

With over three-hundred hours on this game, I can safely say I enjoy it. I have few problems with this game, and its developers continue to update it as they generate new content. I bought this game while it wasn't on sale, and I'm not the least bit dissapointed when it does go on sale. Because I got a great game that continues to get better.

Pros:
-The level of interaction you can have with your Gnomes is up to you. You can micromanage them until they are doing tasks in the order you want them. Or you can let them run around and try to survive on their own.
-As your Gnomedom grows, you get access to better and better things. Trade from other kingdoms, better materials, more Gnomes. Your Gnomes also get better at their jobs, making more durable and more expensive items.
-If you don't want to engage in combat with enemies, you can disable them. If you want to leave enemies on and still not fight, you can have your Gnomes try to run, or buy off the Goblin Kingdoms to keep them from attacking you.
-Automatons!

Cons:
-Early in the game, its pretty easy for a single bear, or goblin raid to destroy your whole kingdom. Even equiping all your Gnomes with weapons might mean their doom.
-The crafting is really slow in the begining because combat is so dangerous for your Gnomes.
- The game has a tendancy to slow down if you have to much going on, i.e. water flowing, many enemies and Gnomes moving, lots of trees and crops growing all at the same time. You can manage these things however, to reduce their impact on preformance.