Downloaded my Year One Edition from Steam and wandered into the Forums to check out the reviews and what other purchasers thought. What a toxic, backbiting, revolting experience. Many of the so called reviews didn’t even talk about the game but rather the Epic business decision that was made to guarantee the studio kept going. This was well over a year ago now and the so called reviewers were just going over old ground yet again, with vicious self serving arguments. The game in it’s present state, to me, is good, not excellent, because I disagree with some design choices, especially the mixture of supposed real world mechanics (aiming) yet the ignoring of real world problems like Heavies not firing over low walls because of game balancing them. To me there are quite a few areas like this, especially vehicles! Not being able to run over slow enemies like worms is ridiculous. Is the game worth buying? Yes it is and the way the DLC’s are coming out does bode well for the future.
Use feedback tool to propose improvements, instead of nag saying
This has brought a lot to present state of game. Oh how it is improved over state in first 12 months!
I was n’t nag saying, and in fact have put suggestions whilst being an early backer, by post and canny. It was my opinion, why so defensive? That’s the same sort of reply that I see on Steam.
Yes, unfortunately some don’t know how to get over past experiences and they keep their shit with them for almost 1.5 year just to spew their frustration to public forum with their sad lives and reviews. And they even review the game with its state from release over a year ago. Game has been improved since then, but for them it doesn’t matter. Phoenix Point is better than Firaxis’ XCOM, but some can’t stand business decisions of developers and need to hate the title. Sad people with their sad life, nothing more.
Totally agree with you.
It’s just fucking awful how some people can’t let go of such a stupid thing as a choice of store. And I don’t even like Epic Store, but carrying a grudge since… I don’t know, how many months have passed since that deal?
Oh you ment by Steam users? There has been a lot of frustration “in path so far” so its public fora, ideal to express it all - be it good or bad.
So my suggestion is - give your own review, thumbs up and thumbs down. I surely will.
I have seen your posts on Steam and I had to restrain myself from saying something as well (a skill I learned while playing PP, you know, self restrictions for the sake of balance 
)…
I don’t want to get involved in a discussion with people who are willing to go to any length to defend their rights as consumers, but can’t give a fleeting thought to the employees of a small indie studio in Bulgaria and their families, who would be the ones ultimately screwed without the epic deal.
Anyway, just wanted to tell you I share your feelings on this.
People dont have this kind of “feeling” or “knowledge” - they dont know its small studio that is growing on PP, that has released only Chaos Reborn before. They expect AAA title, they compare it to Xcom2 as reference, and Epic and delays and many bugs paved the way.
In other words - its a bit of culmination of “deserved so far” and a bit of modern “buyer is always right”.
I am sure in time positive reviews of people seeing new level of startegy in PP will prevail.
Welcome to the Steam community. One of the most toxic places on the internet. People got mad when Epic decided to not add user reviews, but I totally understand where they were coming from.
In the end - reviewers do own the game and have a right to write whatever they wish. Even with that, it has generally positive reviews. As game improves and more people embrace it on Steam less of toxic past will be visible.
This batch are a bit frustrated players and they had what to be frustrated on. Future generations of players will not know of pain, tears and sweat to come to here. Like people nowadays dont know mostly of 8-bit or 16/32 bit era of home computing. To them Wintel and Android are computers/smartphone devices and computer world was always about Wi Fi and small shiny apps that do stupid things 
Maybe parallel is not the best, but you get it
So its just been couple of days on Steam, wish many years
But look at the glass half full for a minute.
Despite all the Epic haters deliberately posting toxic reviews, the game is still averaging ‘Mostly Positive’ reviews - which means that there are more people out there who like the way the game is going than are stuck in the past.
It also helps that the Epic haters always start their reviews with something like: “This BS studio broke its promises when it took the Epic money and ran…” which basically says to me: “I’m a moron, you don’t have to read any further.” 
Well … no.
But there are couple of facts that will remain in past
- Epic deal delayed Steam and GOG release for a year, original promise was all platforms
- Even Epic release was delayed for month or so
- DLCs are rolling slower then promised
- There were a lot of annoying bugs so far, some even present today
- There are a lot of imbalances
- Key promise of adoptive mutations to player tactics is not yet fulfilled …
- Game gets boring and repetitive from mid towards the end
- Some of the concepts are not easy to grasp first time
- Linux support was dropped, MacOS version also tend to be buggy, multilanguage support is not perfect
However, I might add even longer list why its a great game. So there are reasons for criticism, but that should not overshadow the positive aspects. Especially because its not abandoned product, but team tends to correct it.
And in my eyes, it suffers from same modern plague of too early release, too little internal game testing. I nowadays count game after 1 or 2 years with all DLCs are real release, and all before beta. So all players get to be bug correction “guinea pigs”. Some people expect too much insta perfection and get frustrated in process.
I fully agree with the above list by rasvoja.
I didnt care about epic or not but the game but the game hasnt improved a lot for me 1.5 yrs later
just adding:
- mac perf is horrendous (they should have scrubbed it at this point)
- 3 playthough attempts of mine ‘broke’ due to game breaking bugs (the latest ruined my save games again
and that was 1 week ago)
I play on a Mac and hardly ever experience a crash (on Epic). What game-breaking bugs did you experience? I have to restart missions occasionally due to bugs, but that’s about it.
I was shocked and stunned, by how bad the initial release was, but as a backer and follower of JG games since the 80s I could be a bit more patient. For me what I found interesting was how quickly the game evolved over different iterations. I suspect that the project had become much more complex than originally envisioned. However, Snapshot were pretty honest by the new year of the situation in offering up a feedback system, requests to feedback freely with F12 and also creating the community council to test out ideas etc.
I think that my point is that going to the Epic Games Store first was essentially Snapshot’s saving grace. They got a year of game testing for free from their backers and other buyers, and the final result is very polished mostly. The situation might have been very different if PP had gone straight to Steam. And as much as I no longer enjoy beta testing, I actually enjoyed the experience during this strange year we’ve all been living in. As an indie game developer I’m very please with the current results. I’d do it again! If only Julian Gollop would team up with Jake Solomon. Time to go and write a top review on steam.
Its mostly positive though. Ive seen WAY worse.
Battletech was very negative for around a month when it came out because it had some gender pronoun thing or something.
Steam gives people the ability to buy the game, play for 10 minutes, leave a review and get a refund… So all kinds of groups of people go all crazy with agendas and political nonsense… They had no interest in the game to begin with but steam lets them do it.
Seeing now how little they initially developed, truly. If they went to Steam then, that would be way bigger flop. And I also liked original concepts and way it developed, just not the taste of being beta tester live.
@Coyotekins Or think about the No Man’s Sky debacle and the 180° turn it has made in terms of ratings since its release.
I think that my point is that going to the Epic Games Store first was essentially Snapshot’s saving grace. They got a year of game testing for free from their backers and other buyers, and the final result is very polished mostly.
After the deal happened I kept saying that this was a good thing for people who wanted a good game because that meant a whole other year of development with even more resources. Even back then it was very clear that it was going to launch in a very unfinished state.
After the game launched in its awful state I kept saying that Snapshot fooled Epic into giving them money for launching their game in an alpha state in their stores and the real launch was going to be on Steam and GoG.
So far both statements seem to be true.