Bit of raged review

I’m not gonna critisize lore, i’m not about it. “Crabmen pew-pew-pew. Wtf? Are they cloned with inbuild-weapons and where did they get ammo?”. Also, 4 man +commander is all PP project have? LOL
I’m not gonna talk a lot about visual design. It pretends to be future-realistic, but it lost realistic vibe cause it lacks modern elements, and instead fully build on fantastic future ones. Feels like halo toys.
Not talking about optimization. Not talking about game balance.

Let’s talk about gamedesign issues. And the game is full of them.

BASE and RESOURCES
in a short - there is nothing to manage around. Nothing to develop.

  • power control (on/off). Nice future which allows to switch power for current needs, being a tool of priority switch. But in current state of a game - it nearrly useless as there nothing to manage LOL.
  • multiple bases. Idea seems good as adding extra points of interest and/or management/expanding, but in reality it doesnt change the gameplay at all, just used as extra money (food) generators and remote pitstops.
  • no crew = no managment, no extra economical mechanics, decision making; That was great part of UFO series.
  • no salvage after missions. Even having lootboxes on mission will no provide loot for you if they didnt looted in process.
  • research lab kinda useless as you have nothing to research most of time.

TECH and RESEARCHs

  • lach of researches, low quantity/density not even to make player choose what to prioritize, but sometimes you just have nothing to; 2nd research lab was my huge mistake LOL.
  • most of researches provide no techs, but resources. No logic here;
  • autopsies are just a joke. Did you play xcom longwar? Autopsies must provide you knowledge of enemy anatomy, their abilities, weaknesses, vital point targeting etc.
  • w/o diplomacy there are no way to improve your equipment/base/vehicles.

CHARACTER managment and Attributes
Overall character building is bland forvard and about powerspikes, not squad-role-development. Current state turns tactical-and-managment strategy game into powerboosting hero-squad to the limits.
For strategy game you dont need supersoldiers - as losing any of them = lose a game. With current state - you just transform strategy+tactic into tactical rpg-alike (w/o roleplay lol). You just ruin the core mechanism of a genre you choose.

  • hire a trooper w/o looking at him. Idiotic. Forces some players to save/load.
  • skills and attributes learned by multiple skill points. Old good design allowing decisions about how many points and what for to spend.
  • classes always sucks as it limit players choices about how to utilise their troops and their skills and equipment. Solution: remove classes, remake skill tree to provide roguelike elements but also a space for decisions.
  • having no weapon expertiese punish with weapon penalties and (!) chance to not shoot at all. Solution: no penalties - any soldier knows how to aim and press the trigger. Instead, having mastery must provide bonuses to accuracy/reduce movement speed penalty of a weapon/bonus to reaction with a weapon/allow to reload w/o actionpoint.
  • lack of skills. In early game you have mostly no option besides just shoot. Even in 90th it was more choices with aimed shot, quick shot, burst fire, supress fire, rapid fire etc.
  • skills improving weapon damage is a joke. Unrealistic and allows to overcome on of game core mechanic - armour. Solution: remake these skill to provide another kind of damage output: accuracy/action points cost etc. This game need total revamp of skills and skill tree.
  • health based on strength. Super unrealistic and unbalanced making this stat super valuable as it provides survivability which is hard to get other ways (no other ways lol, only armour). Solution: make hp a constant base value +extra hp from armour. So high-tech and resources investments helps you mitigate damage instead of just getting exp. Strength must be used only for carrying weight or pushing heavy objects, which must provide access to heavy armour/weapons as overweight must provide heavy speed penalties and maybe a bit of accuracy penalty. It’s enough to keep strength valuable.
    ~ speed is fine, but armour must not produce bonuses to it, as naked man always faster.
  • stealth system is just unbalanced (as many say), but i thing it also poorly designed.

If you cant design character system - check other games. BattleBrothers have great system while being very simple. Or ask any of high-leveled player(s) for advices (at least ones who have modding exp). Or hire them!

ITEMS

  • inventory: 6 slot bag, +3 active slots are nice UFO-alike design. Even if less complicated. Gives player a bit of choices what their troopers can use instantly and what kind of supplies they’ll have if things get longer.
  • idiotic idea of unique ammo for every weapon. If you ran out of ammo you cant pickup it from enemy or from teammate who use just another modification of the same kind of a weapon. Solution: split ammo into categories, like: batteries (energy-based), ballistic light/medium/heavy, balistic shortgun shells, explosive shells (grenade launchers), rockets, arrows. Allow every weapon to be used with any tier of ammo but of it’s category. Make people allow to play around. Check PUBG’s ammo system: https://pubg.gamepedia.com/Ammunition
  • armour can increase such stats as speed/accuracy/reaction. Ridiculous. Solution: armour must provide extra-hp, armour itself, no speed bonuses (only if using servomotors), no speed penalties (but heavy weight and a mechanic of overweight penalties). Greatly realised in BattleBrothers (again lol)
  • armour split into head/body/legs pieces are just stupid rpg-alike idea. Why? Did anyone wear sniper pants+heavy’s body? It just make zero sense. Solution: armour come in one piece. But keep extra slots for gadgets to configue it. +nightvision? Or extra active slots? Servomotors? Jetpack? Build-in-blade? Or other stuff.
    Also class-specific armour is also an idiotic idea (same as having pre-builded classes). Fuck classes.

ENEMIES

  • customization of enemies. A bit of customization is nice, good idea, but it realised again purely. Check how it’s realised in Longwar mode for XCOM (even xcom become playable with mods).
  • crabmen looks funny
  • self-exploding bio-worms - another idiotic suicidal organics idea. It can be used as detector of lacking ideas. It being realised in many games and usualy it just boring ah.
  • overall concept of overwhelming odds of crabs vs 6-8 supersoldiers is nice… for a shooter game of 2000th. Even bossfights feels the same - as you forced to act the same - shoot from afar with maximum firepower with boosted squad of supersoldiers.

Damn, why it’s too hard to find a gamedisigner who understands how to buildup the gameplay?
I think a guyz who worked on first xcoms were capable of understanding why series were good. NO. I have mistaken!
And there are decades past - there are lots of improvements were done by other games in a genre. Just use them. NO!
I cant imagine you will end up at nearly same level as firaxis - pretty low level.

PS: sorry for my english skills.

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I was just reading old blog posts, and there’s a lot that is missing from the game (such as behemoths). The release version is a working game, but it also seems to be a compromise when it comes to actual gameplay, features, lore etc and what what those were supposed to be like. I think DLCs are supposed to fix this eventually…

This is why the game design sucks here, because it was designed as something else, but I guess the studio was hit by a reality check. Such as their engine sucking and not being able to use large maps (I would have expect them to be on par at least with Xcom2…but not even close), which pretty much makes all missions exactly the same.

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I think the problem is most likely that Snapshot ran out of money and then was backed into a corner where they had to release the game before it was done.

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This ragequit review is too much ragequit, everything bad in the game, well you didn’t choose the right game then.

Just one example, remove multi base? Lol makes me wonder if you played much the game.

there were + and - signs which turned into strong dots after posting. Multibases are good, but realization is bad. Same with some other stuff. But 80-90% of things here are minuses.

There was perhaps + and - but all comments are negative anyway and it problable cover most game aspects. I reread.

So.

  • “-” : power control (on/off) : You found no use of it but in a context of extreme optimization it can be used, you can build more than a generator can sustain, and turn on/off depending of context. No research then turn off research centers and turn on all production centers, and many more.
  • “-” : multiple base in reality changes nothing : Again play really the game more than you did.
  • “-” no crew = no managment : Again play the game more, you can use multiple planes and need to.
  • “-” no salvage after missions : Your comment is false it depends of mission, at least a part of it for some missions types. Moreover I have seen games trying merge loot it’s the first that achieved something merging well, break it with great auto loot isn’t a good change in my opinion.
  • “-” research lab kinda useless : Again play the game more, in that case learn play it fairly well.

I’ll stop here, it’s like that all along. Again, before criticize in deep a game ensure know it well before. You do what you want but your comments are mostly pointless and most wrong because of your lack of knowledge of the game, it’s rude to say it, but no other way to say it.

Don’t you think you judge too quickly? :slight_smile: What if he knows game better than you? Well maybe not in every aspect he mentioned, but he has some right. I have few answers for you.

It is almost useless. For most of the time you don’t need second generator in single base. I would even bet that you don’t need to build more than one, as this generator can sustain all you really need. In that case power management is useless feature.

Basically if you will have multiple drop-ships operating all over the world and taking “shifts”, you can manage to use 1 or 2 bases. It raises the difficulty, but you can do it. All additional bases can be just Hangar (as it is always there) + Power Generator + Living Quarters + Medical Bay (only in case if you don’t want to spend too much on medkits). All other buildings can fit in 1, or if you don’t want to overburden yourself with micromanagement then 2, bases. You don’t have to manage where are your items, you don’t have to manage where resources are stored, you don’t have to manage base personnel, you don’t even have to think about additional hangars. All additional bases are just way-points where you just stop by to fill white and blue bars on the geoscape screen. That is pity and makes additional bases almost useless. At least I think that is why he wrote that it changes nothing.

He meant base personnel, not the soldiers. That just makes you ignorant of UFO series.

he used word "kinda’. So yes you need research labs, but just for few projects of Phoenix Project. You don’t need to do all researches and still you can finish the game as they don’t change too much. All other projects you can acquire from other factions.

And the list goes on. :slight_smile: So your arguing here is wrong my friend.

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Ran out of money??? Where did they waste those money at?? Drugs and prostitutes??? Game looks like some untested mod with all those issues people tell. Or whoever made this mess has no idea…

I finished the game. May i say something Mr. Proper. In all reality i used mod to increase loot drops. Because before this mod all i had is some ammo, which i didnt need. After installing this mod i finally got some rifles and pistols, which i could sell and get some resources. This shouldn’t be mod, this should be game design. Loot system is feature, look at other xcom games. You kill enemy u collect spoils of war. Why i can’t collet crab’s chain gun, which crits my sodiers half map away, btw.

What a great idea! Have vital points appear on autopsied enemies that can be targeted via this new targeting system :slight_smile:

Hitting these could cause extra damage to the enemy making autopsies worth it for each enemy type no matter if they provide tech or if you have the need for the tech.
The synergy between the targeting and research systems would also lend more depth to the game overall

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Yes I miss that aspect too: would have tied in nicely with the havens and factiosn as well though: Synedrion being able to provide better/more/cheaper scientists and NJ engineers…

Also found that I cannot use all that living quarters capacity (on per base for stamina regen means a lot of capacity :)): could be used for the base personel to make it also a reasoruce that needs attention

I know xcom has non soldiers but read better what he wrotes, sigh.

For the other points it’s only very few among a ton of wrong points in OP.

And all your explanation are about how not use them, not that they can’t be exploited in other ways than how you play.

The problem here is there’s a lot too many totally wrong comments, not just wrong opinions, wrong facts. Ok to be kind but OP is obviously from someone who didn’t played much the game.

EDIT:
For a dev point of view, it’s a point of view as much valid than any other, to understand why a player discovering the game can throw it to trash. Im’ no dev.

We should probably just leave you guys here at the forum to “enjoy the masterpiece” that is PP. Every week you can see new posters who don’t like the game, but people defending it are pretty much always the same.
Have no idea how much of this game you personally played, not even sure how relevant that is in the first place. Like can you tell us how exactly did you min/max option with managing power? Really curious. Because many players discover this feature when power bugs out after construction of new facilities :smile:

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I said nothing about wasting money. Game development is a very expensive business, and by all accounts, Snapshot raised in the neighbourhood of $2 million to make this game, which is chump change for a project of this scope.