Recent reviews by NoBogui

At first glance, it looks like an interesting game in the vein of Escape Velocity. As you boot it up, you're excited to head out on your adventure and attack some enemy ships, level up, make some trades, etc.. As a combat oriented pilot you realize the developers decided that the killing blow is the only thing that matters and missiles cost money to re-arm, so your new strategy is to just follow groups of ships around that are attacking other ships, wait until the enemies are low on health, and then launch some missiles and hope that your missile ends up being the killing blow... such fun gameplay.

As a merchant, you go, buy some goods that are in demand, but realize your ship has such low capacity and that docking costs credits, that it's not really worth it to trade. Well, you can trade, but you just have to make 112 trips from planets that supply the goods to planets that are under random events where the goods are worth more to upgrade to the next ship.

Skip it.

Game is fun. Kill baddies, numbers go up. But there are a ton of issues, mostly with respect to a lack of information:
1. Where is the general help screen with all of the tips you receive? Non-existent, so make sure you’re taking screenshots.
2. So many different currencies and only some of them have some sort of description regarding what they do.
3. Many unexplained game mechanics:
4. What do the different colored beams of light represent?
5. What is the normal chance for an elite to drop a chest?
6. What determines what type of chest is dropped?
7. What affects weapon leveling? Actual damage? Damage amount? Swing speed?
8. Why does my auto-attack randomly turn off? Energy ran out? Shouldn't it just turn back on once you have enough?
9. Where do the slugs come from? What influences which ones spawn?
10. Which elites spawn? Random? Map-specific?
11. Dungeons? What do they do? What are the mechanics behind them? Do the levels matter? Not really it seems? For example, the level 1 dungeon appears to disable all of your dashes, health potions, etc., but you probably won’t realize that until you waste a key and die.
12. What does “infused” do for the random ruptures besides more XP and gems? Is that it? 13. What’s with some items saying “bracers (infused)”?
14. There is an enemy that spawns a portal (when does it spawn? Why? Certain levels better?), which takes you to an arena. Again, no prompts, but apparently you can’t dash, you can’t use healing points, and you occasionally become stunned and damaged. Also, the floor falls out randomly. No idea how to prevent the stun or the damage.
15. No way to track daily goals outside visiting specific NPC in Hall.
16. Why was I allowed to change equipment through the first 35 levels and then all of the sudden I wasn’t able to?
17. Skills are hard to see and it’s unclear when they’re activating. Worst part is that there appears to be NO WAY TO TURN OFF SKILL GRAPHICS. This makes some skills completely unusable (e.g., flying dragon that covers your entire screen in fire... no way to see dodge indicators).
18. The screen where you dismantle items blocks all of the rewards you get… lol so exit out as soon as you dismantle to see what you get
Also several other issues:
A. What’s the best way to progress? Just keep slamming up against ruptures? Certain dungeons better for progressing?
B. Why can only certain dungeons be automated (there’s an NPC later on that will run dungeons for you)? Are rewards better if you actually do them yourself?
C. Many dungeons are not explained and you usually waste valuable keys trying them out.
D. Some skills are clearly better than others - Look at the leaderboards for a particular offhand skill and you will see it dominate the top 20. Also, very unclear how much damage each does. There are thankfully DPS dummies.
E. Races have innate bonuses to certain skills… so you’re locked into those once you pick the race (or you gimp yourself… for fun?)
F. Also, some of the infinite progression is tied to your weapon and damage type (fire, lightning arcane), so make sure you know what build you’re going for early on lest you gimp yourself.

Lot of good ideas, pretty fun until you hit a wall, but there is just an insane lack of information that makes this a not recommended.

It's pretty fun, good meta progression, plenty of unlocks, character variety. However, I cannot recommend this game because even with the 2.0 update, the one-shot mechanics are ridiculous. You'll be cruising along, leveling up, not being challenged by much, losing a bit of health here and there, and then you get the defeat screen with no indication of what killed you. This is especially problematic because there is no way to turn down the effects on the screen and at anything past the first few minutes it's difficult to see enemies.

Fun game, but you'll frustratingly lose a lot of progress regularly to random one-shot kills.

A really fun take on the bullet heaven genre with great graphics. A good variety of champions, good meta progression, and a really fun (if not crazy) mechanic of being able to shift into a car. I definitely recommend this game, and I have a played a ton of these types of games. Seriously, buy it.

However, it is not without its issues:

1. A solid amount of bugs in the first 15 hours. I don't mind games with some bugs, but there are several that are pretty frustrating here. For example, you can get stuck in trees in several of the maps if you're shifting in and out near them (ended one of my best runs early on as I got stuck with a boss nearby and couldn't move). In some maps, there are minigun enemies, and they can straight up shoot through giant cargo containers (though the containers stop movement). On the beach maps, some enemies have red circles around them when they do area attacks, but the red circle will be under the sand so you can't actually see it.
   
   
2. Lack of information in a central location. There are various debuffs (poison, burn, chill, etc.), but there is no central location where you can see what these buffs do. Some abilities give information on what they do, but it's not enough (weaken? how? do enemies do less damge? take more?).
   
   I don't know what the different difficulties do besides give you more currency. Does it spawn more enemies? Harder enemies? Give them more health? It's also not clear what increases the difficulty within a level. Is it completing missions? Time? Experience level? And are certain biomes more difficult than others? Too many unanswered questions.
   
   Some abilities also have, for example, a chance of activating on hit (e.g., 10% chance of 50% weapon damage on hit). However, you can also increase your chance to hit via the skill tree and in game upgrades, but this chance to hit is not shown when upgrading abilities, so if you want to see your total chance to hit, you have to look at the ability and then go to your stat screen to see the total. Frustrating.
   
   Also, what is the difference between Power and Weapon Damage? How much power is "9"? A lot? A little?
   
   
3. No reroll or banish for abilities. This absolutely must be standard in these games if you hope to have any sort of a build. For Champion Shift, it's especially important because certain characters are meant to be played a certain way. For example, some characters are ranged, but there are abilities that have a small aura around you, which are really not useful for ranged characters.
   
   
4. Ability upgrades are one dimensional. All abilities have only one upgrade path. For example, the shockwave ability is 10% chance on hit to do 50% damage in an area. Most of the upgrades are damage only. No way to increase chance to hit other than globally, no way to increase area other than globally. Pretty frustrating since the weapon damage is often pretty small for most abilities. However, there are some upgrades that only increase duration (e.g., poison cloud on dash for 2 seconds -> 4 seconds -> 6 seconds, etc.). After maybe the first upgrade, I have no idea why you would ever want to upgade this further. Pointless upgrade. Would be nice to have several paths (e.g., 0 seconds extra duration/30% damage, 1 second extra duration/20% damage, 2 seconds extra duration/10%).
   
   
5. Can't make the minimap larger and confusing map. Maps are big. It would be nice to be able to make the map bigger so you can see where you're going. Also, I spend most of my time staring at the minimap because there is no direction to the next objective; would be nice to have a waypoint/GPS system (there is an icon at the edge of your screen, but I mean like turn left here, turn right here, etc.).
   
   Also, the maps are confusing sometimes. For example, there is a giant bridge, but on the map it looks like any other wall, even though you can drive under it. Other times the height of items gets in the way of fights (there is an outline, but it's not good enough, and you can't see boss attacks). Some objects on the map look like you can drive over them, but you can't, and others looks like you can't drive over/through them but you can.
   
   
6. Skill tree annoyances. You can't remove a single ability, but you can respec the whole tree. You unlock certain selectable abilities focused on stats (e.g., projectile speed), but a lot of times you do NOT want those to show up in your build. Unfortunately, often times the passive stats you do want are behind those unlockables.
   
   
7. Can't turn down weapon opacity. Another thing that needs to be standard in this genre. You must be able to turn down weapon opacity, especially later on when you have so many abilities, statuses, and damage that it's hard to tell what's going on. Would also be nice to change the enemy damage indicator. Nordic Ashes has both of these and it's so helpful.

It may sound like a lot of issues, but it doesn't change the fact that the game is just plain fun, and that's why I recommend it. Also, to the devs, you need to update your screenshots. Those must be pretty old.

Update @ ~27 hours: Ugh, the bugs become more apparent the longer you play. I change the difficulty, but it doesn't always stick (do I have to do it before I hit ready? After? Should I not change it once I'm ready?). Plus, there's no way to tell what difficulty you're currently on, which means you can only tell if you have the right difficulty by the number of bosses that spawn, which takes awhile to get to... Also, one of the boss's big lasers can lag out and it will look like you're outside the danger zone, but you still get hit. Frustrating experience with all of the bugs. Just needed a bit longer to cook.

Update @ ~31 hours: Well, I am finished with this game. I've seen pretty much all of the content, and have been hunting the achievements. I've got about 10 left, but the ones with the heroes are extremely frustrating. For example, with one character you have to (1) get the killshot on the boss with (2) a specific augment that is (3) a modification of your dash that is (4) based on your weapon damage. This achievement is much more random than skill based, which is extremely frustrating:

1. There is no guarantee you will get this modification of your dash (especially because there are no rerolls or banishes as I mentioned above), and I have gone an entire level without receiving it, effectively wasting the time spent.
   
2. Related to the above point, you may be screwed over by your skill choices. For example, you may end up with only choices for X% on attack skills. This happened to me and I was attempting to whittle the boss's health down, one of the skills procced, killed him, and wasted the time spent.
   
3. This character has a very low base weapon damage, so the dash does not do much damage. The dash only upgrades 50% Weapon Damage per upgrade, and you're probably not going to get upgrades anyways (see above point).
   
4. This character's innate attacks have a random bleed component, which can steal your boss kill.
   
5. You are heavily incentivized to gimp yourself - pick stats, pick skills that don't do damage or that you can control where they go.
   
6. You're incentivized to play on a low difficulty, so your weak dash can actually get the last hit, which if you're achievement hunting, you're probably already playing on a higher difficulty.

Achievements like this are just a bad experience because they are almost entirely random.

This game is basically a combination of survivors-like and idle, but there are a few frustrating design decisions that keep it from being great. It's really fun, so it would be great if the dev would make a few (hopefully minor) updates.

1. UI design is frustrating. Love all of the systems, so many ways to upgrade, but there are serious issues with the UI as mentioned by many other reviews. For example, there is no quick way to lock/unlock items (can do multiple ones at the same time, can't scroll through items, etc.). There is no hotkey to buy on abilities, so you have to (a) click the ability, then click buy, then click the next ability, then go click buy, etc. Would be nice to double click. You can't select multiple items, it's either lock and sell or nothing at all.
   
   
2. It gets way too laggy way too quick. I turned off all of the abilities and have a decent computer, but the game lags out very quickly. In the Bestiary battles that are a bit further on, it starts lagging after the 2nd or 3rd wave. You can't even upgrade things while waiting because it's too laggy. I have never seen basically any of the abilities past the ones you unlock around World 3.
   
   
3. The idle part is frustrating because you lack too much control. There are 3 modes: Manual (run around and select abilities), Semi-Auto (characters run around, but you select abilities), and Auto (characters run around, and abilities are selected randomly. The latter part is the biggest problem with Auto mode, because it can make you take some abilities that just do not work with your character or will select a Magic piece of equipment over a legendary. However, you also can't do manual by the end of the game because you have 6 characters and it takes forever to click through.
   
   There should be a way to set a priority list for each character where they select the abilities in order (e.g., first physical base, then fire base, then physical %, etc.). You should be able to do the same with equipment (e.g., prefer legendary rings over legendary amulets, all legendary over magical, etc.).
   
   
4. Equipment can be bricked. I know this encouages you to get new equipment, but there are innate equipment stats that you cannot change, which is frustrating. There should be a way to reroll it, even if it costs a lot or you have to do a specific level or something.

All that being said, the progression is fun, but you're mainly just managing inventory. Still, interesting concept, just didn't quite finish baking before it was released and abandoned.

I am a huge bullet heaven fan, so I am disappointed that the developers have abandoned this game when it is so close to greatness. I still recommend you play this game because it has some great ideas and it's pretty fun, but it loses its luster far too quickly.

1. Nice meta progression, but some of it is pointless. There are several layers of meta progression: you can upgrade your town buildings by collecting resources in maps (nice incentive to go exploring) and some of these buildings let you upgrade your character (Gym, Workshop), your characters gain levels and they can select perks from a tree, you gain random mutations that have varying effects, and you can unlock various pieces of equipment by completing achievements. However, there are some baffling design choices here.
   
   For example, you can upgrade your Recruitment Center that allows you to have more choices of randomly generated recruits, except all of the recruits have the same perk tree and can use all of the weapons and armor available. Other than the fact that recruits can die permanently and you need to refill them, what is the point of upgrading to have more choices? It is very cheap to refresh recruits and to switch weapons and armor at will, and honestly there are only 2-3 out of 9 weapons/armor that are worth using. The recruits also do not feel that different except maybe the tank because he is incredibly slow. For mutations, they appear completely randomly, are capped at 10 (but the game doesn't tell you that there is a cap), and range from negative, to utterly worthless (1% dot damage), to absolutely game breaking (5 piercing, multiple extra projectiles). Should be a deterministic way to farm these and they overall need balance.
   
   
2. Some fun skill combinations, but it feels incomplete and unbalanced. If you've played any game in this genre, you'll be familiar with the active skill + passive skill = upgraded skill. However, not every active skill has a passive skill allowing for an upgrade, which is frustrating and feels unfinished. Every starter weapon has a passive skill that allows for an upgrade, but you can only find/use one starter weapon per level, so it feels like wasted potential. Also, some skills are utterly broken and necessary on later levels. The Kursarigama with its upgrade is actually required on some of the more difficult levels, while the toxic ring, which lacks an upgrade, is great for the first level or two, but then completely worthless.
   
   
3. Lack of tooltips. There is a lack of information in this game that takes some time to figure out. For example, it doesn't tell you how to evolve weapons (you need to level up the active to max, but the passive can be just level 1, and you need to find a crate and get lucky with the roll). There is no explanation of the differences in levels (I'm unlocking new ones, but what do I get from them compared to the first level? Appears to be more difficult enemies, but are the rewards greater? Still not sure). Also, can't check the stats of many weapons or the character during a run... why?
   
   
4. Other annoyances. Can't do borderless window mode, game pauses when it loses focus and there is no setting to prevent that (big issue since many achievements are based around winning levels with certain characters, and once you've got the Kursarigama upgrade there's a lot of sitting around waiting for the level to complete), no way to speed up game time, severe lag when you've got a lot of projectiles on the screen, and quitting out kills your character (why? Should at least be a toggleable option).

This game is a 6/10 and worth playing, but it is so close to being great that it's sad it will never reach its potential.

This is a tough one to review, and I would like to give it an "okay" rating rather than a thumbs up or thumbs down. It's a fun survivors like, cool setting, and some decent ideas, but it is really light one content. At 8 hours in, I've got almost all of the achievements and unlocked everything. There isn't much actual progression other than unlocking new items, so once you've done that, there isn't a reason to play except for achievements.

For $5, it's pricier than most other survivorlikes, especially for the content you get. But for $5 and 8 hours of entertainment, that's a better deal than you can get everywhere else.

This game is a lot of fun and it's clear the dev is working hard to improve it. It reminds me of a more peaceful Rimworld with a greater focus on family units. It's got a bit of a learning curve to get into, but highly recommend it if you like Rimworld with a bit more of a focus on the economy.

Just started playing it, but it is a pretty fun bullet heaven so far. However, few simple things that need to be fixed ASAP:

1. Map is not clear at all. Need to be able to view the FULL map or at least have an indication of where the borders are. As it is, I don't know where I am in the map (center? left? right?).
   
2. Indicate on the map how many times you've visited a store. The price at the store increases everytime you buy something, so I need to know, at a glance, whether it costs 1 or 5 at the specific store.
   
3. Make libraries disappear once you've visited them. No point in keeping them on the map if you can't use them again.

Once the basics are taken care of, I always appreciate the ability to increase or decrease the opacity of skills. Feels essential in these types of games. Also, the ability to play at 2x, 3x, etc. speed.

This is an awesome game, for the right persron. There are tons of crafting skills to learn, multiple combat skill options that you can mix and match (pick any 2), additional buffs you can get from other skills, ways to teleport, etc. Reminds me a lot of Everquest and Vanguard, but with several unique mechanics as well (like being able to play as a cow or giant bat or other animals).

I can't believe this game is in Early Access, because it's already worth it at full price. The VIP subscription is not necessary at all (unlike other games like Elder Scrolls Online), but it does offer some nice perks like extra inventory space for hoarders. Highly recommended.