Recent reviews by Alice(♥);

Unique, fun, vibey, and janky. Get it on sale.

Cyberpunk Poland where you play as an anime girl yada yada, you've read this all before.

The setting and writing are actually very considered, the character work - for what little there is of it right now - is pretty solid and I found myself coming away from it endeared to quite a few of the characters. Even some of the random duplicate mask-faced NPCs that you normally couldn't differentiate from one another (same model and all) have some thought poured into them. These are trying times for everyone involved and you can see it bleeding through every facet of the game. At the end of it all though, people will remain people. Characters have goals, ambitions, and people they care for. There's not really any "I live in dystopian eastern europe so it's time to be a deranged caricature" characters. People just keep it pushing and go clubbing in nowheresville, it feels pretty realistic.

The buildings and environment have been shown a similar level of consideration. The atmosphere is something that I haven't really seen a lot of in games, especially these cyberpunk types. There's this grime that coats and permeates everything but the scale and shape that the environments take on give it some character and make the areas feel pretty distinct from one another. As far as level design goes, it's your immersive sim fair, tons of different little nooks and crannies to explore and at least about 3 ways to get to and from all the different places you need or want to go to in a level.

Don't let the fuzzy visuals fool you either, there's some pretty striking set pieces and moments in this 90sgraphics looking game.

That's about all I can really say that's nice about the game unfortunately. Despite everything that I'll write about after this, I still like the game enough to stick with it and I already spent the money on it. But knowing what I know now, I think I would wait until the next major content release comes out.

The game isn't all there mechanically. There are plenty of augments but not all of them feel very useful nor is there a lot of very interesting interplay between them. That's if you even end up wanting to use the augs in the first place since energy is a fairly scarce resource. There are plenty of guns with different mag compatabilities and chambering but they're all similar enough that there isn't too much of a point in differentiating outside of the 2 categories of "enemies on this map have this weapon so I'll actually get ammo for it" and "there are 2 copies of this weapon on this map so I get to use this weapon sparingly if at all". The enemies are absurdly stupid and stealth feels like a joke. Outside of the second level, you don't even have to really engage with stealth since the enemies are such pushovers. The enemies that do end up posing a challenge are just kind of weird ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. They send out the gmod nextbots with a spooky mp3 attached to swarm you and it's pretty cool the first time. Then they do it like 3 more times and it stops being as cool. There's a money system but once you realize the only thing you can do with your weapons at the end of a mission is sell them then all your money problems are gone. There's a grid-based inventory system but your inventory is so large and many of the items are so small that it doesn't really end up mattering outside of tetrising your longer weapons, of which you might only have 2 or 3.

It's all serviceable but you don't get that immersive sim systems interplay magic.

There's also a good amount of bugs and jank. Important NPCs are liable to vanish making quests or even whole levels unfinishable. NPCs can aggro randomly or just decide not to aggro when expected to. I've had my left click just stop working sometimes - I don't remember how I fixed this but I remember it happening to me several times throughout my playthroughs. You can fulfill the requirements for multiple routes in a level, go to speak to the quest NPC, and then choose to take on contradictory paths routes so you'll be shaking down and agreeing to work with the NPC in back to back conversations. Models in the inventory can misalign making it harder or even impossible to rearrange an item. Music triggers won't turn off after all enemies in an area are dead so as you're backtracking through levels to explore or finish the mission you'll just have the fight theme come on randomly. Third person animations for Marie and the animations for other characters can be pretty buggy and janky. Marie's third person climb and gun handling animations can be especially weird.

There used to be a bug in the demos where using the elevator would just kill you with fall damage. That and the left click not working sometimes should show you the level of jank you're getting into.

For these reasons alone I find it a bit hard to recommend at the current pricepoint but it can still be fun. But no matter how many times those elevators killed me, I still reloaded my save and tried to cheese my way down to the load trigger just to see more of what happens in the game.

I still have more to write on with regard to this game.

Development is going slow. A lot of the jank and unfinished bits just haven't been touched or are in a similar state to how they were even a few years ago. There's content in the current live game that was around in the past demos in a very similar state to how it is today. I'm not just talking NPCs, dialogue, and weapons, it's whole maps that are essentially untouched. Current projections are for early 2026 but I really would not hold my breath, in fact I would actively hope that they delay cos I'm not sure that the results of them trying to rush out the game would be very playable.

The visuals, while unique, can get pretty repetitive. I mentioned there being a grime to everything earlier which helps with the atmosphere but it can make things feel pretty samey after a while since everything is dirty in a similar way, just makes your eyes glaze over. There's lots of wide open areas and not all of them can be winners. A lot of them are kind of like the open areas in E.Y.E. where you're left thinking "man this would probably be kinda cool if it didn't look like Half Life 2". Thankfully there's nothing on the level of E.Y.E.'s metal gear ladder. The characters are pretty samey too. Every guy at the bar is the same gas mask guy, every guard at the club is the same anime girl, every other guy on the street is the same gas mask guy from the bar. There's some unique guys every so often but they feel a bit too few and far between so you're kind of just wandering around clown car city until your next encounter with a named mask guy or one of the devs' anime OCs.

The community is also something. A lot of the audience came from 4chan in 2020 where the demos were passed around initially and a lot of that core audience still remains. The mods, the socials management, and dev team also come from that neck of the woods so expect what you will from that. From what I've seen it's mostly just the same kind of thoughtlessness and immaturity you see a lot more of these days. It doesn't detract from the game too much but discussions of it can start to get pretty smelly and rancid over time which is unfortunate since there can be some really interesting conversation to be had once they get the rowdiness out of their systems.

You can get a feel for all of the negatives from the demo and the community discord. It's up to you whether or not you want to stick with it but for the pricepoint, it's a tough recommend.

Also, I appreciate that you can insert your anime oc girlfriends and that I can kill them too but why can't I kill your oc boyfriend. He won't be the Astral Soviet so why can't we make him the Spectral Soviet. Nevermind you can kill him, game of the year 2025 10/10.

The atmosphere and world building at the start is pretty well done. The mega structure is suitably inhospitable, mysterious, and sparse with life. Small bits of information and details were revealed with time which were not the most satisfying but crucially still kept the intrigue alive.

It really falls apart towards the end though. Some trial and error segments, uncompelling set pieces and levels, writing not being as on point as it was before, and later levels becoming way darker than needed. That final level was so different from the rest of the game that I can't really fault anyone for skipping or calling it quits at that point.

Past a certain point, the game play felt like it got bored of itself. Most of the later sections move far away from the ice pick pick climbing based game play in the beginning, a very disappointing move for the game since that game play set it apart to begin with. The levels requiring you to use the tic-tac, dash, and moon grav felt really boring and like a worse version of a different game. Went from methodical climbing exploration to a kind of bad 3D platformer.

The graphics are serviceable and a bit charming to some but it didn't quite work for me. Early on, there was an instance where the low quality of the textures really took away from the experience. Getting up close to that green enclosed biome was really cool since you could see a really complex structure in the distance. But actually getting up close to it revealed the low quality texture that was on it. All the little lights and windows weren't modelled but just a low quality texture stretched out over a huge sphere. It felt like playing source game and noclipping off to the 3D skybox. The reveal of an enclosed habitable biome inside was really cool but the rest of that segment was disappointing otherwise.

A little disappointing after having followed this project for so long but I had a good enough time that I'd recommend this game on sale or if you're looking for some unique mega structure exploration game play - even if it doesn't last the whole way through.

Fun game. I wish there was a version of it that was good.

this game is soooooo fun. The liquour powerups are crazy and it's great. Something like "The One" is so absurdly overpowered.

WO YAO DA!

How do you get that test achievement????

Do I have to replay the entire game and go through all of the stuff that I missed? I'm going to do that at some point but still I really wanna know

Super grindy game in every aspect from leveling to the shop to the consumables to the weapons to the quests. Very clunky and weird controls that aren't satisfying or impactful, unremarkable by every means. Every weapon is the same with every combat encounter either having the player wait for the enemy attack animation to finish before attacking(no effort for dodging just walk away) or walk up to the enemy and attack(there's a surprising amount of enemies that just sit there and wait to die). No switch ups in the form of aoe or whatever aside from the minor switch ups in the form of the bosses and the only ranged options are the garbage guns and the grenade mushrooms that are equally awkward and garbage to control.

Nonstop loading screens and drawn out animations that often times cannot be skipped like the level transitions, opening loot boxes, redeeming quest rewards. It doesn't sound like much but it adds up big time

A lot of these can't even be circumvented via the ridiculous amount of microtransactions in the game but the biggest ones like the in between level transitions can be skipped at a price of either a subscription or microtransaction.

The grind is fine and actually pretty attractive for some including me at some point but if there was a MUCH better combat system and less of those time inflators then I wouldn't only recommend the game but I would even pay to play it. I feel like if I just got bloodborne and grinded chalice dungeons for the 15 hours then it would be more fun than the hours I poured into this game

this game is basically dead in north america, buggy as all hell, unoptimized, super unstable leading to crashes/game breaking glitches, and basically abandoned by the devs. If you're European or an american okay with playing at odd hours with high ping and are okay with absurd amount of technical issues with the game then you might just be in for a good time. The game can actually be pretty fun when you have a full lobby of players, even though these days it's just 20 a lobby if that and many players are so much more skilled than you are it's not even funny.

Phenomenal. Only thing is that you should get a controller and be able to dedicate time to all of the endings.

only worth if you want to grind your way to 2B's "revealing outfit". doesn't really add to the overall game experience in any real meaningfull game aside from cosmetics that you have to grind for.