Recent reviews by Omicron

Art is fine. I would like to like this game.

But it's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ job simulator.
You spend more time about min-maxing risks vs costs vs rewards. While you grind... for fun? for greater good?

Uselessly punishing with an insurance system as good entry for micro-transactions. If you use common currency, it costs 1/4 of equipment price, to get 1/2 back. (so you loose only 75% value instead of 100% of your whole starting inventory and still loose 100% of your loot, apart 5 weight of secured loot / 250 total weight, if you can't get back from mission for whatever reason, death, missed transport, or transport disabled by weather/lighting, that will kill you anyway)

PvPvE: apparently you can make squad, but by default if you join a game there is no specific option or matchmaking, and it's a kind of free for all.

Space Opera roguelite FTL-like
Excellent ending plot, It might lack development to hook players at beginning.
Multiple ending choices.

Small game with good replay value
Solo autochess vs AI + Slay the Spire-like for map and rogue-lite progression

This game has great potential... and you can enjoy it..

But sadly, it feels more like an Early-Access game than anything else finished, while patches keep making it worse every times.

Today, after today maintenance players were getting randomly 60k-300k gold... (max gold cap is 500k, 30k is > average gold amount of players)
After cancelling in last minutes, just announced another buggy compensation for lost harvesting items...
And went back into urgent maintenance...

Some notes:
- there are zero in-game cutscene like in game trailer...
- great graphics and sound design
- in last patches, current content is getting diluated with over-buffed HP of end-game elite mobs (instead of expecting powercreeping with future content for example, like in any reasonnable game)
- they have added PvE bonus (+10% chest/mob looting luck quality and +30% gathering luck quality) if you flag for PvP in open world... (and stealth nerfed it couple days just after)
- they were unabled to roll-back servers even with major issues like on australian servers that jumped weeks/months ahead thus got all their town downgraded to 0 or had high end elite zone with 0 mobs, with elite chests resetting every 10 minutes instead of 24 hours
- they quickly "fix" tweaking/tuning loot drop issues by completely shutting down loots of given mobs for unlimited time
- duping players get 24h bans
- players getting banned for getting mass-reported by opposing players before PvP wars
- players getting perma-banned for one bad word in public game chat
- players get answered they can appeal their ban as a reply to their own ban appeal, or to completely unrelated request to customer service
- one of public dev says PTR is too much work, then one or two weeks after, PTR get announced. In the end PTR is indeed useless as it is by-passed: unannounced modifications with major bugs and issues hit all live servers.
- there is an azoth currency in game, used to fast travel to already visited town and travel shrines. Getting it is not sustainable/reasonable by PvE itself, and you need to play some of game mods to get more of it, outpost rush a great mini-moba max 40 minutes, wars 40minutes or invasion 10-30min. And while you can quickly fill your max cap of azoths, you quickly use them too...

Tried it for autobattler.

++:
familiar mechanics
ok art
cross-plateform
you can buy "traps" that stay next turn in place if not used
3D units

+/-:
Mechanics are 99% Hearthstone battlegrounds clones (3 gold per unit, get 1 back when you sell, get higher level unit when you triple one)

--:
Very annoying smoking voice
Misplaced mana/gold UI.
Broken locked tutorial that wants you to buy 3 same units without enough gold to buy a single one, after you refresh shop.
Registering is mandatory first time you open game in steam.
Like in HS battleground: annoying fact that you have to get unit in your hand, then only you can play it, instead of directly dropping it from shop (when you do it goes in your hand instead).

So no it's not the self-claimed best card battler.

Mixed review

For only fans like me or new players at this franchise

This looks more like two new campaigns for Orcs must die 2, a marketing relaunch.
So, basically a great game...

Ok game for its price tag.
As usual, perfectible localization, but quite/very decent compared to some other indie titles.

++:
- pleasant and polished artworks
- mechanisms in general
- you can start with one or two chars of your choice, as long you have unlocked them. Two kinds are unlocked from start.
- you have a track of character unlock level for passives and talent cards
- replay value with added difficulty perks for a score multiplier (that will help unlock more things)

--:
- all runs look the same
- lots of confusing UX/UI
- many inefficient flows for mouse movement (i.e. open something like discard stack, cross entire screen to close it...)
- the only time you can't access you deck is when you have to choose between cards
- the only time you can't access you character exact XP details is when you can choose one of you char to gain 1 free level from NPC (so you won't choose one that is a few XP away to its next level)
- expected damage isn't updated, when there are applied modifiers on target
- poor numbers of achievements for a roguelite

+/-:
- you start same basic set of cards whichever characters you decide to play. When they level up they have their own specialized cards
- surprising assymetric play: you can play your two rows each turn, while opponent can only play one of them alternatively... + they can't target your respective back row characters if another char is in front (only line-wide skills when they have), while you can target theirs
- the closest clone of Slay the Spire, expected and wanted

Nice auto-chess to chill out :-)

All Slay the Spire fans will love it :-)

i gonna start filtering out f2p games