I've had this game in my steam library since, I think when that unfinished was put up. My time with it has been the same. 15-20 minutes, quit in frustration, return after months away..repeat.
Those 15-20 minutes go something like this. "Ok so there is a 'don't worry about water/food..but then won't half the unlocks and upgrades be useless? I'll go the full route." Jump into the water swim around. See a half-dozen things that have names, but I can't interact with. But oh hey, there are all these acid fungus..people can eat fungus. This is the only thing I can interact with out here, lets gather it as much as I can. Realize the cool stuff is in a cave, dive down, find a cave..get attacked by exploding fish, doesn't kill me. Find some scarp metal, sulfer, can't go further into the cave without more air. Time to go back to base!
At base what can I make? ok um..an air tank? oh I've doubled my oxygen! That's cool, ok lets see what I can do with all this fungus stuffed in my inventory..nothing..wait what nothing? Ok I'll just..store it, man I picked up a lot of it. Lets go through what I can craft and see what spits out food/water. Oh..nothing. Not a thing. I see upgrades for oxygen, I realize the pod spits out health re-gen..but food/water? Nuh-uh. So it looks like I've got however long the 2 items that the pod starts stocked with gets me too figure out wtf I am suppose to do for that. Game tutorial guiding me? Nope.
Go back to cave with doubled oxogen supply. Die to exploding fish I only understand come out of lootable things -after- they kill me. Wonder allowed why the heck there are fish whose entire life cycle invovles being living homing bombs.
Die and restart in the pod. Oh look, my quickly dwindling food/water meter has reset. I've lost..oh joy some fungus, who cares. Decide the fungus is the games tutorial for learning to look up controls for "how to dump this useless crap out of my inventory". Consider my options...quit game because the mood is gone.
Go online to look up basics. Ok, fungus is for...batteries..for something that lets me move faster. Briefly consider restarting with the 'ignore food/water meters" reminded I would be missing out on half the game, give up. "
I've repeated that -exact- cycle 2 times now. The 2nd two begining with "I wonder why my save file for this game I forget I owned is only 12-20 minutes" ending with "oh, right.."
The game post 'how the heck do I even try and manage these meters!" is likely fantastic. It certainly looks it. But the games tutorial is absolute crap. At least hold my hand through keeping myself alive the hard-way. "Hey you might need a knife to kill fish you can't catch, so upgrade to swim faster. "Here is blue-prints in your vehical for turning sea-water into drinkable water, go find the ingredients for it". Something -anything-.
I wanna fall in love with this game and discover all its secrets and slowly build what I can do from the difficult and hard to the smooth running machine. When I am faced with what feels like a solid hour or two of 'might as well just kill myself so my food/water meters reset while I fumble around in the dark" is just..ugh. This game might be absolutely amazing once you get past that. But for me, that hurtle has been enough to kill my interest in this game, repeatedly.
The future of this series as it has from the beginning really hinges on how they handle The alien raid on x-com and if the soldiers the randomly get to use are equip with there best gear..or starting gear.
Which is something you can't warn them about, because spoilers, and unless any of them has been through that before they won't see coming. The single worst thing in this game for sure IMO. If they get past that bad design choice it will mean they can achieve victory. They might not, the last mission isn't super-easy or anything). But the chances are better then not that we are on the road to them succeeding.
Also, did I see right that any country with a satelite above it automatically loses 1 level of terror per month? Re:why whatever Asian country that was full red didn't leave but South Africa did? Or do you only lose at most 1 country a month? I actually don't know I..never played a game to the point of losing a country before. (either restart or get past that point)
Mhh, I expect a major backlash next week going something like. "Omg this video went long enough that when they do that game we all really want them to play they will get to the good part!" followed by "Wait, why is this not X game, *insert your own reason they must have not picked it*. Missing A-thumbnail may give away the last game weeks in advance and B-they already said they got these suggestions from someone else. (who didn't have DokiDoki in her top ten as I recall but did rate Butterfly Soap (if above post is right in calling the Feb 14 game) even higher then Dream Daddy (I think).
So, sorry people. Go watch Patrick play through Doki Doki if you want..well..the exact opposite of how Ben and Abby are handling these. No voices, speed reading, entire game played through (yes the entire game) in 3ish hours.*
*Note, that is just compare/contrast, not complaint. Some people vastly prefere the voices read out version of VN.
@kortex: One of the reasons mechs are so insanely poweriful/game breaking almost in this. They get both a shoot-twice ability and a 'fire when attacked' ability. Getting 3 shots off a turn with the weapons you can give them means they absolutely wreck house.
Likewise, being able to shoot twice for any class is by far the most powerful ability in the game(aside from the sniper 'i kill everyone on the map on my turn' combo) Also the most broken possible combo you can get if you play Long War and turn on the random abilities. Getting Double tap and burst-fire (whatever the heavy fire twice and the 2 attacks at -15% is) on one character means "Shoot as first action, shoot twice as second" just..insane.
Also holy heck now I am reminded how great that modifer made my play-throughs of this game. Having every single character with randomized abilities made them all extremely unique and memorable. Wish that was a base option in this (unless it is, in which case excellent go try it everyone been awhile since I played!)
Do they get too talking about whatever happen to the X-com series? Have not finished it, and unsure if it was addressed elsewhere but just curious. It certainly isn't show up in the now live list of up-coming events.
There are some things Ben does on here I avoid, not a fan of how his personality bounces off of a few other staff members.
But this solo stuff? Man, its given me new appreciation for his humor and personality. Enough I'm gonna go back and try out some content I've been skipping.
Thanks for uploading this stuff while you were healing Ben.
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