Black Skylands Review (Palstek)
After playing the early access version I thought: wow, gameplay is nice, a lot to craft/upgrade/explore already. Can't wait to play the full game with a much bigger world and areas to explore.
1.0 rolled around... and after plaything through it I'm severely disappointed.
- The world didn't grow much beyond the early access version.
- Mechanics were even dumbed down/reduced in complexity. (Building stuff, upgrading buildings a.s.o.)
- The story is extremely rushed, especially towards the end where I was just laughing and shaking my head.
- Characters that had growing potential (Peter, Evas dad, the 3 different villain characters among a few others) weren't developed at all. So the sudden "love story" thrown in at the end was just as terrible and unbelievable as the villains motivations that are just thrown in 2 seconds before you fight them. Very disappointing.
The few positive things are the (somewhat) fun fights and flying around in a skyship. The artstyle also works quite well for this kind of game.
This game is basically the definition of wasted potential. The foundation was there: solid combat system, the grappling mechanic for parkouring over islands worked well and the basic design/idea of the characters was good too.
WARNING: the following section contains spoilers!
So many things were never explored in the game, here are a few:
- Evas (apparent) descend from a different nation was brought up shortly and then as quickly dropped without going anywhere with it. Two characters briefly mistrust her because of it. This could have been expanded on by Eva also having to earn the trust of more people before the assault on Falcons fort can even commence.
- Why aren't we able to visit the other nations that are mentioned in the game? Where does that huge fleet at the end come from? Why can't we at least briefly visit a smaller section with islands of that nation? Why was the world never expanded??? Could have been used for a few missions to even secure the help of said fleet.
- The doctor quest towards the end was just terribly written and I honestly didn't care one bit about her or her son since there was no build up. Just another boss to fight with characters that don't matter.
- The "love story" between Eva and Peter was just laughable.. these two interacted a handful of times during the game and at the end he basically confesses to love her.. wth? With what build-up? These two basically don't know each other.
- As for Evas background.. I liked the rework of her father, but he barely shows up anyway, and Eva at the end turning into discount Sarah Kerrigan (even in design) to keep her Swarm(!!) from killing people.. that was just stupid. Could have done so much more with her and the end as well. The devs played too much Starcraft 2 before the story rewrite it seems :P
- In 1.0 the swarm region is completely unnecessary.. no need to get resources due to dumbed down crafting mechanics, just one island you have to visit for the main quest (and another for a side quest), a huge region completely wasted.
And yes, I am aware, that there are logs and letters all over the place. However for conveying a story "show don't tell" is how it should be done. I stopped reading them at some point so I can't tell how much they tried to build up characters/story through it, but it is also not a good way to do so, it just screams lazy.
Everything just feels rushed, overall you get the impression that they just wanted to get the game done, no matter the quality or content available.