RoadCraft Review (Navarone)
*UPDATES AT THE BOTTOM*
I'm gonna preface this by saying I was there 5 years and a month ago when Snowrunner released, and first of all, thank you Focus for not making this an Epic Games exclusive for the first year.
Now, on to the game review.
The sound design is phenomenal, the machines sound great and the environmental sounds are spot on as well, I love hearing the raindrops knocking on the roof of my vehicle while it's raining (though the engine sounds still need tweaking, same looping as it was in Snowrunner).
The visuals are an obvious upgrade over Snowrunner and they look great, but truth be told, Snowrunner isn't bad looking either, even after 5 years.
For a more gameplay oriented perspective, I like the change of pace, and trying something different this time, instead of the carry x material to y place, we are being more creative this time.
For me, this is important, because it gives all vehicles a use, and you're not just using the same, flavor of the month truck to do everything (looking at you, Zikz 605, Mastodon, Tayga King, and Kenworth), every vehicle has a purpose here and I love it.
Another very important thing, the driving experience. Some people may feel it's a lot more simplified than Snowrunner, and they would be right, this is first and foremost a strategy and logistics game, driving still being an important part of it, but Roadcraft is rather a hybrid of SR and something like Construction Simulator.
BUT, and this is what I absolutely love, the vehicles finally feel like they have weight again, they move deliberately, and you're not rallying around the map, I was really missing this feel from Mudrunner and Spintires, although it's still not as good as it was back then, but a definite upgrade over SR's driving feel.
The removal of fuel as a mechanic is absolutely understandable, since managing it would become tedious for most, and take away from the main focus of this game, but I would still like an option to enable or disable it, maybe if we get a New Game + patch, as an option in it.
The game also runs well for me with fast load times, averaging about 95 FPS on 2560 x 1440 without frame generation with the following setup: Ryzen 5 7600X, RTX 4070 Ti Super, 64 GB DDR5 RAM @ 6000 MHz, 990 EVO 2 TB M.2 SSD.
And for the final verdict: I would absolutely recommend this game to anyone who likes Snowrunner, and wants to mix some new tasks into their offroading experience.
Fantastic job, Saber, on the development and release of this game, here's to another 5 years of flipping over!
(I will update the review as I continue playing the game, contents based on my playtime with the demo, and the full release so far)
UPDATE at 2.7 hours:
- still zero crashes, and the game runs great
- understandably some people are missing the time of day changing, me, not too much, I prefer to drive in daylight, especially that you need to construct stuff, but the option to enable the passing of time would be great to those who want it
- I hope they add full customization to tweak the crane controls for controllers, lot of options, but I'd change the grouping on them if I can
- the AI drivers need a bit of refining on their pathfinding logic, or the ability to tell them to turn before reaching the next waypoint, not after, getting an inch of the truck stuck on some random scenery made me replan my routes a ton (might be skill issue on my part), but I love the ability to just bulldoze small plants and stuff out of the way
- looking forward to the addition of fuel, and maybe other systems, customization of the gameplay experience gets you a ton of replayability