izigame.me

Fully expected to dig this game, and was sorely disappointed. I've enjoyed most of the Fallout games, and this was repeatedly recommended to me as "Fallout in space". I think that description is accurate. But having pushed on well past the point where I started to get bored, hoping it would turn around, I eventually reached the point where I just feel zero desire to spend any more time on it.
The main problem is that the plot gets very boring, very fast. The setting has a ton of potential, and the game starts strong with an exciting opening that feels like it's leading into an interesting adventure. But it quickly devolves into lame, mundane fetch quests exactly like the fetch quests we've all done ad nauseum, countless times before. And those fetch quests are mostly in service to unlikeable NPCs that I do not care about. It's kind of ridiculous - I'm in space! In the future! I'm exploring alien worlds! I'm a badass outsider not beholden to the corrupt social/power structure and free to cause hell! Aaaand I spend most of my time running other people's errands.
Sure, sometimes that errand is to go shoot something, and/or I get to shoot things on the way there and back, but that doesn't alleviate the tedium because the combat is very bad. Enemies are generic and totally lack personality. They have no AI to speak of. Fighting them mostly consists of mowing them down from range as they mindlessly rush directly toward you, regardless of whether they're armed for ranged or melee. They either die so easily that combat is almost immediately over, or they're damage sponges that you have to wear down while spamming your healing ability. The guns here have the same problem that they do in EVERY RPG-style game with guns - namely, that it feels incredibly lame to put a sniper round right between a bandit's eyes from stealth, and all that happens is he loses a chunk of his HP bar and starts shooting back.
Bullet time is always a fun addition to any shooter, and it's fine here for what it is. But the usage is extremely limited, and nowhere near as useful as Fallout's VATS, because it doesn't fully freeze time to give you a chance to assess a situation and plan a course of action.
There's a rudimentary stealth/awareness system, but it almost doesn't matter. Sometimes you can sneak past some enemies instead of fighting them, but it's not worth the trouble. You deal bonus damage from stealth, but it's usually not even enough to one-shot a basic-bandit. And why would you want to stealth past enemies, anyway? You don't get bonus XP or loot for it. You only miss out on the XP and loot the enemies themselves drop. Better to slaughter everything.
Companions are an issue here, like they always are. It's fun to talk to them, and it's fun when they actually participate in dialogue with NPCs and change how an interaction plays out. I like the idea of companions adding passive skill buffs, and their special combat abilities that you can target and activate are the one part of the action that I think is actually cool and fun. BUT the problem with them, as it always is, is that they tend to either be TOO effective and powerful - making the game feel like it's playing itself - or they're too weak and vulnerable - making them feel like liabilities that need to be baby-sat. On the default difficulties, they will sometimes blitz through enemies, and sometimes go down almost immediately. But it doesn't matter, because they simply stand right up again once combat is over. And neither is satisfying, because it doesn't feel like *I* did anything to get to that result. It's all just a fluke of the AI crashing into itself.
DO NOT try to play this game on Supernova difficulty. Among the tedious extra mechanics it adds is the ability for companions to die permanently. Which they absolutely will, almost immediately after getting into combat, unless you know how to game the system to avoid it.
Playing this game makes me realize how many of the mechanics in this genre are tacked on simply because they're expected to be there, NOT because they actually add depth or challenge. Ammo is another example. The only reason to have ammo as a game mechanic is to present the possibility of running out of ammo. This suggests that ammo is a resource to be managed. You have to spend it wisely, buy/scavenge/steal as much as you can, keep an eye on how much you have left. Sometimes you will be short on the ammo you need, or totally run out, forcing you to change your tactics to adapt. But in this game, from the very start, you will be drowning in a never-ending torrent of ammo. There is ammo literally everywhere. You can't walk ten feet without tripping over some more ammo. I never once ran out of ammo, and I don't think I could even if I tried. So what's the point of having ammo? Either make running out of ammo a possibility that changes the strategic options, or just let the player have unlimited ammo because your game is fully zero fun if the player does actually run out.
The same goes for money. Yeah, technically you can buy things from shops in this game. But you also will just pick up a mountain of stuff simply by walking around. Not to mention all the stuff you can easily steal with zero repercussions. In all my hours of playing, I have never needed to buy ANY of the supplies that matter (healing, lockpicks, weapon mods) and my gear has always been equivalent to or better than what the shops offer. I completely lost track of how much money I had, because it literally did not matter, which makes me wonder what the point of even including a currency/shop system is.
To finish off, I will highlight a couple of the things I like. I do like the weird, capitalist/corpocratic dystopian setting. There's a lot of potential there for dark humor and interesting stories. I like the retro-futuristic aesthetics of much of the equipment, environments, weapons and armor. There are some good characters, and the voice acting is mostly extremely high quality, with actual inflection and tone and personality put into the lines. And the game is quite colorful, which I enjoy.
Aesthetically this game is great. Mechanically, it's a very uninspired and un-creative re-tread of a very well-worn genre. If you've got nothing else to play and you love this genre, it'll pass the time. But there are so many games out there that are so much more worth your time.