Recent reviews by Killymcgee

The idea behind the game is great, and it feels strong at first but it becomes clear that it is still unfinished, unevenly developed, and stretched too thin, still 6 years after early access release.

Each sandbox playthrough starts with a heavy amount of grinding before the game properly opens up. Early progression relies on a very limited set of repetitive quests and constant small-scale fights against bandits. These encounters offer minimal rewards, often barely covering losses. For example, defeating a bandit group might yield a couple hundred gold and some low-value loot, while losing a single troop or piece of equipment can cost just as much or more. For perspective a war horse for one single soldier usually costs around 1,000 gold.

Progression from a new character to a functional mercenary or vassal leader requires an excessive amount of grinding. Even activities like tournaments quickly become repetitive and are required in large numbers to reach the first clan tier, which would get you a semi decent war band.

Some systems like stealth, smithing, and the war sails naval dlc could have been added later after fixing the core issues. Instead of strengthening the foundation they add additional layers on top of systems that already feel underdeveloped. Politics, diplomacy, managing AI armies are very weak areas of the game.

Mods are often suggested as a fix but in practice they don't fully resolve the underlying issues. There are too many interconnected systems needing adjustment, and setting up a stable modded experience can itself be time-consuming, inconsistent, frustrating, and at the end a bit of a waste of time.

The game ultimately contains a lot of shallow systems that lose depth quickly. The potential is definitely there, especially in combat, sieges, tournaments, but it needs bug fixing, balancing, diplomacy. If the foundation were more polished and focused, the game could be outstanding and expansions like stealth, smithing, or naval combat could be meaningful additions.

In multiplayer mode you are just joining the heavily losing side mid battle. The maps are big so everyone is just sniping from a distance, shooting from tanks from a distance.
The single player stories are incredibly ahistorical and obviously written to suit modern politics.
Everyone is running around with automatic guns with laser sights, weapons from any side eg japanese all running around with laser sight stgs. It doesn't respect WW2 history in the slightest. Why bother doing a WW2 game if you're not going to adhere to its history?
I'm glad I only got this game severely discounted.

If it's on a discount then buy it and play a little. I don't really recommend it though.

The story and world is quite shallow. The colonies are run by evil corporations and you're trying to stop them. That's basically it.
The game is very short, there aren't as many quests as most RPGs. Those quests are always going to point A, pick something up, go to point B to deliver it, or killing someone.
A lot of the time you can use high dialogue points to talk yourself out of it. Stealth is super easy and even if you get caught you can talk your way out of trouble. Even if you get into a fight, it's so easy (and I'm playing on hardened) that there's never much tension.

Locations are uninspired or very derivative of Fallout. Come to think of it, most of the game is based around corporations that are like the Vault Tec of Fallout and even certain quests are very similar to quests you can find in New Vegas.
The planets are all basically the same environment, animals, people, but with a different sky.

Guns are quite average, I never use the science guns because they don't deal as much damage as picking up normal guns , even after spending perks to double science weapon damage.

The flaw system, I don't think is much of a feature. Eventually a lot of the flaws will come up after fighting so many NPCs and it's optional to take them on or not. I don't think they're seriously consequential and neither are the perks that you get to choose from for having a flaw.

It's a game to kill some time in a new universe but I won't ever play it again after the first playthrough.