A bit early, but like the game so far...

I'm making this review early to offset some of the negative 1 star reviews, though I'm still early in the game and my ratings can change. I'm only at the start of the game, still in the Dauntless. (I wanted to try many different things before I invested in a full playthrough) Though I have spent a few hours doing this, so got a pretty good idea of the basics of Equipment and Ground Combat. UPDATE (11-APR-2026): I've completed the Prologue. (Extreme mode) The Good: - The interior ship graphics look great so far. It has a nice clean modern look, while still maintaining a nice sci-fi atmosphere. - The character and crew models look really great and their movements feels natural (at least to me). - The equipment models also look good and realistic when equipped. (though there are some that do look odd in the main HUD icon) - Speaking of HUD icons. The game icons are very nice and colorful. I find them very detailed. (The Color Icons settings) - (Note: In the Video settings, the Color Icons box is unchecked, even though the description says it's checked by default, it is not) - (So check the box if you want to see the colorful icons, instead of the flat white ones) I think this affects every icon in the game. - Hopefully a future update will correct this by making sure the box is checked. (I already see reviews misunderstanding this) - You can adjust a lot of things as far as settings and one big part is in the "Gameplay" section. - This section lets you modify via sliders, how much advantage or disadvantage you want in your playthrough. - These include (but not limited to): Increasing Enemy HP or Damage, Merchant buy or sell prices and many more. - This can be changed at any time. Simply saving and reloading after making the changes, will put into effect I believe. - Also, a lot of these settings have tool tips, so read those to see what they do. UPDATE (11-APR-2026): The Advanced settings only show up while in-game (under Gameplay). Only the 3 sliders show up from the Main Menu. - I mentioned the Ground Combat in the beginning. I like it so far. - It's a bit different from previous CRPGs I've played, so took a little bit to get used to it. - But after a couple of fights, I understood the basics pretty fast. - (There is a Wiki that explains many things about this game. The links are in a pinned forum topic by the Developer) - It is a tactical game, so you do have to take advantage of everything (like Stun or Smoke Grenades to buy some time) - So far, every combat item I've discovered, can be useful in some way. - The Help section: - This section explains so much about the game, please press "H" and read if you get lost in the game. - (It probably still needs some improvement here and there. But overall, it's a great addition) UPDATE (11-APR-2026): I also keep a copy of the Wiki info in PDF format. I play on an offline Windows 7 SSD, so it's the only way to access it. It's a great source of additional info. The Not So Good: - In the settings "Controls" section. There is some super relevant info that's missing. - It does not list that "F5" is for Quicksave and "F9" is for Quickload. I don't know how the Dev missed this, as it's kind of important. :) - Quicksave slot will always appear at the top of your load save list, no matter when you save. If you overwrite a normal save, they still remain in the same order on the load list. If it's listed 10 from the top, that's where it'll still be after you overwrite it. UPDATE (11-APR-2026): Remove the weapon mods comment . Instructions are there and I somehow overlooked it. My bad. UPDATE (11-APR-2026): Removed the chest drop comment. The chest changing to regular backpacks is a normal game design. Reloading a save updates and changes random based things for the current generated "SEED". - Best practice. If you find a chest, loot it before saving or it will change and you will lose the loot. (oh well, no save-scumming I guess =P) Things that could be improved: - The game load times can be long (this is early game so far. Also, this is on Windows 7 using a SSD). - The initial new game requires the creation of 9999 sectors. This takes a few minutes. - This could be offset by allowing players to adjust the sector count at the beginning in increments of 1000. - This will still allow for plenty of explorations and planets. - The tutorial doesn't bother me much, but some people may not be getting the most out of the current one. - Some of the basics of the tutorial could be improved to better explain the in-game functions. - The switching to different Grenades or Med Kits, is not intuitive. (it took some trial and error to learn for me) - The button for each acts like a drop up (rather than drop down) menu. I think you just right click it) - The cooldown of special weapon skills is strange. - Why are they still on cooldown after combat ended? - Though with 4 team members, I guess it could be OP. - Surely there is another way? Maybe lower the damage/effect or something? - Having it on cooldown for 5 turns at the start of the next combat, is just jarring. (I can deal with it, just weird is all) UPDATE (14-MAY-2026): Removed misleading line about one use per Tutorial, unintended. UPDATE (11-APR-2026): The pop-up hints disappear too fast. Maybe allow players to click each closed. This gives time to read them properly. Some early tips (on Dauntless in Extreme mode): - If you really want good loot badly, save and reload and hope to get lucky. (the load times are around 25 seconds for me) - In Extreme mode, mobs with a skull next to their name, have a chance to drop a chest, instead of a bag. - (These chests can contain up to 8 loot, with a chance for Rare, Legendary and even Epic items) - (I got one with 2 Epics and 3 Legendary one time. This was in the Dauntless!) - If you don't like the bag drop, save and reload and do the fight over. It too me 6 tries to get 1 chest from 3 dead enemies. - Extreme mode bumps every enemy up a bit, but also ups the rewards as well. - Right now there is a bug in version 1.0 (likely to be patched) when it comes to restoring HP after combat. - Let's say your crew all get KO'd during a fight. Well, after the fight, just save and reload and they are back to HP max. - This is likely unintentional, given that in Extreme mode (and likely Hard mdoe), player and crew do not regenerate HP after combat. UPDATE (07-MAY-2026): Not a bug, reloading saves has this affect on certain things in the game. Restoring HP seems to be one of those effects. That's all I can think of right now. This is truly a wonderful game and I highly recommend it to any fan of CRPGs. The price is also very nice even without a sale. !! IMPORTANT !! Read below with caution! UPDATE (11-APR-2026): Dev has removed the AI portraits in latest update, but provided an option to download it for those that still want it. Original comments left below. The controversy over the Portraits. Some people are accusing it of being "AI Slop", which personally I think is a very crude way to put it. The solo developer hired artists to do this. They put their trust in them, so they have to trust everything was done right. So blaming the Developer is pointless here. Developer will never have proof if it turns out to be true and that's a big assumption. So the Developer cannot in all honesty state AI was used, since they have no way to verify this. The people running the images through online AI programs (kind of an irony here) and saying the results are that AI was used, cannot themselves truly verify it either. AI is not omnipotent, they make mistakes, especially in these early stages of AI development. I mean, read the news a bit, you'll see how badly the AI can mess things up, when it does. It's not all bad, but when it screws up, it screws up BIG. I got nothing more to add here, but it's frustrating to see a nice game get rated down for things people can't even truly verify 100%.