Man. I bought this on sale expecting that, despite knowing it's nowhere close to Wildlands, I'd probably still have a pretty decent time with it. Hah. Nope.

I think in my 1hr of playtime I had about 5 minutes of actual gameplay because I spent the other 55 minutes:

• Diagnosing why the game looked a grey smear because the game thought I had HDR enabled (I did not), and then proceeded to completely botch the tonemapping
  
• Skipping all the intro cutscenes and character customization to be able to adjust ingame graphics settings because Ubisoft decided they wanted an "immersive" start and lock the main menu and graphics options until *after* you make a character and watch the intro cinematics.
  
• Figuring out that the HDR support for this game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and looks worse than SDR does because Ubisoft decided to crush the dynamics into a grey smear of colour with no way to actually make it look decent
  
• I wasn't even planning on playing this in HDR, but the game started with it enabled and I figured I might as well try it out if it clearly is demanding I do.
  
• Turning it off, getting into the game, and enjoying a bit of the intrigue and atmosphere, only to get bombarded by a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ingame popup after doing ONE story checkpoint asking me if I wanted to switch to something called Conquest, which apparently takes place *after* the story, and skips all the tutorials? Dawg I shot 2 guys and walked around a bit, now you're asking if I want to skip the game to do new side stuff? really?

I threw in the towel after this. I couldn't be arsed to deal with Ubisoft's ♥♥♥♥ with their ingame adverts and popups showing off whatever new thing or a friend pass or w/e. I just wanted to sit down and shoot some bad guys but instead I spent an hour + a bit more time waiting for shaders, logging into ubisoft connect, updating ubisoft connect cause it was out of date and wouldn't connect anymore I guess (it even failed once and I had to sit waiting to retry again), and dealing with all the in-game settings BS just to not even be able to enjoy the thing in peace.


I'll just go back and play Wildlands again tbh, this ♥♥♥♥ ain't it.

Fantastic game! It has some quirks to be fair: I had a few bugs crop up, and there are some distinctly TRPG-flavoured unfair moments, but I love it all the same. I spent 21.6 hours total on this for two playthroughs, one for the best ending, and one for the bad/"Good?" ending, which ended up giving me 100% achievement completion, with the first playthrough having maxed every character and S-ranked every trust. While that's not the most hours of playtime possible out of a single purchase, I enjoyed every hour of it, and it absolutely made my weekend.

I love the music and art in this game, and I've found myself humming and whistling along to every song, and the art is just... It's glorious. I love the character designs so much! It's not often I feel compelled to buy the artbook and soundtrack DLCs for a game within just a few hours of playing, but this game really spoke to me.

This game is brutal though! Definitely not the easiest thing to do, you really have to think about stuff, plan out long in advance, and do a lot of save scumming to tip the odds in your favour. With that being said, I personally never felt frustrated with the game. Once I was stumped on how to solve the conundrum I had gotten my armies into, and I spent some time at my job thinking about how to solve it, which I haven't done for another game in a while!

Certainly not a perfect game by any means, but definitely one I'll remember forever.

Helldivers 2 is genuinely fantastic, and some of the best fun I've had in a while. Arrowhead Studios are great, you guys continue doing what you do best, and I hope that Sony continues to not be stupid.
(Sony backpedaled >:D)

Yeah... this game is nowhere near a ready or purchasable state. Charging $50 for what is essentially an extremely buggy tech demo should honestly be criminal. Not worth the $50 in the slightest in its current state.

I am, however, incredibly excited for the future of this game! It looks very promising with a lot of quality of life additions and features not available in the previous game without modding, but right now KSP 2 has as much content and stuff to do as the KSP 0.18.3 demo back when it was available, which cost a whopping $0.

Eventually, I could see this being worth $50. But right now, despite how much I want to support the developers, I would only pay $15 for this, max.

TL;DR: It's a great foundation for an incredible X game, and it's what I've been craving, but it definitely needs some bug fixing, polish, and the two DLCs.

This recommendation comes with some caveats.
Now, I wouldn't call myself a veteran of X games, only really having put 200ish hours into X3: Albion Prelude, and a few dozen hours in X: Rebirth. I haven't played other X3 games, such as Reunion or Terran Conflict, however I may start playing X3:TC, and here's why

This game is the perfect foundation (haha, get it?) of an X game.
As a framework, this game is incredible. I feel like it perfectly captures what I loved about Albion Prelude, while taking some elements of X: Rebirth and imrpoving them (new highways are nice for productivity, more on that in a bit)
However, the game does have its flaws. I've had loss of progress through crashes (pretty sure this is patched in 1.21), ships getting stuck inside of station hitboxes, ship AI generally being bad, etc.

Computer Specs:
i7 6700k
GTX 1070
32GB DDR4 RAM
Game is running on 7200RPM HDD
1080p monitor

Setting used:
2x MSAA
Vsync off
Everything else as high as it can go.

• Perfectly captures "game-feel" of X3: Albion Prelude, which I love dearly
  
• The UI is very responsive, works well with the mouse. It can be a little over the top with info though, and it's lacking some necessary features to really stand out.
  
• Station-building is easier than ever, and feels extremely polished.
  
• Game is beautiful. Ships are incredibly detailed and look amazing, certain sectors have breathtaking views, it's the best-looking X game by far.
  
• Runs perfect* on my system. (*Save for a few instances where the game was loading hundreds of paranid fleet carriers, and only for a few seconds it dipped below 45)
  
• Trading ships and mining ships are actually useful in making money (1.21 beta)
  
• Egosoft has already given the game 3 patch updates, showing dedication to the game
  
• The music is really good
  
• Customizing ships looks really nice, its graphical and I like it better than X3:AP's implementation, but it needs some work. It currently doesn't show all of the stats necessary to really understand the difference between different options when building.

• Universe is very small right now. This will most likely be made bigger later on with the DLCs. While individual sectors are much larger compared to X3:AP (one sector could be 3-4 x3:ap sectors in size), the prevalence of the highways and travel mode make the distance much smaller. Very convenient to travel through, but it doesn't feel as utterly massive as x3's 200+ sectors.
  
• Only 3 main factions (Argon/Teladi/Paranid). You have sub-factions, such as the Holy Order of Pontifex, Hatikvah League, or the Antigone Republic. There are also the Xenon, Kha'ak, and Pirate factions (Scale Plate Pact), more on them later. We do not currently have the Split, Boron (Unfortunately impossible(?) to implement), Terran, Yaki, ATF, Goner, or any of the corporations we had in X3, such as OTAS.
  
• Docking with stations is tedious, and can be broken. (Docking computer MK1/MK2 is a necessity)
  
• Only one small story line so far, so there's no real story yet. It's basically a sandbox right now, a damn good one at that.
  
• Very little ship diversity. We currently have a decent diversity in base ship types, but there are essentially no variations (They do exist, I can only seem to buy Vanguard variation ships, but did claim a ship that was a different variant, and I've seen Sentinel variations around). So where X3:AP had an ungodly number of ships, X4's is very low by comparison, right now.
  
• Very little weapon diversity. It's basically you pick from 8ish weapon types, and their respective upgraded variants. That's it.
  
• Lack of information, whether it's on weapon stats, anything in the Encyclopedia, descriptions of things, etc. It's just not really there right now.
  
  
• Ship maneuverability is pretty "floaty". Even corvettes and bombers used to be hulking masses in X3, now they feel like a heavy fighter did in X3, and the fighters now feel like Scouts. It just doesn't feel like it has much substance, personally.
  
  
• 24 hours in, and my world feels... empty, in a way. It's technically full of life, lots of traders doing stuff, but there's no conflict, even between the people that are supposed to be having conflict. Back in X3:AP, I had to put Omicron Lyrae as a blacklisted sector because so many of my traders were being lost in the crossfire. Right now there's nothing going on war-wise. Even the Xenon/Kha'ak aren't doing much. I joined a battle to fight 2 xenon destroyers for fun, and it was amazing. But now there's no Xenon in that sector anymore, even though it's occupied by a few xenon stations, and the Paranid don't move anywhere past their gate to engage.
  
  
• SETA is in the game, but it requires components to craft, which you get from the Xenon. If you're like me, you now don't have any xenon around to get said components. Bummer.
  
  
• Some missions are outright bugged, like the black market ones. Couldn't finish them, and right now (24 hours in), I'm having issues where I can't abandon missions, and having certain missions not complete because my builder refuses to put turrets on the station.

Yes, and No. Personally, I loved the 24 hours I've put into it. However, the game does lack some polish in places, and has some glaring issues needing to be addressed. All in all, this game is going to be amazing, it just hasn't hit that point yet. After a while, the lack of factions and the overall small-feeling universe make you long for the well-established X3 games, which is why I'm honestly going to be putting this game away for a while (few weeks, maybe a month or two) and doing something else, like playing X3: Albion Prelude for the fourth time, or maybe trying out Terran Conflict.

Honestly, Egosoft blew me away with this game. This review really doesn't do it justice, it's hard to explain the sheer majesty you can get from this game, like hitching a ride on top of a large mining ship and walking around on top of it while it flies, or hanging out in the bridge of a destroyer as it absolutely ruins some xenon's day. Kudos to you guys, you guys are some of my favourite devs. Keep up the amazing work.