Amazing and an improvement over the first.

Fix the launching issues!
I shouldn't have to jump through hoops just to get the game to actually launch.

I'm glad some people aren't just mindlessly throwing positive reviews out there like most of the reviews. I will admit I love the game and enjoy the story so far, but there is a reason why this review is negative. I will not post any spoilers in this review, as I want to focus on one main thing.

I want to focus on the performance, as with most of these negative reviews. This game is not optimized and suffers from issues like stuttering, pop-ins, and frame rate issues. This brings me to this. Companies do not care about the consumer as they know people will buy the game anyway. It's almost like common practice now to throw terrible ports or poorly optimized games at PC players. They throw these games out there like a fresh pile of sh*t, then clean them up later (Like Cyberpunk 2077). I'd like to know why they had to push back the original release date because they obviously didn't use that time to optimize this hot garbage. The game isn't entirely unplayable for me, but I do have some terrible stuttering once and a while. But that is just for me; many players have the same, if not worse, issues than I do. It seems like the "day one patch" hasn't done anything to address any of the problems either (if it was even our day one patch as it was only 300mb for me). I will leave this review negative until they fix the performance issues.

Also, another point/conjecture is that the game runs fine in the beginning, almost like they just optimized that part so that you hit your 2-hour playtime and can't refund the game after you realize how terrible the game runs later. Very scummy, if true, but I digress; if you can't wait for the game to get optimized and want to play now, go ahead. As I said, I like the game; but I am sick of PC players getting sh*t on.

Also, if you want to know, here are my PC specs (at least what I think is relevant):
CPU: Intel i5-12600k
GPU: ASUS TUF RTX 3080 Ti OC Edition
Ram: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (2 X 16GB) DDR4 3600

I use/run the game on a 1440p 144hz monitor. I kept the games resolution at 2560x1440 but capped this game at 75 fps to reduce stuttering when frames drop. (I sometimes dip into the 60s or lower). Still get pretty bad stutter here and there.

Settings I toyed with to get a better frame rate:
Running the game on a mixture of high and ultra settings.
DLSS: Balanced
Ray tracing is all off - I'd suggest you turn that sh*t off if you are having issues as it was what killed my frames.
V-sync: Off in-game but turned on with Nvidia control panel.
Low latency: on+boost

Great game and for the price it is worth it as you can dump many hours into the game and not get bored. If you are looking for something to kill time or mess around this is the game to get. So many servers to play on and a lot to do, even play with your friends. If you don't have the game I'd say pick it up now and enjoy it.

Dear Take Two,

You moronic ♥♥♥♥ bags deserved all the hate you received. PLEASE ♥♥♥♥ off with your petty cash grabs too.

Sincerely,
Curious George

Most of this is compared to new Rust and Rust Legacy after just playing both again.

What I Like:
-Better graphics than Legacy

-Great building system

-IME I probably ran into less hackers in this than Legacy

-The concept is sort of there I was actually kind of happy for this new
Rust when I heard about it. (but I fear the game changed too much)


What I Dislike:
-The constant KOS really not much diplomacy (community)

-Performence isn't that great usually I get 45 fps, but a dip to 20 sometimes.

-The gun play and combat compared to Rust Legacy just isn't there it feels hard to control.

-Raiding is too easy can pour hours into building base and then get raided

-Really hard to solo became more focused on groups

-Map feels a bit too big still and it is randomly generated so hard to navigate whereas
Legacy felt more compressed forcing more interaction and easy to navigate

I just recently played new Rust and I got a base up after 2 days, got guns and supplies. Everything was going my way as a solo player. The way I was playing felt more like a chore to me to get on expand my base and get off. After all that work my neighbors who found out I may actually have stuff raided me and all that work was gone.

I am now back to Rust Legacy thinking to myself that the new Rust isn't that good and that I probably wont go on it for a while if ever. I know the devs ask us to trust them that this will all become great somehow and that is is all going to come together, but I'm not really sure where this is heading and I'm not sure I'll ever be willing to play the new Rust. With all that said I actually am getting more enjoyment out of Rust Legacy even with all its flaws it feels perfect to me. I got a base up, made some friends, pissed some people off, and I'm still playing after 3 days.

I wouldn't recommend this game just out of preference for Rust Legacy and that I feel I don't have the time or the group willing to play the new Rust. If you have time and a group of friends that want to play then go for it I'm sure you will find enjoyment.

~Good game-bad optimization~
I wouldn't recommend this game purely because it isn't optimized. I played it for an hour and couldn't seem to get a stable framerate. Another reason is because it is just too time consuming for someone that goes to school and only plays weekends. You just can't play it when you have stuff going on like that. Overall I liked the concept of the game and the time I spent playing wasn't that bad, but with the fps drop I experienced I just didn't feel like spending anymore time in the game it felt almost unplayable. Once they optimize it I could see the game being a lot better, but it still isn't for me because I simply don't have time.