Lives up to the hype and praise.

Beautiful, artistic, and a gripping story that draws you in with the world building and characters, then throws you a curveball at the end of every act. Going in without any spoilers was a great experience. This game brought me to tears several times.
I thought I wouldn't like the combat as much, but it feels very rewarding and fun once you start learning the patterns. If you prefer playing on story mode it won't lock you out of any content or achievements either. Thoroughly enjoyed the easter eggs and achievement hunt. It was not too hard to 100%. The only gripe I had was the minigame challenges that felt clunky and frustrating, but they're not extremely long.

Highly recommended.

I honestly thought I'd like this, with the combination of an economic part and a defense part. Though, the more I played and the upgrade pattern was 'solved', it became basically a meaningless chore that could mess up your run with a single misclick.

There are a few towers here, with the variety being in the various combinations you can get. There are some really innovative ones, but there are many more uninspired 'both towers apply this status effect' fusions, that make the discovery of these also not very intriguing.

There are also some game mechanics that feel very tacked on, such as the Oracle, which basically gives you a choice between bonuses for the next waves. But the choice is rarely meaningful in game. It turns into either an optimization/reroll strategy until you get the one specific option, or the choice made no difference and was just yet another tedium added on.

While I appreciate the vision of the devs, I don't think I'll play this more.

Works well on Steam Deck!

I don't remember when I bought this game, but it's very fun! It has surprisingly many ways to build mechs that all feel powerful. The fact that you have to take into account line of sight and that you're able to blast through walls gives a lot of tactical depth.

That said, I'm playing my first run on Very Easy, the other difficulties were too much for me at the start. It seems like there is some meta progression and new unlocks too, that may help scaling to higher difficulties later.

For 5 bucks, I'm totally hooked on this. It feels very much in the same vein as FTL and Into the Breach.

Apparently never gave this a review.
It's good. Nice level of complexity, and the two-class combination system combined with some complete skill-altering equipment gives an extreme amount of build experimentation!

The developers are also amazing. They have gone out of their way to support the community for the years since this first released. They've done numerous patches and even incorporated some of the popular mods with permission/credit of the original authors after the mods became unsupported. Because of the persistent playerbase, they're even working on yet another DLC to expand our class options.

This is one of the really good ones where you by it not only for the game being fun, but also for the developers behind it to appreciate their tireless efforts.

Some of the early writing I've come across feels a bit rushed, some of the arcs and dialogue get resolved a bit quickly. That's the only criticism I have so far. The art direction is something I thought I'd have issues with, but I got used to it very quickly. There are plenty of dark atmospheric elements and not having hyperrealistic character models probably does favours for the stunning environments.

The story is compelling, the combat feels great (and can be challenging), and I want to keep playing! It's also very well optimized, especially for a AAA game. I have had no framerate issues so far, and was even able to turn on some selective ray tracing on an AMD card. I did have one issue related to AMD AFMF2, which I hope gets resolved soon.
I also feel your origin has a big impact on the story, much more so than Origins, ironically. Your choices matter, and are reflected in the world state. It feels like a great entry into the Dragon Age franchise, whereas ME:A was a fine game (after several months of patches) but always felt very distant from the Mass Effect franchise.

Oh, and you can absolutely make a good looking qunari 😈

Definitely having a lot more fun right now than the people hoping this game will fail!

Lets get to work 621!

This game blew all my expectations out of the water and raised my standards for big stompy. I only played MechWarrior titles before, because I thought fast anime-style mechs were not for me. I have now seen the error of my ways.

The sense of scale is absolutely insane and combat pacing feels amazing. Mouse/keyboard controls feel responsive, which is a relief! The bosses are interesting and much more forgiving than a Souls game (counteracted by the fact that there are no invincibility frames here). Even if you get stuck on a boss it's made very easy to switch your build and try a different loadout.

Insane amount of customization, where it also feels like customization matters. Most options feel unique, even the standard missile launchers have noticeable difference between the small/medium/large variations. Most items are balanced like proper sidegrades of eachother, with a few sticking out on both ends of the spectrum. So you can really take whatever weapons speak to you the most.

Oh and the music.... the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ MUSIC!!!!

Strongly recommend this to everyone who is interested enough to look at reviews for the game.

Editing the review because there was just a huge FREE update with new endgame content, which was the major criticism I had of the game. It's great to see the devs still support the game, and have invested time into upgrading to Unreal 5 to continue support in the future. Definitely recommend supporting this game!

original review:

Overall been having a good time with this game, but I'm glad I got it on sale.
The flight controls feel good (keyboard) and customization options are fun, and the game has plenty of worked out side content so it doesn't feel super grindy. "Diablo is space" made me buy this, and it delivered fot the most part.
The big downside is the lack of endgame content and replayability. There are a meagre amount of farmable set pieces, the weapons have often only one 'special' variant that usually comes down to 'fire at the same time instead of alternating'. The way you can swap between any ship type is handy, but also means there is no point playing again as a different class. Since the endgame has almost no interesting gear/game changing sets to go for, IMO it loses a lot of steam after the campaign is (almost) finished.
The puzzles can be fun, but also follow a very basic pattern of 'match the shapes' with rare exceptions, with most of the difficulty being to find the shape in the first place.
Story + side missions last you almost until max level and serviceable. I feel the amount of time spent traveling between locations could be less artificially long.
I still enjoyed many hours so the game gets a recommended, but does not reach a level of satisfaction I'd spend 50 euro on.