Pretty embarrassing display on Fromsoft's part.

Insult to injury:
- Elden Ring DLC weapons were not added.
- Overpriced for what little you're getting.
- Scaling for solo & duo is even more abysmal. (Solo is hilariously easy, 2 is painful)
- The lack of playtesting is painfully apparent.
- Feedback from the survey they sent out for this DLC clearly wasn't used.
- Optimization took yet another tank.
- RNG issues with relics got worse.
- Whole new RNG relic system that's even more RNG than the last one.
- The new map has only 1 viable route & is an absolute nightmare to navigate.
- Powerhouse PC destroying snowstorms were added in without fixing the FPS tanking issue that comes with them.

TLDR; unless you specifically dislike audio+visual parry mechanics similar to Sekiro, get it. 9/10

The Good
+ the story
+ writers don't treat you like an idiot
+ the music
+ the visual feast that is the environment & combat (overworld is a bit of a toss up)
+ weapon & monster design
+ the combat (be forewarned: even on Easy with QTEs turned off, you will still have to parry)
+ the most challenging boss fights are optional & entirely out of the way
+ almost every boss fight is enjoyable (definitely not staring at a certain snake, nope)
+ the voice acting
+ refreshing take on turn based combat that keeps you engaged beyond team building strategy
+ while some animations are hilariously stiff & there's clipping, majority of the characters are well done and display expansive + clear ranges of emotion
+ Auto Death exists
+ game doesn't hold your hand, allowing you to discover + explore things on your own while not being so enormous in scope that it's unrealistic to expect



Worth Mentioning

-/+ Outside of forcing an auto-save by changing the weapon on a character out of aggro range of enemies, there is no manual saving (save system is a giant plethora of auto-saves)

-/+ While the story is a highlight, it DOES leave you clueless for the majority of the game & may not be enjoyable for those who don't enjoy chasing a mystery.

-/+ While this was likely a personal issue, I went through the entire game and ended up caring about only 1 out of the 5 characters. Even after doing their side content. Technically 2, but when you boil it down that was only because that character mattered to the 1st. Side characters mattered more to me than the majority of my party.

-/+ KB+M randomly decides it doesn't want to work mid-combat (An issue that isn't present on controller, and is bad enough that it forced me, someone who played Elden Ring with KB+M, to pick up a controller)

-/+ Fights that have no audio queues and fights that have no visual queues both exist.

-/+ NG+ has a lot of QOL missing and feels like a tacked on feature; both the prologue & the tutorials have to be repeated, the beginning doesn't account for your full party and turns it into an annoying slog to trudge through, game constantly changes your party setup without notifying you, scaling issues ramp up, etc.



The Bad

- Level scaling is poorly done and it's not uncommon to reach the last boss of the game severely over leveled. Doesn't help that the difficulty tuning is also a mess

- The removal of the damage cap happens too early & suddenly, skyrocketing your damage from 9999 to the millions. The optional modifiers made available to you to alleviate this don't actually help any who still wanted a challenge but don't want hour-long slogs for boss fights & those who do want the hour-long slog fests will simply not use something given freely rather than the modifiers x_x

- A lot of boss fights will make you slap music to 0 & Special Effects to 100% simply so you can actually hear the audio queues, blasting your ears with noise you don't want to hear while the audio queues you actually want are still real low AND it's depriving you of the soundtrack.

- Romance felt as if it was shoe-horned in to appease the RPG crowd; wish it didn't exist or at the very least was harder to run into. It's real shallow, overall disappointing and there's a lot of story-related reasons why it doesn't work beyond being a narrative device to make you care about the 2 characters more.

Tried it for the 1.0 free weekend; can't say it was a wise use of my time. While I thank the devs for the opportunity, it definitely should have stayed in EA longer. 2/10

The Good
+ the cave system allows for boat retrievals on foot by getting to the island you lost it at underground
+ build system is easy to understand
+ Players can be in different areas (i.e 1 in underworld, 1 in over-world & 1 in dungeon) without issue
+ simplified inventory system; no durability, no weight & no inventory boxes to manually sort

Worth Mentioning
-/+ the UI format & chosen layout leaves a lot to be desired
-/+ while the traders having items laid out around them that you have to manually interact with each time is a cool idea on paper, it's not very practical and quickly loses its charm
-/+ Failing a set of platform jumps = you get forced to start back at the first jump.
-/+ Customisation, in all aspects, is very limited despite being a "cosy" game.
-/+ Character Creation is senselessly limited for the supposed reason of "gender neutrality", yet the character model is very clearly male instead of androgynous. While this certainly isn't a deal breaker, those looking to play a female character or anything looking similar to female (your only option is a camisole) will find themselves heavily disappointed.
-/+ You will never wear shoes, and you will never have the option to change this despite having a foot gear slot. The devs think it's funny. Make of this what you will.

The Bad
- Plagued by frequent loading screens that are painfully long
- Constant & massive memory leak issues, requiring the game to be restarted every so often.
- the above fix does temporarily stop the leak, but does not fix the general issue in every zone; you're always going to deal with random FPS drops during certain fights, against certain volumes of monsters & in certain areas
- Massive performance issues (i.e lights & fires are a massive FPS sink that can easily get into 100+FPS drops, corrupted dungeons randomly skips/freezes frames from what I can only assume is the background corrupted effect that's unique to them)
- Forcing you to manually control the camera with mouse clicks is one thing, but not giving full control of said camera & constantly having to deal with automatic systems changing its direction/zoom level is an awful design choice
- You can be attacked & killed while in a loading screen (dying forces you into another loading screen where you can also be attacked and killed, shoving you into an infinite loop that requires a server restart or a co-op companion)
- Dying in a dungeon vs a boss = you have to run the entire dungeon again, including any platforming sections. Corrupted versions of dungeons go out of their way to make this process even longer without increasing the threat or entertainment value.
- Death bags do not require a prompt to pick up, resulting in other players accidentally picking them up on the regular (especially if you died in a boss room)
- Travelling is a pain. It's boring, it's bland (as are the repetitive environments you travel through), it's mind-numbing and it never gets anything added through further gameplay to make it enjoyable. Be it on land, be it on water, be it underground...it doesn't change. Real shame.
- Combat is extremely basic and cursed with a block system that barely functions, high jump animation attacks will get you hit but jumping over things will not, hit boxes are wildly inconsistent, tracking is wildly inconsistent, pathing can be defeated by circles, FPS drops occur constantly in battle & will constantly kill you...it's a mess.
- The tutorial barely teaches you anything. Majority of actually helpful information is found from reading item descriptions & the text that comes up in loading screens, NOT in any of the tutorial.
- Tutorial prompts come up randomly and interrupt whatever you're doing, including when your co-op partner gets one islands away while you're mid-combat and now you're dead.
- For a 1.0 release, there's a ton of game-breaking bugs; crops & their seeds like to randomly disappear, enemies & players fall through the floor and/or walk around invisible, the loot crates on larger ships randomly delete their contents, storage containers randomly delete their contents, floors suddenly disappearing, bases deleting themselves, etc.
- missing an absolute plethora of QOL features; no craft from chest, no simultaneous use of chests or workstations in co-op, no quick deposit, no shared map discovery, no saved invite code, very few map markers, no ping system, etc.

I cannot, in any form of good faith, recommend a walking simulator that blatantly lacks any ability to speed it up outside of a very short & very punishing sprint (200+ of my hours is just that; being AFK as my character does a snail pace walking that you can't alt+tab away from, an experience that never changed no matter how many times I came back to try again over the years). A walking simulator that STILL has no tutorials & lacks mod support outside of the devs getting others to do their translations for them. Even came out of Early Access far too early, despite numerous bugs being around for literal years & 5+ years on a story mode that still isn't finished (that you also now have to pay for as DLC).
Insult to injury, it's made by developers known for empty + broken promises who're far more interested in cutting up the base game for DLC (full of their own unique bugs they also aren't fixing) than they are anything else.

─▄▀─▄▀
──▀──▀⠀⠀If you liked what was in base,
█▀▀▀▀▀█▄⠀⠀you won't be disappointed here.
█░░░░░█─█ ⠀Just the mod functionality&co-op/vs alone is worth it.
▀▄▄▄▄▄▀▀ ⠀⠀⠀The rest is icing on the cake.

TLDR; For every enjoy-er of dungeon crawlers & difficult rhythm games, this is a must have. The disco floor is calling you. 9/10
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ᵣₑₑₑₑₐₙᵢₘₐₜₑᵎ

The Good

[ + ] movement/attacking/skills/item are all actions tied to the beat, bringing a refreshing take to both the dungeon crawler & rhythm genres in one go
[ + ] clever mix of the two genres; all movement is directly tied to the beat & a coin multiplier that have replaced a predetermined step chart and needing Perfect steps, the directional combat system replicates the standard arrows with multiple layers of unexpected complexity, everything has heavy emphasis on not getting hit/messing up your combo & the more you mess up, the harder it is to recover.
[ + ] DOPAMINE ~\(≧▽≦)/~
[ + ] multiple boss & mini-boss fights, with exclusives that give you motivation to venture out into All Zone clears
[ + ] the in-game pixel art is clean and well done
[ + ] wide variety of characters that each bring their own flavour to the table
[ + ] while it does require a DLC to access, has fully functional multiplayer (both PVP & co-op)
[ + ] in-game built in level editor, mod portal & custom rules
[ + ] digital gods be praised, there's a fully functional Save & Quit that lets you pick up a run from anywhere at anytime
[ + ] in-game option to stagger start when you un-pause that counts you in AND plays back 1-10 seconds of the track, allowing you to pick up the beat again once without having to attack your keyboard in panic
[ + ] absolutely stellar techno soundtrack(s)
[ + ] soundtrack not your thing? tired of hearing the same beats? no problem, game has its own built-in system for you to replace every single track with ease
[ + ] while it does require a DLC to access, mods are both fully supported and easy to do/control; large & relatively active mod community
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ᵣₑₑₑₑₐₙᵢₘₐₜₑᵎ

Worth Mentioning

[ -/+ ] Zone runs are around 7 to 15 minutes each & an All Zone around 25 to 60 minutes.
[ -/+ ] I'd definitely describe this game as chaotic; there's a LOT of visual noise that can get extremely distracting/confusing
[ -/+ ] Don't let the "Roguelite" tag in there fool you; the majority of the game is Roguelike & fully expects nose to grindstone. There is a "regular" mode where you can go play just 1 of the 4/5 zones at a time, but the available permanent upgrades are very limited and both those and the items you can purchase for diamonds found in said mode do not effect/carry over the mode you'll be in most frequently (All Zone). Death does not progress you and you have to start from the beginning, at square zero, each time.
[ -/+ ] Accessing the practice areas for specific mini-bosses/bosses requires both seeing them first & diamonds (a currency earned from playing regular Zones), and that requires some hammering away.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ᵣₑₑₑₑₐₙᵢₘₐₜₑᵎ


The Bad

[ - ] Steep learning curve with, outside of the tried and true nose to the grindstone, little ability to alleviate the burden even when inside a grace period
[ - ] RNGesus is a cruel mistress.
[ - ] Albeit not as difficult as two or three of the optional/DLC characters, one of the main story characters is extremely unforgiving.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ᵣₑₑₑₑₐₙᵢₘₐₜₑᵎ

TLDR; was surprised to be reminded that this game is out of early access. It shouldn't be. Extremely unbalanced 4/10

The Good
[ + ] great sound track
[ + ] decent graphics, game looks (mostly) nice
[ + ] base building system that allows you to bring your build to another world, instead saving them to the character rather than the world/save
[ + ] building system is fun and (mostly) not a pain to use
[ + ] gear isn't dropped upon death


Worth Mentioning
[ -/+ ] That (mostly) fun building system is unfortunately coupled to a foundation system that can be a real headache, and likes to ignore the existence of pillars
[ -/+ ] Bad weather damages buildings that aren't covered by a roof, and said rooves like to be extremely finicky on what they are and aren't covering despite the carbon copy roof beside them with an identical wall below it providing 100% coverage (doors were the biggest offender)
[ -/+ ] No voice acting


The Bad
[ - ] Combat & its animations feel very stiff and clunky in a very inconsistent/unreliable attack + parry system that can't seem to figure out where it wants hit boxes to be. Added bonus of a plethora of bugs constantly teleporting/falling through the floor & enacting the ever wonderful "I can hit you but you can't hit me"
[ - ] The entirety of the bug pet/tame system is gamebreaking levels of imbalanced, even at level 1. Smalland feels comfortably difficult when you start, before plummeting to an absolute breeze the moment you unlock the ability to tame bugs. I.E: The scorpion starts with 2k health and has base damage of 50-60 for its fast melee + 60-70 w/ a 30-40 poison heavy attack. At level 1. For context, my level 70ish character with 100 STR & Legendary weapons was doing far less than it was.
[ - ] Pets can and will consistently yeet you off of Great Tree elevators (the only way to get up or down them) thanks to the endless clipping issues this game suffers from
[ - ] Pets can and will decide their defense post on top of the Great Tree is actually along its sides, usually on the very tip of small branches, and do not go back to their original location even when they slide all the way down to the base of the tree over the course of in-game weeks to months.
[ - ] The option to turn off Pets permanently kicking the bucket and not attacking each other/turning off Friendly Fire is Multiplayer only. Unfortunately, this also means stopping Pets from permanently dying every time they waddle into or fall off something into a river, is Multiplayer only.
[ - ] A bug where pets can still permanently die despite every setting to prevent it being on both exists, and is not uncommon.
[ - ] Pets will always be infinitely better than you no matter how much you sink into damage stats/gear.
[ - ] Pets will damage near-by buildings even with Friendly Fire off, as well as damaging & eventually destroying any traps they stand on top of (without taking any personal damage, at least). They will also hit each other and randomly begin fighting amongst both themselves & other players pets during combat.
[ - ] Game doesn't like to explain its own mechanics, and relies on third-party websites to do that instead.
[ - ] you NEED Intelligence to make (and repair, for even the smallest sliver of a repair) better gear, but you also don't need that gear. The % increase is nowhere near enough to make a difference when being compared to the wildly overpowered pets at your disposal. This only changes with the last weapon in the game, but that's solely because it's a 225-550ish (350-500ish Legendary) vs the 32-37 ballpark of its competitors.
[ - ] Player attributes do not scale equally to the rest of the game, making Constitution worthless and Dexterity a dump stat.
[ - ] Game disrespects your time overall; crafting takes too long, building takes too long, you need far too much wood to simply exist (that also takes too long to gather), repairing both buildings and equipment takes too many mats, events take too long for far too little reward, Great Tree lift you have to take every single time you go up or down takes too long, certain quests force you down very unnecessarily long paths... everything to do with time is bloated.
[ - ] Despite not having an overall lifeless world, exploration is boring and unrewarding. Points of interest are nothing more than reskins and barely unique arrangements of standard assets, every piece of lore is abandoned as quickly as its presented. Really doesn't help that you start paying attention to the copy+pasta assets everywhere, as there's not much to distract you from noticing.
[ - ] World settings are pretty bare bones, giving very limited control to the host over their experience, while also making the monster damage/health scale also apply to player pets.
[ - ] Cooking remains an entirely wasted mechanic that has no real benefits, outside of "woo I fulfilled my survival game nom nom quota"
[ - ] There's very little to no guide on quests, to the extent of where it wouldn't be uncommon or even a difficult ask to completely miss the fact that there's a main story quest line. While I'm certainly not saying to add something over the top like a golden path, being unaware you're even on a quest to begin with is a testament to how weak the UI overall is. My group thought it was just part of the tutorial.

TLDR; There's a lot of good ideas here, but it's a buggy mess that isn't worth the time in its current state. Lukewarm 4.5/10.

The Good
[ + ] graphics are on point (albeit the lighting can be pretty bled out on high settings)
[ + ] dual monitor friendly, allows Windows' built in shift+window+arrow
[ + ] game settings can be edited on the fly while still being in game
[ + ] automatic Unstuck function (with an easy manual Unstuck button)
[ + ] Squadron/companion system is mostly functional & fun to use (though the AI...)
[ + ] (mostly) enjoyable combat system with basic directional swings
[ + ] responsive & fluid directional block system that allows you to turn off Fluid Blocking & Block Assist

Worth Mentioning
[ -/+ ] Fur does not look good/exposes the fabric underneath to instead look like hair that grew out your characters shoulders, and most armor/gear clips (cape+quiver = forever clipping)
[ -/+ ] No swimming; you just get auto-warped out if you end up in too high of water. While this in itself isn't an issue, even knee high water will auto-warp you and can become problematic in the swamp areas against enemies who have no such problems.
[ -/+ ] Bandit patrols walk Land of the Dead style at the bottom of rivers while patrolling/heading to their destination/heading to you (don't bother trying to fight them there, they turn into teleporting wizards near rivers)
[ -/+ ] Housing tents/Houses have storage that you cannot stop villagers from infinitely taking stuff out of, as they want absolutely nothing (outside of weapons/armor, it seems) stored in there at any point in time unless you make every single other storage container in the entirety of your save not accept that specific item type. And they will BEELINE to them to clear them out when you build a new storage & don't have the option checked for a couple seconds (every single villager that had the action queued up will still take an inventory full of whatever it is to the new storage, too). Drove my group nuts
[ -/+ ] Pretty non-existent character customisation that shares assets with NPCs
[ -/+ ] No in-game gamma control
[ -/+ ] Auto-run is actually auto-walk seeing as hitting shift/starting to run cancels it & running while starting it automatically drops you to a walk

The Bad
[ - ] There are a LOT of bugs. Game crashing, game breaking, save nuking bugs.
[ - ] Multiplayer players will be kicked almost every single time you disassemble a Dirt Road
[ - ] Sensitivity settings are bleh; Controller gets full control of its sensitivity with # specifics (camera, combat camera + ranged aiming camera) but KB+M is limited to ONLY a generic camera sensitivity %
[ - ] The UI is awful. You have no control of its resolution scaling, words barely fit their containers in 1920x1080, there's no use of color differentiation, you can't zoom in close enough to map to actually see all the symbols in a large settlement, herb symbols are both too small and too similar to the map colors, the crafting box for villagers makes you scroll through giant craft menus instead of the few tasks you have on that bench, etc etc etc
[ - ] Lots of armor/weapons, but the difference between them is nonexistant to minuscule (or just plain worse, like 1 to 2 armor increase for 2 to 5% across the board speed decrease) and it ends up becoming inventory/crafting menu bloat that is a pain to navigate through
[ - ] The game forces you to initiate your first liberation while still in Tier 1 to reach Tier 2, and opponents you now must face in large numbers are Brigands wearing full armor/using Tier 3 weapons. You do not have any defensive buildings made available to you and they will one shot you and your companions, two at most in full armor, while most of your attacks bounce off them for little to no damage. Once you liberate your first town, you're now forced to deal with Brigands on the constant (as they have their own raid timer & always come in full force) and this difficulty spike discomfort persists all throughout Tier 2 (though I did have a couple good laughs at the militia being swatted around like flies every time I tried to use them to help with reclamation parties).
[ - ] Raids are extremely underwhelming, especially in comparison to reclamation parties, and quickly become nuisances rather than actual threats
[ - ] You cannot stop villagers from taking materials off of stations, including when you've got a giant crafting queue (for both yourself and the villagers) on the same bench that's actively being worked on.
[ - ] You cannot stop villagers from taking (or eating) materials put on the research bench
[ - ] Majority of things are either villager specific (i.e forester & the consistent ability to hunt birds) or they do it miles more efficiently in half the time/durability/risk/headache. While I do understand that this game is a Sim, being so heavily discouraged from doing everything except controlling building/resource placement & very basic trading/fetch quests means I'm watching the game play and/or going AFK for far longer than I am actually playing the game.
[ - ] Winter in its entirety. It's not an engaging mechanic that changes how anything functions in the game; all it does is give artificial time bloat to the games length because a variety of important resources are now frozen for the 2 to 10 in game days it stays around. I didn't even notice a cold debuff existed until being over 60 days into the game, and even then I promptly forgot about it as being cold does nothing seeing as you're already forced to keep food buffs rolling 24/7 to manage stamina to begin with. Warm clothes are not a thing, frozen farms do nothing to dent the insane stockpiles you'll have going before they come around, and you don't have to manage cold at the camp nor do they impact patrols/villages/trade. I never once had winter last less than 3 in game days.
[ - ] Building in most aspects. I was originally pretty happy with clicking to build each part, similar to The Forest, but the carpal tunnel simulator that is the Bloomery alone completely changed this opinion. Then you get into Tier 2 buildings that require you to use a Construction Hammer: each little node is no longer just 1 click done, it's now a 3 to 10 seconds smack it with a hammer animation. And each building has easily over 60 individual nodes to build, while you cannot queue up building clicks or make your character automatically build the nodes on the building you're standing in
[ - ] Unfortunately, they didn't make the moving system any better. Not only do you have to repeat the process in reverse (including every single one of those 3 to 10 second smack it with a hammer animations), you also have to repeat the process AGAIN to rebuild it in the new area.
[ - ] Doing ANY mining as the player is very punishing. It's basically a ratio of Get 10 Rough Stones, Get 1 of the Ore you want (or 20 to 2/30 to 3, depending on gathering level). And you have to hold the mouse down for the entire time, without the ability to tab out
[ - ] While Fast Travel is nice to have, your companions + militia do not travel with you & have to walk across the map to join you. ANYTHING hostile being anywhere near them will also X that travel spot out and make them unusable, forcing you to make one every so many meters to ensure you can actually use the travel function.
[ - ] No dopamine hits to be found here, unless you consider being given endless piles of Renown upon Renown in an already endless sea of Renown to be a reward. The best you'll get is some Cauldron-cooked stews and nails as there's no gear drops, no item rarities, no actual rewards for clearing bandit camps, and nothing of interest in a single chest.

TLDR; a difficult rogue-like still worth supporting despite its slow updates, though make sure you know what you're getting into. Decent 6.5/10


The Good
[ + ] ALL of the roguelike bases are both covered and implemented well; permadeath (+ a permadeath setting that deletes saves upon death), turn-based combat, grid-based movement, randomly generated dungeons, mandatory exploration, endless monster genocide, complex systems with multiple approaches to the same problem...it's all here
[ + ] we ain't playin' main characters with plot armor to protect them in Stoneshard. Every victory is earned, every struggle feels personal, and the mundane can always take you down to the ground even after you cover yourself in plate armor.
[ + ] stands on its own two feet as a unique take to the genre in a package that you'll be hard pressed to find elsewhere
[ + ] the promise of a challenge is delivered and delivered well, all wrapped up in a dopamine dispenser AND without relying solely on RNG
[ + ] rewarding tactical combat that was very clearly thought out & always keeps you on your toes
[ + ] in-depth medical & survival system that is intrinsic to gameplay without becoming over-bearing or otherwise annoying
[ + ] almost every aspect of preparation matters (not just personal knowledge), and can be the difference between survival and another "You Are Dead" screen
[ + ] lots of build variety that directly impacts how you play (with more to come)
[ + ] fast travel system is a caravan that comes with portable shops + good generation + save & its own upgrade system
[ + ] not getting any good loot? Pfffffch, we can make it! >:D
[ + ] exploring the map, taking your time, and progressing slowly is both heavily rewarded and encouraged
[ + ] very stylised, clean & well-done pixel art that's a visual feast
[ + ] fantastic soundtrack
[ + ] simple UI that is easy to use and understand


Worth Mentioning
[ +/- ] RNGesus has blessed us with its "balanced" presence, now get your chess goggles on and pray.
[ +/- ] The rogue in the roguelike is so true to form here that it's borderline to full-blown masocore ("a focus on intense difficulty, often featuring complex or unfair mechanics" absolutely describes it well). Difficulty is the goal, challenge is the constant, death is the expected, and it won't be everyone's cup of tea.
[ +/- ] while the ability to use a bedroll to save exists, the things are bloody massive in a very limited inventory space
[ +/- ] currently lacks any narrative depth (though developers have very clearly stated that it's among the last of their priorities)
[ +/- ] Stoneshard's tutorial gives you a clear idea of what you're in for and a basic grasp of what you need to do, but it still needs to be expanded; important things, like the fact that dungeons close for set amounts of time after you kill the final boss + exit the entrance map, are not presented to the player until it has already become a problem and can lead to a poor new player experience


The Bad
[ - ] Updates for this game are pretty slow. While some breathing room should be given to a smaller team in terms of timely updates, all that really seems to be added for the past couple years is simply tedium and mindless repetition rather than expansion/development.
[ - ] Most of the overworld is empty space.
[ - ] Recent changes to combat have made it a lot more tedious and dominated by RNGesus rather than personal decision; large groups of enemies are far more common, narrow corridors have been expanded to forced 3v1 minimum instead of the original 1v1, it's a lot more difficult to separate groups (even via map swaps), there's still no stealth system to alleviate any of this...the list goes on.
[ - ] Injuries are far too detrimental for how frequent & easily obtained they are and morale plummets from practically nothing; both previously manageable systems, now painful headaches throughout the entire game.
[ - ] Combat is being taken in a very "Do it this very specific way, or just die" direction.
[ - ] a fast forward button is sorely missed when making long (and slow) treks on foot
[ - ] the lack of a respec system is brutal; wherever the stat and/or skill points go, that's where they stay. This can absolutely cripple a build and force you to have to completely restart the character/save over from scratch when you get around level 12 and realise your build hits like a wet paper towel and/or gets yeeted into the sun from a casual breeze.
[ - ] no save/autosave system outside of manually doing so at a bed means each and every death comes with some form of back-tracking (caravan update mitigated this a decent amount, and bedrolls do exist, but the pain remains)
[ - ] has a very steep learning curve

Sure, it's worth 2$.
But treat it as a 2$ game led by developers with a bad track record, as overall it's just not worth your time and certainly not worth full price.
Though if you're here for the PVP mode, save your money.

- Game is over 6 years old, and has always been PVE exclusive, yet they decided to add a PVP mode this late into its life. While this in itself wouldn't be an issue, they adjusted the balance of the ENTIRE game to fit this new PVP mode. Don't be fooled into thinking this was in actual development for years, Fatshark themselves have stated they only started in Spring 2023 despite announcing and subsequently shelving it in 2019.
- A Versus style PVP mode being put into a PVE exclusive game that revolves around the brutal efficiency of a team immediately removing threats (and has always been balanced around a PVE exclusive playstyle, in every aspect) is not a good choice. This style of mode only works in places like L4D2 because they made the game with it in mind from the get go and there aren't a bunch of PVE skills/equipment around. Most specials don't even have strafing animations.
- said new PVP mode should have been left in the oven longer. Poorly designed, poorly executed, and packed to the brim with bugs instead of features. It even has no matchmaking criteria (an issue that cannot be fixed thanks to their releasing this system to a dwindling playerbase of primarily PVE preferring players that can't support an MMR system), leaving veterans who've clocked in thousands of hours of merciless efficiency mopping the floor with new players as a constant.
- said new PVP mode's queues are relatively inactive + there's no option for premade/private lobbies.
- Game now tries to force install Windows Edge Runtime every time the game is launched.
- EAC got shoved into the game, over 6 years past its original launch and all thanks to said new half-baked PVP mode.
- EAC's sudden inclusion into the game adds more performance and connectivity problems in a game already plagued by them. + Linux cannot naturally run EAC & the work-around does not work for every game (especially when the devs do not internally support Proton).
- EAC did absolutely nothing to stop the immediate downpour of cheats/hackers.
- connectivity/lag issues have only been getting worse over the years.
- AI competency mod is no longer supported & their replacement for it fixed a grand total of 0 AI issues.
- DLC keeps getting nerfed. They even nerfed the already nerfed to the ground memehammer.
- Balance changes to DLC classes/items have been demolished, all for the sake of their new PVP system.
- These changes also made the grind for PVE a LOT harder. Chests AND crafting have both gone from the old +10/-5 system at max to a range of 260-300. Getting 300s is now extremely rare, regardless of what level your characters are & multiple people have reported getting dud reds (potentially as low as a 210PL red, when they were all 300 before this PVP update).
- Devs claim the 260-300PL range & outlandish Trait priorities currently on Crafting is a bug, but is not prioritizing fixing it nor are they intending to reimburse people for the 100s of crafts they performed while these "bugs" were present.
- Devs have apparently developed amnesia; Veteran has been rolled back to a 200PL max. Moving from Veteran to Champion is back to being a massive difficulty hike that will become an inescapable wall for the average player. Introducing your friends to the game/playing with your lower level friends is, once again, back to being a pure time sink with 0 reward for experienced players.