I really wanted to like this game going into it. The art style is cool, the gameplay ends up being sorta like minecraft that we all know.

Unfortunately that excitement dies pretty quickly. Excavation takes entirely too long, and by the time I started to have enough resources to start building I had spent an entire resource node. Upgrades that make excavation faster tend to be late game, and because of the sheer scale required you constantly are running out of foundation pieces or belts.

But the worst part by far, more than the speed you can build or destroy anything, has to be how empty the world feels. There are no enemies to fight, which I guess is intentional. There are no ruins or story to discover, outside of let's fix the space station. The critters that roam around don't appear to do anything, and I have played pretty far into the game at this point.

I should also note that the most recent update #2 broke my savegame, so if I ever end up playing again I'll need to start all over. I just can't put it on the same pedestal as other games in the genre.

This is a review for the playtest of Robocraft 2.

It's in the same trap as the old robocraft was. Because there is very little interest in the game anymore there just aren't other players. Every single "person" you play against with "_##" after their username is a bot. You can be waiting a couple minutes for matchmaking just to get thrown in a game with only bots. I do not understand why we can't just collect XP or materials by intentionally playing bot matches if this is the case.

Another friendly face from every robocraft game is that there is currently just one map and one gamemode. You guys have had YEARS to develop these games out, and it's like you restart all your work everytime you try to reboot the games. Newsflash to keep players interested when you first release you need CONTENT. Even the first game at least had more than one map.

The tech tree is interesting, and the way you progress it is by using equipment and levelling it up to advance. Unfortunately progress is SLOW so you need to sink a huge amount of time to advance the tech tree even one step. One missing feature is the shields from the first game. They were all asymmetrical pieces that were difficult to fit to the robocraft but when used properly they were a strategic piece of equipment.

Another issue I have is that every one now has shields automatically, but some designs get more. Because of this shield it kinda overlaps the shield parts I was talking about. When you leave combat you do regenerate parts of your robocraft and shields, but I've found it's slightly aggressive in it's recovery. You might have just shot an enemy and they go behind a rock and now have all their weapons back.

The last issue is the AI. It's just a mess. If you shoot an AI from halfway across the map they know exactly who did it and they'll shoot back. If there are other bots near your location you'll immediately come under fire. I have played probably 20-30 matches now and I think I've had a victory on 4 of the matches. If both sides have AI bots and one side has a player shouldn't it be more balanced? I take out one bot alone just to find that there's 3 "people" left on my team and 8 on the opposing team. I've built my robocraft to max and when I go into battles I see machines with even more weaponry and at least 2 times larger than mine. Unless I'm missing something why does it seem like the restrictions I have do not apply to the AI in matches.

I do not know how Freejam could save this game. Short of returning to literally OG robocraft, and advertising like crazy on youtube. Definitely make more maps, and definitely make a way for players to submit feedback. Testing how robocraft gameplay feels is what the community has been doing for years, we just want content. If you found that some players like the newer version/rules then why not just branch that into a dedicated gamemode in robocraft, instead of just saying that's that game, this is this game and we don't do that here.

I'll start this review of by saying the one thing that I always felt was important to note. I received this game from my brother as a GIFT; due to the price of this game I was not planning on buying it unless it had more features or went on sale which it doesn't look like it ever has. I felt like at $35 this game wasn't worth it with it's limited features. The locomotives are nice and very detailed, everything can be operated the same as the real thing. But the gameplay itself is very simple, you pick up resources from one location and move to another location. There are no AI to hire on to run routes for you or man station platforms. You drive the train, you add the water and fuel, and you load and unload all of your freight. Overall it is what I expected based on videos I've seen of youtubers playing it online. I definitely agree with other reviewers track laying is a pain and many track features are lacking. Almost any level crossing can be built in real life, so why are we restricted to 90 and 45 degree? There is no Y shaped switch so certain junctions are very difficult to make look correct. The spline update did fix the track laying somewhat but it's still difficult to get the link GUI to show up.

Now for some nagging issues. Autosave in the beta branch does work fine, but it doesn't have a nice easy pop-up to know when this is happening, just a small set of text. When in the menu for player list (TAB is default) you cannot exit this menu by just hitting TAB again, instead if you hit TAB again it highlights the X in the top right corner of the box. Most of the locomotives can be driven without being in the driving mode (F is default) this is a nice feature but I've noticed some controls are inaccessible when running this mode, such as the brake in the Porter. When you are in driving mode ( F is default) there are multiple gauges displaying info which is helpful, but the two that stick with me are water level and fuel. Both of these are an arbitrary number instead of a simpler percentage system. I have 200 water which I can somehow calculate when driving but the cab just shows a nice water level gauge, this should just be a percentage gauge when driving... Fuel is also confusing, different trains have different amounts, I'd be happier just knowing when it's getting low IE 20% or so, maybe eschew the gauge and just give a low fuel warning popup on screen when in driving mode; instead of an arbitrary number that can max at 50 on the porter and potentially different on different models. There is a bug in the beta build that large turntables just slide like ice, so they're useless; trains just slide right across. The old feature of the game was when you got out of a train it would just stop moving entirely; I understand why this was removed so that you could run push-pull trains, but an issue this created is that the handcar can move without anyone on it. Along with these, some locomotives are difficult to get into driving mode, it seems like you need to aim for the center of the model geometry so I might have to have my head in the firebox just to get to hit F and have it react.

Steam trains have simple gauges for some items so having an exact figure when driving is unrealistic. Some things are nice that they're difficult to work with but others are just flat out obnoxious. You need to manually pull down the water spout and get it in the hole and if you placed the tower wrong you have to place another one this is an issue because they should just snap to the rails so they're the correct distance from the track. Placing down supply items such as firewood depots should also be able to snap to rails or toggle. As others have said you should be able to freely tweak track and add switches in the mesh, along with crossings, without having to delete an entire section of track and lay it again. Tree removal is a hassle, you pick one at a time, this really needs to be an area toggle or just say remove all trees within X feet of this section of rail. If you remove every single one after building a huge track and manage to forget one your train will stop dead and probably derail. Why not just make it break the tree AND derail so that we don't have to chop down a tree AND rerail our whole setup. I've also noticed a but as I've played longer that sometimes couplings just break. I don't know if this is a bug or a feature because there is no GUI over the coupling to say LINK IS BROKEN DUE TO STRESS. So I have to assume it just deleted it to be funny. If that's the case I'm sad because I haven't run any train with more than 10 cars because this issue keeps occurs occasionally when you have more than 6 cars on a train.

There are difficulty settings but they are confusing because there is no definition of what can happen. There is a setting for physics and a setting for industrial difficulty. Regardless of this you will be able to round sharp corners at impossibly high speeds, and things that would derail a train or break tracks does show the train leaving the rails only to rejoin them a few feet later. I understand some middle drivers are flangeless and them slipping off is normal, but my front driver on a train completely left the rail only to rejoin a little later; the wheel flange appears to just cut through the rail to reset itself. You do not pay to place rails, you do not pay to place supply depots, you don't pay for log cutting, and you don't pay for bridges. The only thing you actually pay for is locomotives and rolling stock.

This game has potential to be great and I feel like it is very ambitious in trying to tackle a lot of issues at the same time. But things that it thinks are important are not important to some people and things that are definitely important to players seem to not register as an issue to the developers.