A great tactics style game with squad/technology development and management. You choose in which order to do the missions to focus on either acquiring unit unlocks and squad size upgrades, canticles or technologies. On the harder difficulties the maps become more like puzzles and can be very unforgiving. The art, sound and music are spot on and fit perfectly. Customising your tech priests allows you to create a squad to your play style with many different skills and load outs.

This is a great 40k game that gets pretty much everything right, I'm looking forward to playing the sequel.

I avoided Starfield when it came out due to bad reviews, but received the game from a friend so decided to give it a go after having it in my library for a while.

The game is enjoyable, but it required me to change the way I'd usually approach a Bethesda game. The systems in the game seem very disjointed and the progression system is totally broken, which means you can play for hours and level up and barely improve your character, since you only receive a single skill point on levelling up, and all skills require a skill point to unlock and upgrade. There are mods which can change this but I am playing on vanilla with the difficulty settings maxed for the extra XP bonuses. They could easily have improved this system, but instead implemented a "new game plus" mode, which doesn't make any sense.

The story also shoves you in before you've even explored any of the systems or games mechanics, and within an hour you have your own ship and are in one of the capital cities and have many of the companions (this makes hiring crew obsolete before you even learn you can hire ship crew). This seems like poor writing and design as they could have let you develop your character before introducing you to the main quest, allowing you to slowly explore the first few star systems.

There is no karma system or faction reputation that really effects your play through, which for a vast game like this seems like a missed opportunity for a deeper experience, and would have allowed greater replayability. I was also able to simply start the main faction quests without having to first prove myself in any way, which seem a bit unbelievable from a story and RPG perspective. This also makes the "new game plus" they added kind of pointless, why would you start again when the play through is not really going to change much?

It seems way too easy to progress and get credits, everyone is just throwing credits at me, making skills persuasion skills seem redundant, since everyone is willing to just hand over rewards. There are so many activities to do in this game to earn credits, but they all seem pointless since credits are just showered on you. It would have been a better approach to allow characters to earn the first ship and make a name for themselves before the main quest pops up. Again the writing seems kind of simplistic and short sighted in what could have been done.

I think they art style and graphics are good. The combat is alright, it would be better but I am limited by the skill progression system, I would have to be level 40 just to have 10 fully upgraded skills - and on the higher difficulty some like fitness etc are a necessity just to be able to function and carry ammo etc. I do find the exploration elements fun, and have done some basic outpost building, again limited by the progression system. The space combat is ok - it feels like Star Wars Squadron style combat, and the random encounters in space have been entertaining, as well as distress calls etc, though space travel eventually becomes a matter of fast travelling - which I don't mind, though all the pointless animations for docking, landing, or even standing up from the cockpit etc become a bit annoying. It would have been more fun to move through space more and encounter things randomly rather than fast travelling.

I am intrigued by the story and faction quests and some of the followers I currently have, so I will likely try to finish the game eventually, though I don't see myself replaying it once I've completed it, which is a shame, as I have replayed all Fallout games from 1 - 4 many times over and same for the Elder Scrolls series.

The shooter parts are fun, but there are other bits that just break the immersion and intensity of the doom feel combat. It's better than the last one, I quit that after 30 minutes. The characters in it are quite generic, to be honest there just is not enough pure combat parts.

I think it's time they put Doom aside and dabbled in the Heretic and Hexen settings, this game shows the melee/ranged and spell combat could be fun.

It's worth playing, but DEFINITELY NOT WORTH £70.

The campaign is short but the game is fun, and probably best played in co-op. I hope they continue to add more operations and flesh out the pvp modes.

An entertaining game, it's a real shame about all the crashes to desktop I experience though.

An example of how to do a sequel to the golden age games of the past. Really fun tactical RPG with a decent story for this genre of game.

Outstanding, a must play for anyone who loves RPGs.

This is an enjoyable mech squad based tactics game with a refreshing combat system which takes a while to get used to. You move your mobile base around on a campaign map trying to liberate provinces by attacking bases, patrols and convoys while trying to keep your mechs repaired and your pilots alive. There are base upgrades and a workshop to build items. The battles are fought on a time line that works in 5 second phases, the battles load quickly and are over quite fast so there is a lot of tactics action to be crammed into whatever time you have.

Some tips for new players, don't try to command your mechs on the tactical map, focus on the timeline on the bottom left, scrolling left and right on this shows the actions of the next 5 second phase, only use the tactical map to select targets and move locations after clicking plugging the action into the timeline. Pay attention to your heat as there is no warning that your actions may overheat your mech. Scrap items when you have acquired a nice supply of loot, and upgrade your base fast to get the additional mech bays and also try to recruit pilots whenever you can.

Some downsides are your pilots don't progress in any way, it would be better if you gained perks or some kind of progression based on missions, kills or events that occur throughout the campaign. The maps are all kind of similar, after liberating a number of provinces the biomes and maps don't differ at all. All the missions feel and play the same way, example is a convoy attack you can move to the capture point, but it is easier just to kill all enemies, which is how all missions have been for me. It would be better to have objectives that require you to diversify your tactics and use different mech builds, if pilot progression was a thing this could be combined to make a much deeper aspect when choosing what to deploy.

The graphical style suits the genre and setting well, and the mobile base, upgrades, workshop, world map travel and random events add another nice management layer to the game. As mentioned by other reviewers it would be good if there was an option to watch the whole battle after a mission is complete, perhaps in a cinematic way where you can scroll or change cameras, as the time line control creates some tense moments but it is hard to pay attention to everything in the short 5 second bursts of action.

A refreshing tactics game that is worth a play, there is potential for the developers to add quite a lot to this game to make it even better.

Sat down to check it out briefly, ended up spending a whole day on it.

Phoenix Point is a decent addition to the tactical turn based genre from the creator of the original X-COM: UFO Defense. Just like that 1994 classic, this game is brutally hard at higher difficulty settings. The action point system in this game gives you a lot of freedom to employ different tactics and combinations of soldier types. The graphics portray the world and the horrors of the pandorans very well, however I personally wasn't a fan of the art style of the soldier types and factions, they seemed kind of generic.

Completing the game at higher difficulties is a tedious task, with nearly every shot on your soldiers causing a body part to be disabled and bleeding to occur. The pandorans also evolve quickly to become almost overwhelming, you have to rush to research the end game and miss most of the content, so it is recommended to play on normal if you want to experience as much as you can in the game and enjoy the play through.

Some of the mission types use repetitive strategies, such as the base invasion missions, there is no variation in the approach as you can just set up your squad to destroy the enemies as they come through the entrance.

There are also a few annoying things in the game, such as the overwatch system, which triggers even if your unit only spots a small portion of the enemy. If you have multiple units on overwatch at the same point, the target that triggers overwatch will keep moving while the full animations play, which means some overwatch units don't trigger, or end up shooting parts of the environment as the target continues to move. Very irritating. It is also recommended never to just press the shoot button, as some times even though it says you have a shot, you can end up just shooting a piece of cover in front of you (or squadmates), as the shot success only requires a tiny piece of the enemy to be visible. Always use free aim.

The game gave me vibes of terror from the deep (please someone do a new take on that game!) with the pandorans looking like crustaceans and invertebrates mixed with humanoids. Overall the game is enjoyable and I recommend anyone who enjoys squad based tactics games to play it.