This game costs $60, and when I watched gameplay videos showing character customization, stats, dialogue choices, companions, and how choices affect outcomes, I thought it would be like BioWare’s Dragon Age or Mass Effect style games and wanted to buy it.
The reason I didn’t buy it right away was because the graphics didn’t look like modern graphics for the price – the textures looked like they used an artistic, painted style to cover up for not having high-quality graphics… So I was planning to wait for a sale. But while looking at computer parts recently, I found out AMD was giving it away as a game coupon, so I bought the coupon second-hand for about $13 and played it. After seeing the ending, if I had to rate it, I’d give it about 6 out of 10 points. It has this feeling of “not exactly bad, but somehow not good either.”
The graphics are mediocre.
The graphics don’t look like they’re from a game that costs around $60.
These days, games that cost around $60 all have textures that feel like they use physically-based rendering, but this game doesn’t seem to follow that trend. When you look closely, the textures feel hand-painted. So while the backgrounds look pretty, when you get close to objects in first-person view, the textures are surprisingly poor… Now that I think about it, it feels like all the specular maps are missing. Even people’s eyes look scary when you see them up close because they look lifeless.
The playtime is really short
About a $60 game that you can finish in just 13 hours… seriously? I didn’t do many side quests, but I did do companion quests, got lost wandering around, and died a lot trying to beat the final boss. I had to stock up on tons of adreno and keep trying. If you just go straight through the main story without getting lost, you could probably finish it in under 10 hours.
Korean localization: Translation(X) Literal translation(O)
The Korean localization feels like whoever did it just translated line by line mechanically instead of properly adapting it to Korean context. It’s slightly better than Papago (which is like Google Translate in Korea), but it feels more like “literal translation” than actual “localization.” The awkward flow combined with unfamiliar proper nouns and this literal translation style makes it hard to understand what NPCs are actually trying to say.
Choice-based Story & Ending
The progression really reminds me of BioWare games, but maybe because the story is short, it feels like the story was just made to have choices available rather than my choices actually impacting the narrative. Take Dragon Age: Inquisition for example – various events happen during the Inquisitor’s journey to resolve the rifts, and those events are exciting too. But in this game, the journey to save the Hope’s crew literally just ends when I find the chemicals needed to save the people on the Hope. Even that story becomes tiring to read due to the ambiguous Korean localization.
Companions
I don’t really understand why companions even exist. First, there aren’t many dialogue options to actually talk with each other. I also don’t get why they made companion quests – they don’t feel like companion quests but more like regular side quests.
Also, I only put 10 points into companion-related stats by the ending, so they were around 20, but there’s no way to allocate stats for individual companions. You can’t assign roles like tank or DPS to companions. Even when I gave them the best armor with over 90 defense, they just melt away during combat.
FPS…..?
All enemies enjoy fighting to the death. Usually in shooting games, if you take cover, you won’t just get picked off and die, but this isn’t even a melee combat game. Although it’s a shooting game, enemies never take cover. It’s not really suitable for me to take cover either, and since all enemies don’t know how to use cover and just walk toward me while shooting, taking cover actually puts you at a disadvantage.
Weapon
I like sniper rifles, but since this is a game where taking cover is impossible, I tried various weapons.
↑ Phin’s Phinesse Spacer’s Choice
However, this one thing is all you need.
Overall
……………………………………………… I tried to write down the good points, but there’s nothing to write. It’s not exactly boring, but it feels about 50% lacking for the price. Since I bought it for about $13, I just think “well, whatever” but if I had paid full price, I would have been pissed after seeing the ending. The game progression is similar to Mass Effect, so I keep comparing them, and even though Mass Effect showed that terrible ending in the third game, Mass Effect is still about 100 times better. $60 seems way overpriced – this looks like a game that should cost around $30.