Element Space

I can't recommend this game. Whilst there's clearly a lot of work gone into it I find the battles too buggy to continue with it any further. Strange behaviour when an event happens and a character seems to slide into a completely different part of the map. I don't have the time to continually restart missions when this happens, there's no save on turn. All in all, I'm just not getting along with it. I may return to it at some point as I love this type of game, The story, characters and narrative feel a bit disjointed at this point, although I have admittedly only played 10 hours or so.

Like others have said there are some interesting ideas in this game. Unfortunately combat seems unbalanced to me at least in the early stages. There are also many bugs that effect combat in a way that makes having a strategy difficult.

The game is simplistic in its linear story line. However I found myself liking the tactical battles. Being a turned based it wasnt too hard in the begining, but later gets much harder with alot more enemies and your crew of only 3 per battle.

I did like how in some missions you get several other characters as rewards (besides upgraded weapons) for certain missions. These characters can be a boon later in the game.

Its not greatly in depth as XCOM or Jagged Alliance tactical styles but I found it fun. I beat the game in a total of a few days for a couple of hours.

I think its a decent game, especially if its on sale.

A real missed opportunity this. It has some great ideas and some excellent combat, but it's also one of the most bug-ridden games I've ever played. The initial few hours were fine, but then I got to a point where every other combat round would see some bad bug impact on the game-play. The writing is really poor too, and ultimately it's just not up to scratch.

I put off writing this review until this late date because the developers kept posting promises that they were still updating the game and making fixes. They only admitted in the last week that they lack the budget to finish this project. As others have commented, there are some good ideas here. Unfortunately, now that we know that the game will never be properly polished, it's impossible to recommend it as an enjoyable experience.

The game is totally bugged, overwatch wont work. It crashes when reloading from a save point. Your chars and the enemies wont move in their turns. The list goes on and on

This game is a special level of bullshit. It has a few good ideas and basic concepts, but it's strongly marred not only by a lack of polish and a clunky interface, but outright gamebreaking bugs and horrible ballance. If they ever decide to fix it to a point where you could call the game a beta, I'd say go for it. But at the moment it's not worth it, even with the discount.

Game mechanics are very rudimentary and clumsy. Battle sequences are not very well thought out and do not use the basic control concepts of a computer mouse that so many other games today use automatically. Graphics are not too bad but are more used as a way to distract from how poorly executed the animation sequences are in combat. Dialogue between the various characters and NPCs is almost ridiculously comically. Only redeeming feature about this game for me is...I go it for cheap on one of Steam's sales.

Let me say I do enjoy this game. I however can not recommend it in its current state. My biggest complaint is how forced and short it is. I've now played through it twice and both times the "countdown" clock wasn't even half full yet i was forced to go to the end mission. I think the Dev's need to free up the choice. I think we should be able to spend as much time as we want shoring up political allies and earning the trust of our companions. I was never able to get more then 3 political bodies to "friendly" and 2 allies to "trusting" before the game forced me into the final confrontation either play through and that's despite as I earlier said my "countdown" clock not being even half full. That is very dissapointing.

It seems it's the studio's first game, and after several hours and completing one run, I can see both sides of this coin :
-Yes, it still has several bugs sometimes (killcam stucks, ennemy stuck, etc.), the camera is utterly a monstruosity and should be fixed and reworkd from the ground, the story is nice but not very original, etc.

The Faction/Philosophy reputation is nice, but still has some flaws.

BUT...Art Direction is overall pretty good (graphics, sound, music, ...), UI is correct, some companions are pretty fun, and the lore behind the created world is intriguing.

In the end, it has a slight Mass Effect feeling, in a turn based tactical game, and with the untapped lore the game's hints, final verdict is : I want to know more .

So , for a first game, in a very young game industry environment (South America), it's pretty much a very good sign, if you just manage to pass this f...g camera/controls.

And I'll happily buy a follow up on the universe (DLC or next game).

Element: Space has a lot of potential and cool ideas, however it seems really, really rushed. It's riddled with bugs to the point that you start to think if it was even tested. I didn't expect the game to compare to XCOM, I just wanted something new. Here's some of the issues I've noticed:

Cover system is really inaccurate. Spots on opposite side of enemies keep being marked as "flanked" to the point where I thought it's a display bug, and was hit with every bullet. I've been hit more than once by enemies while being in full cover and game lead me to believe I wouldn't be. What's more, overwatch seems to invalidate cover. About that.

Overwatch just doesn't work. At all. Enemies keep running through the "cone of effect" not triggering anything. I don't know if it's an issue with my party composition, but for me it literally does nothing.

Melee Lock - the game's original idea, it's supposed to lock two characters in melee, and leaving that lock should result in being hit in melee one more time. It also makes you leave cover, but gives enemies a hit penalty against you. Guess what? Half of the time it doesn't work. Enemies tend to just waltz away without my character trying to stop them. This brakes the lock of course, leaving the character standing without cover getting owned.

This is especially frustrating, since you can't really change your tactic, because weapons as well as characters are unlocked as rewards for linear questline. You have no option of buying or focusing on something else.

Above issues combined with very very limited character customisation and progression, simple and repetitive combat, low resolution textures and lack of voice acting is why I can't recommend this game. Good idea - very amateurish execution.

Interesting X-com clone. It has some good ideas behind it, but i feel that still needs some polishing, lets break it down:

The good:
-The combat is Fun.
-Combo system (team skills used together are super fun).
-Story is nice, but it has a some room for improvement. (Looking at you Decision Making/Galactic congress)
-Strategy is mandatory, you will pay dearly for any mistakes.


The bad:
-Bugs. Didn't find any game breaking like during EA, but some Minor Bugs are still present.
-Missing voice Acting. (one is so used to this nowadays)
-UI could use some polishing & Tooltips.

The Ugly:
-Can't do anything during Enemy turn. Not even Open Menu.

This is a tough game to review right now. I REALLY enjoy the combat. It looks like your basic XCOM style turn-based game, but the battles are designed more like puzzle battles. There is very little RNG in the combat. You either have a 100% chance to hit the enemy if they are in the open and not behind any cover, 50% to hit if they are behind low wall half cover, or 0% chance to hit if they are behind full cover. Your shot against full cover could destroy the cover, though.

You only get to bring three dudes/gals into each battle, out of supposedly eight total party members. Each party member has some unique skills that they bring to the battles. So, you get to choose how you want to solve these battle puzzles.

Don't get me wrong, the combat is good, fun combat, it just has much more of a puzzle feel to them. Even the developers refer to the battles as puzzles you have to figure out. That's cool to me, and something nice and different in my huge pile of turn-based combat games that I own.

It's not all roses and unicorns, though. The checkpoint system is almost horrendous. I have lost progress quite a few times due to the way their checkpoint system works. And, the "Continue" button on the main menu is not very reliable, and has dropped me into a game earlier than my checkpoint should have been saved. It's just inexcusable how unreliable this checkpoint system is. I get scared every time I quit the game, not sure if I'll reload back to exactly where I should.

Also - the camera during combat is all over the place. On enemy turns, the angle it chooses often times blocks the enemy movement and actions they are taking. Yikes! Also, the camera resets after your dudes take shots or actions sometimes. I haven't found any rhyme or reason to this, but you will be constantly moving your camera back to where you want it after the game moves it somewhere else.

One minor, yet hugely annoying point is that you cannot click through some dialogue scenes at all. You have to wait the designated amount of time until the game moves to the next dialogue. However, in other dialogues you can click the mouse through the lines. But, then again, in other other dialogues, you have to press ENTER to click through the lines. It's just very scattered and inconsistent.

I won't talk about the story, because I haven't gotten far enough into the game yet to have an opinion. There is no voice, though, it's all text.

Overall though, I am really enjoying the game. It just needs a bit of polish, a major cleanup of the checkpoint system. Heck, give us a true save anywhere system, so we can save when and where we want. Checkpoints are poo.

So, Jake and Elwood give Element: Space two cheap Walmart sunglasses up. The combat is fun, the puzzle aspect is very compelling to me, the interaction between the various skills and abilities allows for some pretty clever ways to destroy the enemy. Just blasting with your rifles will not get the job done. Use your skills in conjunction with your weapons and you will have a great time blasting bad guys!

Polish the game and we'll have a super cool game here.

Not a bad game, but unbeatable due to bugs.

The last mission kept removing party members mid fight (and replacing it with some fake "mind controlled" unit that wasn't even there or selectable), and the AI in the last battle kept freezing forcing me to alt-f4 close the app.

Like others have said, the camera is beyond annoying. I found the difficulty to be too easy, however; even though I cannot beat x-com on anything higher than classic.

The depth of the game is not nearly as advertised .. I maxed out a faction, yet did not get any faction perk. Each character only gets 2 abilities total, nothing to swap out, just 2 abilities. They get a "loyalty" perk eventually, but this is passive. They can also bring 1 supply item, and 1 more special item .. I do not consider these to be abilities.

Just finished it.

It's such a marvelous pot of potential, but there are some serious flaws that I don't think many gamers will let go. There's a lack of information on so many levels, a lack of skill reset, or which characters lie along the paths. I've to admit in my playthrough, i only managed to unlock Maria (omg amazing with any aoe damager), Alice, Zero, Arthur and Vincent (both these two were really really... boring to use)

The initial difficulty was incredibly difficult. It got once i got strong melee weapon for my main char, and stronger skills with larger aoe. But here's the thing, you can't see what the next skill upgrades are, so it's possible to make huge mistakes when it comes to skill placements.

Oh, and the final fight was really -_- dislikable.

But when it's good, man it's good.
I'm gonna give this game a thumbs up, it was worth the money, and i wish it was balanced better.
Kudos to the writer/writers on the stories and dialogue and quests, It was an ambitious endeavor but had wonderful moments.

Please patch up with clearer information, would be so appreciated. With the difficulty curve, i'm not really sure i want to try playthrough a second time to see the other chars.

Updated 5/2019 from the initial review.

Disappointing, it clearly has some great ideas but is currently still frustrating to play. Cool xcom type turn based combat game with little strategic choices. Appears to have some fun ideas about combo ablities amongst your 3 characters. While patches have improved the fun, there is still a fair amount of frustration in playing.
Graphics are nice, but there is literally nothing to the game other than the combat grid. You have some time wasting "walk your party through the non-interactive environment until the next invisible trigger" type stuff in between combat in the missions. You can't re-equip or even swap weapons (like you can in combat) when outside of combat. There is still no documentation in game about various rules (LOS, squad level "one use" items that are actually 1 use per person). The enemy will have various unusual weapons/abilities that show up. You will have little clue about what they are or how they work until it blows up on you (unless they have a passive ability "on" which you can now see a tiny icon next to them that sort of describes it). You are given an ability early on that causes push back, but you will never really know how far the enemy will get pushed (though they did at least add an arrow showing where the enemy goes). The push action will reveal your lack of knowledge about what counts as a "wall" and what is just neutral landscape (ie. elevated railings block LOS but don't count as a wall for push damage). And since push typically leaves the character standing out in the open, its a crap shoot on when you should use it since you never know if the target will get pushed off the dock or just move a few inches and then shoot you. In my 2nd mission I got wiped out 3 times in a row, as I learned what each of the 4 new unique enemy units would do to me.
Story line is cheesy, no voice acting (which is probably a blessing).
Bugs are mostly gone, though I am still having random game freezes, which is quite annoying.

Line of site is still quite wonky, the game will tell you there is no LOS, but then you move there and you have clear LOS. But other times what appears to be LOS is inexplicably blocked.
Your pull abilities don't show you where the target ends up, so you might pull your ally next to you but totally out of cover to be mowed down, or they may end up on the other side of you under full cover.

It is at least playable now with bug fixes.

Having almost finished the game;
1. Game locked up on 2nd dramatic fight of the ? finale.
2. The maps start recycling near the end.
3. Unclear why I have a timer mechanism, Rarely lost a game once I figured out what enemy units were, and it seemed like I could just keep playing minor missions forever (got bored of doing same maps so finally did the crypt mission).
4. Melee is so strong they actually had to create a faction that auto shoots you if you move close to them.
5. I ended up skipping the finale speech, after the very long trial dialogue tree I wasn't up for a second round of "choose dialogue for minor vote bonus" , as I was already maxed out on corporate happiness.

Overall the game has improved. Still buggy, still lots of mystery rules you have to discover, crashes less often. Tactical challenge is good initially but then dramatically drops off once certain skills are acquired (free attack, free grapple hook, etc.)

The community moderator reacts strangely to an objective criticism of the game - deletes messages and blocks the account. I am writing this review to bring problems to the developers.

Pros:
+ Beautiful fight animation and 2D art.
+ Close combat link (a new mechanics)

Cons:
- The plot is clichéd and has no right to life.
- A world you don't believe in.
- Enemies appear from nowhere. Jump from the ceiling behind the heroes right before the enemy turn.
- Horrible skill tree, lack of balance between classes.
- Awful camera and constant slow motion.
- No content (7 missions, 5 hours of gameplay).
- A lot of bugs.

Someone say, the game is racist, brothers Slavs are depicted as orcs, who have nothing sacred. I don't know, did not see anything like that.

The worst thing is that you do not believe in the world of this game.
Characters behave foolishly. We play for a team of idiots (probably, it was for these words that they blocked me ^^).

Albert Einstein: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
The clinical idiocy of the heroes (due either to the deadlines or the untalentedness of the scriptwriters) manifests itself from the very beginning of the game.

The captain, the rear admiral, and their friend, the heroes who gone through the flames of war, are responsible for the security of the galactic summit. These three woodpeckers lose contact with the onboard computer of the ship and run into the service bay. There they see two dead guards, and two thugs with weapons (one of them has a sniper rifle). What should deck officers do in this situation? Take firing positions and quietly shoot both? Shoot one and order to surrender to the second? Raise the alarm and call for reinforcements? Not! The correct answer is to stand tall and order to surrender. And imagine - one enemy escapes under the gun, and the second makes several shots and hides in the shelter. Three experienced soldiers could not do anything!

Well, everyone makes mistakes. The first enemy is defeated. We run further and see a crowd of vilians, far exceeding us in number. What are we doing? That's right - we order them to surrender again!

Miraculously surviving the fight, our idiots are moving forward to the battle with the boss. And imagine: they made the same mistake twice. On the way, they lost a friend (more on that later). We caught up with the enemy because of which this nightmare began. They sit in ambush. What should they do? Correct - order him to surrender! *laughter through tears*

In future battles, the situation will change slightly. There will be even a moment when the hero first shoots and removes one enemy. But it is rather an exception. Heroes will run chest on the embrasure. They will face enemies and move themselves at a disadvantage. There is not the mechanics of hidden battles that exist in XCOM, Mutants Year Zero, Phantom Doctrine, Troubleshooter, etc. But if the game obliges us to fight in the open, then the plot and actions of the heroes do not even try to justify it somehow. They just go to die, like a flock of sheep for slaughter.

Small spoiler (10 minutes of play) about a dying hero: the infiltrator hacks the alerting system and accuses our heroes of treason and trying to arrange a terrorist act by overloading the engine of a spaceship moored at the docks. Heroes catch up with the soldiers. Unlike our woodpeckers, they do not try to talk, but open fire. The captain orders them to lay down their arms, but they simply ignore them. And now attention - one of the idiots - Rear Admiral. She listens to the orders of the captain and does not even try to say anything in this situation. Just think - ordinary soldiers hear the alert on the speakerphone and attacking the captain and rear admiral. I hope that they were shot. :)

This is followed by a classically clichéd company - the heroes lost everything they had. On a fragile boat they save the galaxy, enlisting the support of new allies. All this we have seen many times - Mass Effect, Battletech, and so on, and so on. But here's the catch - in those games the heroes became victims of planned intrigues, victims of bureaucracy and xenophobia. Here heroes become hostages of their idiocy. Two cretins (remember - the captain and the rear admiral) escape into hyperspace, as they were accused of treason. The infiltrator's corpse is lying in the docks. The whole ship is packed with video cameras (we are shown a picture from the engine control room). Characters have radio communications. Senior officers have their leaders, contacts with army superiors and friends, political contacts. But they do not even try to use the moldy brain and tell the truth to anyone. In fact, the heroes have hidden the truth from the command.

I just can't believe the reality of this insane world!..

The world with a galaxy where we can go only one corridor. The game is linear. But there is a choice - we can ask for a new sword or shotgun for the mission. We can get a bonus to humanism or autocracy. The only fork in the plot allows us to choose a new companion. The remaining missions are not attached to a planet. You can fly to Mars or Venus and meet the same enemies on the same location with the same goal - to kill everyone or disarm the bomb.

The world is completely dead. There are several non-memorizing alliances with complex abbreviations. They are grotesque and hypertrophied in their desire to correspond to one of the four extremes. For example, there is an authoritarian Japanese shogunate. But these are not Minmatar from Eve Online, well thought out and inscribed in the history of the Universe. This is not a parody from Red Alert. These are faceless creatures that are distinguished from the rest only by a few lines in the tooltip of a mission.

There is no world. The story is sucked from the finger and recorded on the knee. Characters are idiots whom I cannot empathize with. Dialogues do not offer a choice, only reactions are those corresponding of extremes of ideology: independent, autocracy, bureaucracy, humanism. Complete disappointment.

Well, since the plot does not cause any pleasure, let's say a few words about the gameplay.
This is a Mass Effect 3 with a top view. All the complexity of the fighting is based on the enemies that fall from the sky. You are killing the penultimate enemy. The strength of your team is running out, but you did it! But what is it? A boss and two bodyguards are falling from the ceiling. They do not wait for their turn, but immediately run for pre-set positions. The boss, a flamethrower with pre-emptive fire, rises right next to your half-dead hero. He needs to escape to the cover, but he cannot do it - if he moves, he will be burned. If he stay, he will be burned. And all the other characters have already made a move. This is not a tactical game.

And of course, terrible balance and strange skills. For example, the shooter has the ability to automatically retaliate when the enemy enters his attack zone. This is a passive ability. Another passive ability causes him to counterattack the attacker in ranged combat. And another small detail - there is no chance of a miss in the game. The probability of hitting the target is 100% if it is not hidden behind cover. If the target is behind a low cover, the chance to hit it is 50%. Otherwise, a cover will be damaged. Now imagine what happens when several such shooters rush into the room, ignore the sequence of turns, and take positions advantageous to them.

In order for the player to be able to resist dozens of such enemies, murderous range and AOE attacks are added. You will most often fight with skills, and wait for their cooldown. Link a group of enemies with a chain of pain. Jump into the center with an AOE attack ignoring control zones. Run for cover. Wait for cooldown.

I still have many words, but the length of the review is limited. Hope for a bright future. :)

Is this a new thing with developers (I'm looking at you underworld ascendant)? You make a great game and then you throw all the hard work out the window by forcing the player to go through large chunk of very difficult gameplay without the ability to save, so that in the likely outcome that you fail, you have to do it all over again. And again. Why? Nobody wants this. It will just make people not buy your great game, which I am certain is not the aim of the devs. Even the most recent dark souls game had checkpoints every 5 meters. I mean, I love tactics games and I am all for including hardcore modes (I only play xcom 2 on ironman) but don't force the players through the gauntlet before they can learn to appreciate this game you just slaved over. I am giving this the thumbs up because the two related issues that kill the game (having to go through full missions without saving and without being able to heal and reload) can hopefully be patched and because it's actually a really good tactical game worth saving. I like the colourful shiny star trek graphics, its a welcome change, I like the clean UI, the AI is great, I like the focus on team work and using different abilities together. The story is sci fi video game blah blah. It gets the job done but this is not The Witcher 3 or even Battletech. It would be nice to have a great story for a change but really who cares? We are here for the battles and boy do they shine. Now please fix your game devs. Thank you.

At this time I cannot recommend this game.

While the gameplay is fun and the game looks nice, the lack of saves between battles is unacceptable. I played through 3 fights and logged off thinking I would come back later and do the fourth. Instead, when I went back to the game I found I was back at the beginning (including all the starting cut scenes). I actually have no idea how many fights I have to complete before I can save, so I have no idea how much time I have to set aside to play.

Additionally annoying was the fact that I could not log off until I had gone through all the cut scenes and started the first battle.

While not a game killer for me, there is no character customisation at all. While focussing on a specific main character for story purposes is a great thing, it is still possible to allow players to customise appearance and gender while having a backstory and plot laid out. As I said, this is not a game breaker for me, just a minor annoyance, but some people might think otherwise.

The game has great potential for a high fun factor but the first step is fixing the save game situation.

Okay I think the game is fun initially, but after a couple missions the difficulty ramps up extremely fast, with a "mission" actually being four or more battles in a row. The battles start off hard and get much harder, at the same time your units have less and less health. You will fail, trust me, and then be punted all the way back to the beginning and have to do all those battles you completed so expertly all over again.

So the balance right now is total crap/sadistic, but the game quality/content is high. Balance is relatively easy to fix. So I am giving this a thumbs up for the community to buy and check this game out, and then camp on it until it is playable beyond the first couple hours. Which I would imagine will happen within a month or so.

X-Com type movement style, Storyline Choices, I like it but it does have its flaws you can't exit the mission to restock gear before trying the mission again. you run from one match to another to another to another without being fully healed same goes for your ammo no refill, same goes for your medkit no refills, you also dont get a save between or during the match so if you make it to the 4th match and lose you start at the first match over and over again other then that I could be very happy with the game and enjoying it if they restock everything between matches or let us save or start at the match we lost in. It is early Access so maybe they will add inventory options.

If they fix the med kits & ammo refill each battle then I would say buy the game but its not worth it atm

I wanna get it a perfect review but If everyone gives it a good review then whos to say they will fix the issues.

Games I have played like this
Valkyria Chronicles 93 recorded hours also played on ps2
Valkyria Chronicles 152 hrs on record
Battletech 200 hrs on record
Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus 30 rs on record game is new
X-Com: Enemy Unknown 789 hrs on record
X-Com 2: 381 hrs on record
Final Fantasy Tactics over 989 recorded ps1 and psp

So I have tried the game and want to share my impressions. Since I have just played a few hours I cannot fully evaluate it.
The gameplay is pretty similar to X-Com with some differences.

- Missing Voiceover. I don't know if it is planned to be added but I had never such a strong feeling that the characters should "talk" instead of just displaying the text. It would immensly help immersion.
- There seems to be just 0, 50 and 100 % chance to hit. A bit boring for my taste.
- Its not grid based like X-Com but has free movement. I can live with both.
- Cover is mostly destructible.
- Sometimes the actions happens behind objects so camera placement could be more intelligent.
- In one mission there just came more waves of enemies. Seemed pretty unfair to me. Also one enemy drops mines to my covers and when I flee they explode. Don't know how to counter that and also seems unfair. Other enemies blind my chars and thus make them "useless" for 3 turns since they can't do antyhing than move in this time.
- A mission consists of several battles, mostly with increasing difficulty. When you mess up you can restart the mission but you have to do the "easy" battles again. An option to redo just the last fight is indispensable for me. Otherwise the punishment is way too hard for my taste and sucks the fun out of the game.
- Overwatch areas are displayed. Nice. Somehow unexplainable my chars STILL always run into it ;).
- There is plenty of Melee combat.
- The setting is a "weird" mixture from sci-fi and antics. Unusual but not bad for my taste. Just not the general thing you would expect.
- Story is nice and interesting so far.
- Many special abilities like dragging enemies towards me etc.. I think its way more diverse and offers more tactical depth than X-Com where its mainly straight shooting.
- For me its very difficult to estimate who I can shoot at when going to a certain position. I often end up where I can't do what I intended to do and thus wasted a turn.
- Battlefields are very varied and mostly nicely designed.

What I would wish:
Pick up weapons/armor/money from fallen enemies. Loot crates, at least when just walking around (not enganged in fighting). The "walking" between the fights is just meaningless, especially when I often can't directly find where I'm supposed to go.
An option to keep mouse within game screen for multi monitor setups.
Overwatch always hits. Thats too predictable for me. Maybe have an evasion check or something.
An option to just redo the last fight not restart the whole mission. This is simply waste of time I can spend better.

Other than that the game appears pretty polished and bug free to me. I have a hard time deciding wether to recommend or not because of the "unfair" things I mentioned. If you like these kind of games give it a try. But for me its currently a bit too frustrating and thus I wait until it gets fixed. But maybe its so by design and I'm just too spoiled or too stupid.

Note: I play with Steam in offline mode so my gametime count may not represent my actual playtime.


Update: I have played two more missions. Still just the standard weapons available. More Human enemies. Und the feeling of unfairness. There comes a guy with a flamethrower and sets my whole team on fire albeit its behind cover and behind corners. Then I shall play 4 battles again to come back to that point? Not with me. The number of retries for a mission seems limited to 2. I guess the Devs make it intentional that it is so hard but for me this is no longer fun. I don't know how to counter that stuff when I don't even know what awaits me. This is too much trial and error and simply feels unfair to me. My team of 3 usually fights against much more (up to 9 until now) enemies. My people have 3 to 4 times the hitpoints of the enemies but the enemies also have armor and repleneshing shields. And each of them shoots at me. On the other hand I lack proper information wether I can shoot from where I want to move or not.

Sumarry: The game has good quality (Optics, Gameplay, Polish). But it also has a steep learning curve and feels difficult and unfair to me. A "rewind" or turn/battle restart option could make up for mistakes and missing information. But playing the whole mission with several battles again is just stupid and frustrating for me. So I still recommend it but you need a high frustratioin tolerance and a bit masochism to enjoy it I guess.

I thought I'd drop a preliminary review since the game just launched on early access. I just started (played a few missions), and I'll return with more thoughts once I've played more, but so far, what a cool game! The game is a strategy/rpg with X-Com-type fighting and a space/intergalactic/warring factions type of theme. I’m quite impressed with the production values for this game, especially considering the price point, and based on what I’ve played, I’d say it’s well-worth supporting.

I should also mention that I have a pretty good gaming rig (i7 quad core, 1080, 16 bg ram bla bla bla), but the game is running very well so far which is always nice and not always a certainty with an early access game. And of course, although I’m giving this a thumbs-up, it’s obvious that it isn’t a finished product. The game play is fun but there are elements that need work, and I hope the devs consider including some voice acting to breathe more life into the characters. But hey, it’s early access!

I'll return with more thoughts later, especially if it turns out that my postive review was a little hasty for whatever reason haha. But yeah, take the plunge if you’re hesitating!