The good 👍
- Well made space combat
- Works with VR

The bad 👎
- Story is meh
- Cutscene animations are stiff

Conclusion:

It is a good game in a not often seen genre. The single player campaign is okayish, with basic plot and not so well written characters. It works as a longer tutorial to PvP battles, where Empire and Republic compete for dominance. The problem is that there are not so many active players left, and the game fills their place with average AI.

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Details

📘 Story ☐ Bare-bone ☑ Average ☐ Good

☐ Interesting lore ☐ Well written NPCs ☐ Choices matter Usual theme. Bad guy decides to betray the Empire and help Republic soldiers fight for freedom. In order to win, they cannibalize star destroyers and make a huge ship that can shoot even bigger laser. Previous bad guy protégée feels hurt and does everything to hunt him down. It's as simple and predictable as it can get. The game is linear and there are no choices. The only interesting bit is that we play missions as both Empire and Republic. Gaps in story on Empire end are filled with missions played as Republic.

🔄 Gameplay loop ☐ Boring ☐ Average ☑ Good	☐ Grindy ☑ Repetitive Each mission starts with a short briefing of what the mission is about. They are not really detailed or interesting. Then we jump into a specific ship (which acts as tutorial to each ship type available in game) and follow simple objectives. Destroy this base, escort this ship, follow someone. We are accompanied by 3-4 NPCs ship that can drop us repair pack or kill some easy targets. The mission ends with us "doing light jump" and we're back at the hangar. Here we can have short conversations with wing mate NPCs to learn a bit about their background and start the next mission by going to the briefing room.
🪄 Abilities ☑ Basics (walk, jump etc.) ☐ Magic / powers	☐ Skill tree ☐ Statistics ☐ Combos There are no real abilities. It's all about flying the ship.
🎮 Controls ☐ Clunky and stiff ☐ Adequate ☑ Fluid and enjoyable	☐ Not customizable ☐ Stiff animations ☐ Sometimes confusing That's the main part of the game and it is good. Controls are not as simple as "point and shot" but also not complex like Flight Simulator. There is delay between us moving mouse / joystick and ship turning. We need to control throttle and redirect power between engines, weapons and shields as needed. There is no 3rd person view, everything is seen from the cockpit. Which means that HUD and field of vision is different in each ship. We also can't see what is behind or sideways, which makes the game more challenging. (I love snug corners in 3rd person games to see if there are enemies :D). Some ships are fast and fragile, while others are slow and heavily armored. Input is responsive and smooth.
📇 Inventory and menus ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Over complicated	☐ Made for gamepads ☐ Hard to navigate Menus are easy to navigate. There is no real inventory, instead we can customize ship components. Armor, lasers, rockets, shields, anti-rocket measurements etc. They need to be unlocked first with in-game credits. Components do not work as upgrades, there is always a trade-off. Lasers that shot faster but give less punch, engine that has higher top speed but less maneuverability. So it's more like tailoring ship to our game style than making it overall better. There are also ship and pilot skins that can be unlocked, but they cost a lot. And we can't even see them except for when we're in hangar.
🥊 Combat 🏹 ☐ Boring and generic ☐ Average ☑ Good ☐ Great	☐ Well designed weapons It's good. In SP there is balance between how simple AI is and how many ships we need to destroy. Thanks to controls, it's fluid and enjoyable. It lacks a bit in MP though, as being stacked against long-term players made me feel like a sitting duck. And other times we're stacked against complete newbies (or bots when the game could not find enough players) which makes it too easy.
🤖 Game AI ☐ Brain dead ☐ Really basic ☑ Average ☐ Smart and responsive	It's not great. It does feel like enemy ships are there for us to kill without giving much challenge. Interaction with wingman NPCs is limited to "follow x along" or "press x to get repair kit". It's possible to order them to attack a specific ship, but I never personally used it. It's not a strategy game that requires planning. Also, why some newbie that just joined the team would give orders to pilots with years of practice?

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☑ Story progression ☐ Few collectibles / easy to get ☑ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☐ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☑ One checkpoint, frequent ☐ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☐ Can run on potato ☑ Medium requirements ☐ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☐ Average ☑ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☐ Nothing to remember ☐ Good voice acting ☑ Good weapons & effects ☐ Good OST ☑ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☐ Resolution, volume only ☐ Basic graphic settings ☑ Advanced graphic settings ☑ Adjustable HUD ☑ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☐ No map ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☑ Minimap ☐ Hard to read	Details: Cutscene and face animations are stiff

The good 👍
- Combat is good with exception to range attacks

The bad 👎
- It's possible to re-bind controls, but it is something leads to unexpected results in combat

Conclusion:

I was bit disappointed. It looks like there is "undnertale" approach to combat vs pacifist, but it did not matter in the end. Enemies have things to say but it's not interesting and get repetitive fast.

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Details

📘 Story ☐ Bare-bone ☑ Average ☐ Good

☐ Interesting lore ☐ Well written NPCs Hero comes to (yet again) defeat the evil king and restore happiness to the kingdom. But this time one minion shows a spark of self thought and drops a chandelier on our hero, which does kill them. The surprised evil king sends minion (us) on a quest to do his evil deeds. There is "revelation" at the end which explains king behavior, but it's not unexpected. Main quest focus on going to three bosses that normally stand in the way of hero to return amulets, so that next hero will be able to defeat bosses, get amulets and defeat evil king.

🔄 Gameplay loop ☐ Boring ☑ Average ☐ Good	☐ Grindy ☐ Repetitive Simple platformer without metroidvania elements. We make a few jumps around to reach the next location, and either fight with enemies or jump over them to avoid combat. We can also bribe enemies with enough coins, which makes them neutral. Levels are small and there is not much exploration. Surprisingly, there are no secrets behind walls at all. Game is saved on safe stations.
🪄 Abilities ☑ Basics (walk, jump etc.) ☐ Magic / powers ☐ Advanced combat	☐ Skill tree ☐ Statistics ☐ Crafting We are a minion, not a hero. Walking and jumping is everything we can do outside of combat. During combat, we can attack or dodge. It's really simple.
🎮 Controls ☐ Clunky and stiff ☑ Adequate ☐ Fluid and enjoyable	☐ Not customizable ☐ Stiff animations ☑ Sometimes confusing As basic as it can get. Thought there was some problem to re-bind them. The game also does not work well with DualShock. And using ropes to traverse the level is really awkward. In normal game you jump from one rope to another and the character grabs it. Here we need to press the button for both leaving and grabbing rope. Which can end up with us making another jump instead of staying stationary. The game also has two bad QTE sequences which really feel out of place. Why would there be QTE mini-game in a platformer?
📇 Inventory and menus ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Over complicated	☐ Made for gamepads ☐ Hard to navigate The Whole UI is really simple. There is inventory, but it acts more like preview of upgrades we have. It's not possible to equip anything.
🥊 Combat 🏹 ☐ Boring and generic ☑ Average ☐ Good ☐ Great	☐ Well designed weapons We have one weapon - magic hilt that can either act as sword or really slow hammer. On top of that, we can dodge or block attacks. Combat is turn based and limited by endurance. We need x points of stamina to attack, stamina recovers really slowly, so in general we can swing the sword once during our turn and then prepare to dodge the enemy. We can find stamina and health upgrades in chests. Enemies have easy to read attacks that need to be dodged by either jump or crouch. It's possible to use shield, but it has limited uses, and it's hard to time block well. I would say combat is good if it stops on that. We need to learn enemies patterns to know if we need to jump or crouch to avoid damage. Problem is with flying enemies. We have slingshot to fight those and oh boy. Who thought it's good idea to control sling direction with left-right arrows. Not up-down arrows. Or simply mouse. No, it's counterintuitive pressing left or right directional keys.
🤖 Game AI ☐ Brain dead ☑ Really basic ☐ Average ☐ Smart and responsive	Enemies have 2 or 3 attacks each that are repeated in random order. They patrol maps on fixed routes. It's as basic as it can get.

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☑ Story progression ☑ Few collectibles / easy to get ☐ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☐ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☑ One checkpoint, frequent ☐ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☐ Can run on potato ☑ Medium requirements ☐ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☑ Average ☐ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☑ Nothing to remember ☐ Good voice acting ☐ Good weapons & effects ☐ Good OST ☐ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☐ Resolution, volume only ☑ Basic graphic settings ☐ Advanced graphic settings ☐ Adjustable HUD ☐ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☐ No map ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Minimap ☐ Fast travel	Details: Game is saved on save stations and few check points No voices, all characters blabber Map is accessible from stationary poles on levels

The good 👍
- Nice combat

The bad 👎
- Animations are too slow. Most of the mission time is wasted looking on characters walking around, 1-2s delays before they start attack or end attack. Same problem as in XCOM
- Game has good difficulty at start, but later it gets really easy

Conclusion:

I did enjoy this game but had to use cheat engine with speed bumped up 3-4x, otherwise I would not have patience to waste my time on animation. If I can end a mission in 15-20 min with faster animations, why would I spend 40 min on the same mission. Just because devs did not add slider to speed up filler animations. Apart from wasting player time it is a good tactical game with ability to pick missions we can to play, specialize tech-priests how we want, and interesting enemies.

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Details

📘 Story ☐ Bare-bone ☑ Average ☐ Good

☐ Interesting lore ☐ Well written NPCs It is not a story-driven game. Adeptus Mechanics ship ends on some planet, and it turns out necros are there. The ship captain decides to stay and kill necros general before he can fully awaken and threaten other worlds. There is not much lore backstory for people not familiar with 40k universe, and mission goals are really simple.

🔄 Gameplay loop ☐ Boring ☐ Average ☑ Good	☐ Grindy ☑ Repetitive Ship bridge works as our hub. We can open priest menu to upgrade them, check unlocked tech, change equipment and select mission. There are few mission-giving characters. Beating the current mission can unlock 1-2 further missions from quest-giver. Unlocked missions can be beaten in any order, and they don't get blocked if we end the mission from the other character or wait too long. In total, there are around 50 missions to choose from. Each mission works as a dungeon in isometric view, made from few connected rooms. A room can have mission objective, event (1-2 story sentences of what happened in this room) or glyph (changes to action points, enemy initiative, our health, loot). There is a doom clock that shows how close the last boss is to awakening. Each new combat turn and traversal between rooms add 1 or 2 bars to the awakening meter, and each 6 points rises the awakening level by one. There are some ways to lower the meter during the mission, but in general the more time we take to explore and fight enemies, the faster we're getting to the end of the game. Thought it does not feel like the game is too stingy with time we have, and don't force us to speed run through levels.
🪄 Abilities ☐ Basics (walk, jump etc.) ☐ Magic / powers ☑ Advanced combat	☑ Skill tree ☐ Statistics ☐ Crafting There are 6 skill linear skill trees that can be summarized as melee scout / ranged / boost troops / healing / generate action points. We can mix trees together, so we can have scout with some action points generation. There are too many abilities to describe, but they are unlocked in sequence, together with armor for priests. Priests don't get experience points, instead we need to pay to boost their level, and each level gives one ability point to invest into the tree. There are no ability combinations.
🎮 Controls ☐ Clunky and stiff ☑ Adequate ☐ Fluid and enjoyable	☐ Not customizable ☐ Stiff animations ☐ Sometimes confusing It's an isometric game so like I write each time - it would be hard to break controls. We move around with direction keys or mouse, and give order with mouse.
📇 Inventory and menus ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Over complicated	☐ Made for gamepads ☐ Hard to navigate Menus are basic but easy to read. There is a problem with inventory though. During missions, we can unlock gear (there is no research) and it gets listed in inventory in order it was unlocked. Which means that often higher level gear is mixed with junk. It's not possible to filter or sort it. Which makes it annoying to swap gear around. There is also no comparison tool that would show stats of current and new gear.
🥊 Combat 🏹 ☐ Boring and generic ☐ Average ☑ Good ☐ Great	☑ Well designed weapons Depending on unlocked skills our priests can have different initiative, movement points, ranged attack reach etc. At first it does feel we're under leveled, but not much later it's possible to do hard missions. At a point where we have action points generation abilities, a lot of movement points and higher gear it's possible to run across the map in one turn and kill harder enemies in 1-2 turns. Which feels a bit OP. Most of the attacks or abilities use action points, which are obtained by scanning AP pillars or killing enemies. So often combat turn consist of "use ranged weapon, walk to enemy and use melee, if you manage to down it you get action point". Unless the enemy is hit again by attack when they are downed / reanimated they will resurrect with half of original hit points. Enemy can have a shield that blocks melee or range attack. Enemy stats are not visible unless they are scanned with servo skull (one use per 2-3 turns) or with a specific ability. Servo skulls are also used to get action points from far away pillars. If a priest is killed during mission, it will be gone for good. Thankfully, the game has manual saves. There is only one melee weapon, but many ranged weapons to chose from.
🤖 Game AI ☐ Brain dead ☐ Really basic ☐ Average ☑ Smart and responsive	Enemies will react to our actions, try to flank us or pick easier target (which was pretty much always my healer). Combat is pretty challenging at the start when we don't have much gear and no abilities. But then quite easy later on. There are couple enemy types with both ranged and melee attacks and abilities, have their own attack patterns and things to watch out for.

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☑ Story progression ☐ Few collectibles / easy to get ☑ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☐ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☐ One checkpoint, frequent ☑ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☐ Can run on potato ☑ Medium requirements ☐ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☐ Average ☑ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☑ Nothing to remember ☐ Good voice acting ☐ Good weapons & effects ☐ Good OST ☐ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☐ Resolution, volume only ☑ Basic graphic settings ☐ Advanced graphic settings ☐ Adjustable HUD ☐ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☐ No map ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Minimap ☐ Fast travel	Details: There was a weird delay when choosing servo skull to scan that disappeared with cheat engine speed hack.

The good 👍
- Good game for kids and casuals
- Game has campaign co-op
The bad 👎
- There are so many puns it stops to be funny
- Basically fetch quest simulator. Go-kill-bring back is the only type of quest in game

Conclusion:

It's nice cute game to play with a kid, or safely leave a kid with. But I would not play as an adult, expecting high quality gameplay or story.

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Details

📘 Story ☑ Bare-bone ☐ Average ☐ Good

☐ Interesting lore ☐ Well written NPCs Continuation from 1st game and I don't remember what was in 1st game. Cat and dog are teleported into a world where cat and dog kingdoms fight each other. We need to find the legendary sword and end the conflict. There are a lot of puns that may look funny at first, but later when everything is forced into a pun they made me roll my eyes. Dialogues aren't really interesting.

🔄 Gameplay loop ☐ Boring ☑ Average ☐ Good	☑ Grindy ☑ Repetitive There are two characters - cat and dog. Only one can be controlled at a time and in SP 2nd character is controlled by AI (it's also immortal). In co-op 2nd character is controlled by another player. The story is linear, and we are sent between different NPCs and dungeons to retrieve some objects, or beat a specific enemy. Which makes basic loop really repetitive. Enemies have non-scaling levels, and we can't kill an enemy that is way above our level. Which means there is some side tracking required to get "missing" experience.
🪄 Abilities ☑ Basics (walk, jump etc.) ☑ Magic / powers ☐ Advanced combat	☐ Skill tree ☐ Statistics ☐ Crafting Really basic. Mana regenerates when we hit an enemy with melee weapon, and magic is secondary to melee. There are no stats, and our damage and defense depends on weapons and armor we randomly find in chests. Both enemies and us use the same abilities, they trigger and look the same.
🎮 Controls ☐ Clunky and stiff ☑ Adequate ☐ Fluid and enjoyable	☐ Not customizable ☐ Stiff animations ☐ Sometimes confusing There is no problem though the only thing that we can do is move around, press one button to attack and another to interact with NPCs or chests.
📇 Inventory and menus ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Over complicated	☐ Made for gamepads ☐ Hard to navigate Inventory have tabs for armor, helmets, melee and wands. It's not possible to sort it or throw away junk to ease the clutter. And there are dozens of useless outfits and weapons. I know it's appealing to kids to have a cat that looks like Robin Hood, Cook or Dragon, but they are generally low level armors. Menus are easy to navigate, though it's one of those annoying ones where we need to go to main screen to exit.
🥊 Combat 🏹 ☑ Boring and generic ☐ Average ☐ Good ☐ Great	☐ Well designed weapons It feels like the higher level difference between us and enemies, the more damage we deal. There is no parrying or blocking, we need to hit-and-run. Which means combat goes back and forth between "enemies attack, so we run around" and "enemy ended attack, so we jump in to hit it a few times". I know it's a mobile game, but it does not excuse it when it's released on PC as a "full" game. Weapons are generic and there is not much difference between them. Swords bash and wands shot short range projectiles.
🤖 Game AI ☐ Brain dead ☑ Really basic ☐ Average ☐ Smart and responsive	Enemies can only detect us when we're inside their detection circle, and charge at us while randomly using 1 or 2 abilities they have. They will not respond to us or coordinate their attacks. It's painfully obvious in case of the blue jelly-like enemy that can use lightning spell and shield, but lacks melee attack. It will charge lightning and shield, try to attack us with lightning and then just bounce to us while shield is on. But as it doesn't have melee it will just bounce around, so we can wait for shield to drop and kill it. It will not try to bounce away, to recharge lightning and try again.

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☑ Story progression ☑ Few collectibles / easy to get ☐ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☐ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☑ One checkpoint, frequent ☐ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☑ Can run on potato ☐ Medium requirements ☐ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☑ Average ☐ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☑ Nothing to remember ☐ Good voice acting ☐ Good weapons & effects ☐ Good OST ☐ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☑ Resolution, volume only ☐ Basic graphic settings ☐ Advanced graphic settings ☐ Adjustable HUD ☐ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☐ No map ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Minimap ☑ Fast travel	Details: