Bought this because, well I was sooo hungry for a sci-fi RPG. I didn’t have much expectations, but at least I hope for a little entertainment but after finishing the work camp escape and a little bit of the first “city” it’s quite a disappointment for me. I’ll play more, maybe-maybe the game becomes better later on.
First – location, it has “Mars” in the title but I do not see Mars at all in the game. All I see looks like some slums/squat in desert area with some generic “cave” and “industrial interior” thrown into the mix every now and then. But maybe that’s me. When I see “sci-fi” and “Mars” setting I instantly compare shit to Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Mars” trilogy, maaan – that would be an awesome setting for RPG! That’s rich environment, in comparison M:WL setting is in a way “post-apocalyptic” so it should explain lack of interesting technical stuff, advanced weaponry, etc but I feel disappointed anyway by blandness of the environment.
Second thing – area/dungeon design, it’s plain fucking terrible. Layout is dull, I do not understand why every 30 seconds you have to go through the doors with stupid door opening animation, jump over the gate (with stupid jumping animation) or climb up the rock step (yes, you’ve guessed – with stupid climbing animation). The only purpose I see is artificially lengthen the travelling time so you don’t see how small the levels are. Levels are linear, it feels like running through a corridor with a combat every 153 meters.
Every now and then you have some branch, and for “exploring” off-track there is always an reward, oh-wow “secret” stash of junk. “Secrets”, well after 10 minutes of game you know where to expect them – see a 4 boxes in the corner – it’s guaranteed that behind them is the 5th one with junk used in crafting. So, yeah. The levels are so generic, bland and predictable that Mass Effect ones shine as a pinnacle of game design.
You have 3 different “trees”: direct combat skills (“fighter”), sneak/tricks (“rogue”) and technomancer – aoe/cc/buffs (“wizard”). At first it looks like a lot of skills, each with 3 levels. Skills are grouped in “rings” – you have to invest enough points in the “ring” to start investing in higher one, also skills are connected in “lines” orthogonally – you cannot invest 3 points in the skill in higher ring unless you also put 3 points in the skill line in lower ring.
It first it looked like you have to make choices while you shape your dude, but I’ve leveled up very fast (12 levels in one session - few hours) so it may be the case that you train majority of skills in the long run anyway – depends on the the game length.
IMHO some skills are broken. Stealth is a joke in so many ways… Useless wast of skill points – gives nearly zero combat benefits, looks artificial, buggy – very often your dude is sneaking in full light before the eyes of enemy and zero reaction, sneaking behind – instant detection, WTF?. Small plus - some combat skills/tricks are fun and you have to think/know when to apply them and when they are useful. But some enemies have one viable strategy to be used to defeat them, period.
Combat feels very, very Witcher 2-like including the “roll with your dude to own them all”. Every now and then you can mix using a skill, but the majority is “roll behind the dude, strike once or twice before he turns are his goons run towards you and swarm you to death“.
Companion is useless, one good thing that when his HP falls to zero he just falls unconscious, if I were to keep the dumbfuck alive, I’d insta rage quit. And well, despite sci-fi setting 95% of combat is melee, except the “nail gun” used as a skill and technomancer powers. No rifles, lasers, plasma guns, meh.
Small incline: you HP is not bloated with level-ups so the margin for mistakes is small. If you allow yourself to be swarmed or enemies position themselves so multiple of them can shoot/electrify you => trouble. “Healing potions” do not recover your HP instantly but give a boost to HP regeneration, so no potion spamming – that’s cool. Of course you can kite enemies with rolls and wait for regeneration… Sometimes the game feels like an acrobatics simulator ;-)
Quests/plot… Well, nothing too creative – lot’s of fedex, collecting X items of some junk, etc. Some side quests give nice rewards (f.e. crafting schematis). At first it looks like there is some C&C, but I have discovered that it’s just a façade. In the starting prison you have a choice to try to save two more dudes but after you start the escape phase they die in stupid, scripted way. Well, at least I grabbed some XP for this side quest, oh-wow. Small chat with only a few NPCs, merchant, a lot of dialog options lead to the same results, no speech/diplomacy-related skills, meh. Environment interaction limited to “loot a box/stash of junk”, “click once on a shiny thing to progress quest”, meh.
Crafting – quite nice and useful. Well, in fact it looks like that you find the very basic version of weapon/armor in game and you have to enhance them to be useful. Nice choices here, you have to decide if you want more survivability or a lot of crits. Crafting ammo and consumables is also useful.
My recommendation: do not buy it now, maybe it’s worth $5 with all the future DLCs in a future Steam sales. Only if simplified Witcher 2 in pseudo sci-fi setting looking like a corridor version of Megaton from Fallout 3 (painted red, orange and brown) does not make you puke. It feels like an console action game with a few RPG elements, definitely not a Codex stuff.
EDIT: At least the UI is really good, not a trace of console-like endless scrolling. The character page where you select skills is cool, selecting skills/powers/tricks in combat very smooth.
