Hi everybody!
I joined Alpha testing with version 0.908 or 0.909 or something and played around a bit. Unfortunately my holiday ended and my time was short again.
Now launch is upon us (yay, grats!) and I had the opportunity to fire the game up again and decided to start freshly with a new game, same difficulty (Normal), but with Ironman enabled. Also chose a different commander and switched the Ninja in favor of the Sniper.
Balance-wise it is REALLY improved. The version I playtested in Alpha had an issue with too few Hacking points early on and I felt that the first few missions were too easy. I was one-shooting everyone and everything.
Now it is quite different. The first mission was a cakewalk this time around, but the second I lost. Not because the game (or RNG) was being unfair, I was just too careless. Now the difficulty feels exactly right for "Normal", not too hard, but also not too forgiving. Great job!
Also the first time I felt quite overwhelmed with items, which is not the case now. I find some good stuff, the variance os higher, but the customizing between missions feels more doable.
So, overall everything is better with 1.0! I will surely recommend this game to everyone I know. :-)
Thanks a bunch and keep up the good work! I hope the sales pick up on this one, it has definitely earned it!
So long,
Ipkins