And the epic story of failed 4x games continues, or to quote Baleur from the Steam Forums (whose opinion on 4x games I can always, 100% share and same applies for LoE)
This game is in a similar state to what SoTS2 was at release.
Yeah, no joke.
Heck even in SoTS2, even though it had almost no gameplay, at least the sliders and buttons worked properly.
In this, while it HAS some interesting gameplay, the interface simply doesn't work.
I had an absolutely abysmal first impression of this game, even worse than SoTS2 because there at least there was eyecandy to look at in the main menu.
I adore the procedural planets with their slow morph to terraforming or urbanisation. I also adore the music and general feel of the game, the different user interface designs and even sounds depending on the species you play as.
I love the Aliens / H.R. Giger feel some icons and artwork has.
The galaxy really is huge on max size, and there are a good number of planets and solar systems within it.
Feels very Imperium Galactica, feels like i wished Endless Space was like (in terms of zooming down to the solar systems, having proper planetary simulations and ship control).
But by god it is buggy beyond belief.. I can deal with it crashing every 50 turns, because it autosaves every turn. But i can not deal with basic industry-standard control methods NOT WORKING. Why the hell can i not double click on 1 to jump to my control group? Why can i not shift click to make waypoints or DESELECT that pesky colony ship in my group? Why can i not shift to SELECT the ships around my colony ship? I have to bloody manually move it out, then drag select the remaining ships. Jesus christ, this is 2012, not 1991...
No wait, even in Command & Conquer 1 you could shift select units....
Overall i'm very torn. I feel ripped off that i just wasted 40 bucks on this mess. I've bought 10 euro games that are ten times as polished, deep and complex as this game. This is the same overpriced piece of incomplete nonsense that was Sword of The Stars 2. And I'm sure this game will also continue being sold at FULL price without as much as a notice on the store page that it is woefully incomplete.
Why? Why devs? Why do you decieve your customers, your lifeblood?
Why do you treat us like pieces of ? in the gutter?
We're human beings dammit, we deserve to be treated with some respect after we pay your bloody salaries, don't we?!
--- This is what you both should have done ---
If you (and Sword of The Stars 2, as well) were just HONEST with us, none of this would have happened..
If you would just have been honest and done what other incomplete games do, we would not have had a problem. Sell the game as a pre-beta game. Label it as "pre-release, pay now - play now!"
I would not have a problem, i would gladly have reported all the bugs and helped polish it up for release.
But no, you couldn't do that could you? You had to be like Kerberos Productions. You had to hush-hush the game, not release any footage, and decieve every single one of us.
You could not just be honest and open and say, "here's the game, it is not complete, it is not polished, but we really need your support to finish it. if you buy it now, you get the beta version until it's polished enough for release".
SO many games do that, and it works great in every case. Why did you opt for the ?? option?
Jerks. If you would have been honest about it, i would have bought it anyway, and happily supported it until it was polished. But if you decieve us don't expect any support, you literally stole my money. I paid for a full finished game, that is what you advertised it as.
Give me my money back.
Here is my list of immediate problems.
1. You can not double-press control groups to jump to them.
2. You can not shift or ctrl click to select or deselect units, make waypoints, queue anything, etc.
3. You can not load a campaign game, it will count your click on the load menu as clicking on Skirmish "behind" the menu, and stat a new skirmish game instead of loading your save, lol.
4. The ship design UI works once you learn that you must DRAG and drop stuff onto the main view, nothing in the game tells you this, no buttons or category buttons have any tooltips what so ever.
5. Zooming in the galaxy map is odd, if your mouse is not hovering directly over a start it refuses to zoom in.
6. You can not focus on a selected unit or group unless you directly double click ON the unit, which is impossible if it is moving.
7. You can not skip out of dialogue in the campaign, or the interface elements will 'stick' forever.
8. Jumping out of the planet build screen sometimes warps you halfway across the solar system for no reason.
9. Scrolling the view is RIDICULOUSLY slow, with no way to change it.
10. The mouse pointer itself is slow in an odd way, i think the "enhanced accuracy" setting in windows which adds a tiny bit of acceleration is not working in this game, yet every other game i've played simply uses the mouse speed / whatever that you have set in your OS. Not this one..
11. There are no graphics option. Zero. Set your resolution, that's it.
12. No anti-aliasing in a 2012 game. Again!! What are these developers these days smoking? Anti-aliasing CAN be forced via FXAA in your nvidia control panel, and it is desperately needed. The text ain't blurred too much.
13. There is again NO explanation of certain game systems, colony ships persist after colonizing a planet, one assumes you 'repair' them at a repair dock to refill them. But no such function exists.. Self-destruct tally hooo!
14. Some military ship designs take 1 turn to build, while others with the exact same complexity and modules take 12 turns.
15. You can not zoom while holding the right mouse button to rotate the camera. Complicated to code that i guess?
16. Fleets do not work, at all. You can form a fleet, but it does NOT appear in the galaxy map where you select it, and when you click on the fleet in the solar system view, guess what happens? It does NOT select the ships in the fleet!!! It merely opens the list to show you what ships are in it.
Brilliant genious design choice. Why would i want to select the ships in my fleet by clicking on the fleet?
Don't be preposterous!
17. You can only play against 1 single AI, regardless how huge you make the galaxy.
That say all there is. But I have to admit through not entirely legal means (Did I ever mention a friend of mine knows a friend who for some reason always has all games when they come out ;p) I played this trainwreck too.
First thoughts from me, remember.. not bought it, just played it (And I promise I deleted it again and gave that friend a solid scolding, with cake)
1) The story makes you immediately think someone else should have written it. Someone who read Ender Saga.
2) The story is beyond stupid, and with stupid I don't mean just childish, it is simply executed very very badly.
3) The camera focus and scroll/zoom problem is a game-stopper, on anything but the postcard size, the scroll is terribad.
4) Terrible GUI issues (Sots2 was not this bad on release, that's how bad)
5) This game has no balance. So it can't be imbalanced. It is simply "not balanced and tuned at all" yes, 2% research.... opaque information flow. To this day I still have no idea what the bars on ships even mean. (I can guess but seriously? A tutorial does not mention that!!?)
It has some good things, the graphics are very nice. I love the module and weapon placement system, the procedural planet changes. But that is all.
This is the game we have not been waiting for.
And again. The only hope is Arcengames takes it upon themselves to make a 4x game. Because it seems anyone else simply has absolutely no god damn clue what they are doing. It makes me sick people with no clue get funding for games that are on a simple craftsman level TERRIBLE quality. Features you think are standard don't exist here. And again as Baleur writes, a hush hush policy.
And that at 45€Thank you Kalypso Entertainment .. wow, terrible. Sots 2 was bad,
this is worse. 1 AI, Baleur was not kidding. 1 AI enemy is all you get. If you even get that far, the game loves to crash randomly, and even starting a game is twilight zone material, because there is
no loading bar... lmao.
And yeah, absolutely 0 graphics options. Doesn't run smooth for you? Sucks to be you! Runs too fast and needs AA? Sucks to be you, unless you force AA, which you should. the Font and GUI is already terrible and FXAA doesn't ruin it any more ;p This is a "could have been" not a "Will be" not a "is" .. this game is not even worth to get on a steam sale for 5$
The judgement is spoken. My verdict for Legends of Pegasus.
Fail of the year.Also if you think I am too harsh, remember.. 45€ that is full price. This is essentially a scam.