Here are my impressions at the 5, 30, and 60 minute marks; I kept a notepad and set alarms to jot down all my thoughts at those intervals. Quotations are my word for word musings.
5 minutes:
-Strong title screen
-Excellent music
-Buttons have a nice "click" effect
-"A modern take on Alpha Centauri...?" I'm getting excited.
-Fairly standard, cookie-cutter factions. Religious fanatic, military dictator, economic powerhouse, expansionist socialist, eco-friendly hippie girl, and scientist. Indeed very similar to AC. Minus points for originality.
-NICE intro.
-HEX TILES, YUSSSSS
-UI is a litttttle close to Civ 5. Especially the way the notifications pop up on the right side just over the world map, and will not let you proceed without taking action with research/units/production.
-Months instead of years is a fantastic way to set this game and its pacing apart from other 4X games; games that span hundreds/thousands of years, yet never reconcile the concept of ONE RULER for this whole period.
-Zero bugs so far. Alt-tabbed back and forth a ton, played with graphics and resolutions, intentionally left a ton of tabs and other programs up.
30 minutes:
-Research tree looks/feels a little bland and daunting. Everything is a shade of grey, mouseover tooltips are extremely short and assume you already know what the building/unit type this tech unlocks actually does. Fine for experienced players, tough for total noobs. Consider integrating some kind of manual into the game menu to explain things and show tech/unit/buildings/weapons. Doesn't have to give a LIFE STORY (a la the infamous civpedia) but could save gamers a good bit of trial and error.
-Also appears completely viable to ignore certain techs forever, especially if you are gifted a free tech that normally requires earlier techs. In my case, I got analytical dynamics (seeker ATV's) from the word go, and now it appears I will never need to get reinforced steel plates. Others lead to no other techs at all. Not sure if this idea of skipping techs is intended; it could work if the goal is to force tough choices and create specialized factions in a tech race. But then usually you would be forced to eliminate one tech advance in favor of another... Jury is out on this.
-Unit resources (rank/power/movement/health) and their relationships are not all immediately clear to a new player. For example, how does ranking up affect the other stats? How much does my health improve, since all I see is a percentage? This all may become clear soon enough, but at 30 minutes, I am in the dark.
-This game FEELS very polished. Kudos.
-If I am understanding this correctly, there are weapons with certain bonus AND penalties that can be assigned to the different unit types. I like this idea a lot, reminds me again of Alpha centauri. Seems well implemented too (like the flame weapon obviously being used to torch alien bugs, but not so great against metal units)
-"OMG A COMPLETE CUSTOM UNIT WORKSHOP OMG OMG OMG" -Me freaking out and flashing back to hundreds of hours of Alpha Centauri. Seriously, why has no one else ever brought this concept back in any 4X game since?? I don't care that it's not original to this game, it's freaking awesome and I have missed it for 13 long, long years.
-"Xenomorph drones... really?" Could have dreamed up some more creative names for the bugs.
-Pervasive alien fungus too.... Seeing more and more similarities with alpha centauri. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, that game defined an entire year of gaming for me... just makes me
sometimes when its really egregious.60 minutes:
-The game is starting to spread its wings and distance itself from other well-known 4X titles (one in particular). For one thing, I really like the way that city resources are handled. Specifically the idea of Habitat. How has this never dawned on other 4X game devs... you have to grow your population AND house them properly, or they get upset. Simple and brilliant.
-Adding on the previous thought, I also like how the morale system is handled. A lot. Ties directly into many aspect of gameplay and will punish you in a hurry for ignoring the plebs.
-Great idea on staking a preemptive claim on territory before you expand via population growth. I honestly don't recall that this has been done before, and I really like it.
-If there is a unit auto-explore function, I have yet to find it. Add one or make it way more visible ASAP. Like.... non-negotiable. No one likes to manually click a unit around their whole starting area every turn for the first 30+ turns of play. Or if they do, that's their prerogative, but don't force the rest of us... lol.
-Good variety of alien units, with REAL COMBAT STATS!! God I still have nightmares about my big, bad, expensive units getting "scared" of the lowliest of aliens in a certain other game, and getting laughably wiped out. Thank you for not putting a whole crappy unnecessary extra layer of combat into this game, be it psychic or what have you.
-Unit map animations are OK, nothing special. The former unit is really repetitive while it builds.
-60 minutes on and I have yet to bump into another faction. But then, I have been playing rather slow and evaluating. So no opinion yet on diplomacy.
-Still zero bugs/crashes. Fantastic.
Overall, this game has been very enjoyable so far, with a fairly easy learning curve for experienced turn-based 4X gamers. Clearly polished. It definitely steps on some toes of other games in the genre (and even movies.. xenomorphs?? PANDORA??), borrowing game concepts from specifically alpha centauri and civilization, but hey, those are fantastic games... and to the developers' credit that have taken those basic concepts in a different direction to make them their own.
I will probably put in well over 100 hours on this beta key... and still buy the game. That says a lot.
