There are not just bugs. The game is also baby easy. All the fallback mechanism made it so you basically can’t fail, the game throws money at you. The whole economy is balanced around fallbacks instead of really balancing, because you can’t balance what isn’t working to begin with.
It’s going to be amazing, once they fix the bugs and performance. Right now it’s a full price early access. Almost every system of the game has at least one bug. A lot of the simulation currently is working with fall back scripts. I really really want to recommend the game, because it’s fun, but it’s also rushed out the gate.
It’s recommend for everyone buying C:S2 to test with the 100k citizens save file (enable unlimited money to prevent achievement from triggering). In settings disable DoF, motion blur and Volumetric. Borderless window mode. Enable TAA, as that’s the only AA that I think usable.
On WQHD, RTX3080 10gb, 5900x, 32gb ram this will result in a mix out of playable and unplayable. Everything set to high. A small town will run >60fps, the 100k will be between 43fps and 10fps, depending on how many pedestrian walk around. Currently this is tanking my performance most.
I hope to see first performance fixes before I reach a 100k city. Also I still have the option to turn down level of details and global Illumination. Overall the game could use some more color, but is very playable on my small town.
The game has some other bugs, like difficulty placing roads/demolishing them. Quite a few shadow issues and other building/vehicle glitches. There’s also a lack of certain details that feel unfinished.
Some services don’t even work properly as they are bugged or hidden via bandaid strategies by the devs, for example early game city budget. Garbage trucks not moving out of building. Animation of npc visiting parks are missing. Bikes are yet to be announced (but somewhere on the roadmap).
Weird balancing decisions, like the milestone/money flow, while losing money. Lack of building variety and a lot of bad textures, like blurry roads, lacking grass, strange water surface style. There’s also bugs that textures don’t load properly. There’s some shadow/texture streaming issue going on.
Overall: I can’t recommend it, even though I currently play it and even have fun. The performance is too bad, the lacking details will needs a few months extra and some systems even longer before they’re fleshed out.
As fan, well of course I’ll swallow that and keep playing…
Edit: will report back after the latest patch today. I’ve heard +10fps for some.
Edit2: personally I believe the performance better now. Still lots of work to do but playable and stable.
Difference here is, Crysis had graphics never seen before. C:S2 on max settings is nothing groundbreaking, it doesn’t even have raytracing. In this case there’s performance issues, not futuristic technologies.
I’ve finished the game and yes, it’s price is too steep. I’d buy it half off. There’s some sort of replayability but it’s small and most might not do it. It’s still a fun game and highly recommend, but not for the full price.
I like the game as a whole. I could name you shortcomings of nearly every aspect of the game yet as a whole I have a really good time.
Some quests have a too early ending or sudden dropoff, yet they were fun and the dialogues were good. Building your spacecraft is fun, despite the restrictions on how you can rotate stuff. The points of interest are often kind of lacking, but then on I’m in space and I don’t mind mostly “empty” planets as that’s what space is.
It’s actually kind of strange, because I don’t like No Man’s Sky. I find that game so boring and tedious. While Starfield is engaging to me. I wish the survival aspects of the game were a bit more, as they got nerfed too much. I’d like to prepare for the planet conditions.
I don’t like that unique weapon rewards aren’t unique other than a name/skin. But the overall weapon of the game are fun and I have many in my inventory that I barely use because I enjoy the ones I main. (Meaning I have enough for New Game+ as I just focus on laser and energy weapons at the moment)
The environment often shines at night, the weather looks great and I like the music creating a good synergy.
I found NPCs to be enjoyable too, while I’m sad I can’t put two NPC of Neon in my ship crew (the bagger girl and the gang girl, sorry I don’t have their names at hand)
Space battles are fun and not too hard but not too easy. (I play on hard difficulty though).
I have fun with the quests too. Just a few days ago I did a side mission with a rough AI, that I could solve peacefully with Ryujin dialogue options. I have yet to visit Chrimson Fleet and do most of the main story. I’m just at the beginning and there’s so much great stuff yet to happen.
I still enjoy Starfield after 60 hours and the enjoyment is even growing. I’m sick of pretending the game isn’t good, just because the hive mind decided so. It has flaws sure, but which game doesn’t?
Some environments are amazing and change so much by daytime or weather. I love this.
Destroyable environment like Company of Heroes but modern rts setting.
Cities Skylines in the latest Unreal Engine.
Stardew Valley in pretty 3D graphics with no tile system. Valheim comes close but the graphics, while unique, is far from highly detailed.
Teardown multiplayer shooter.
General a lot of single player could use a simple coop that’s just playing the game together. It’s very rare that coop is more of an addition than a game focus. While often I just wish I could share the fun with friends together. It’s sadly because of the complexity of adding coop, vs rewards when it’s “just” the same experience but with friends, instead of a competitive like mode where they can sell skins and shit.
I personally always wanted to build a battle ship simulator game with crew system and destructible ships, with harsh survival elements like in the movie Master and Commander. Where you’re very close in the action and ships get real impact holes. Most indie games don’t come close enough on the realism level I’d like to see. Sea of thieves is somewhat there.
Ray tracing sounds like a stretch, but with frame generation nothing seams to be impossible anymore. Though I’d rather see them target consistent 60fps now.