Final Upgrade

About

Final Upgrade is a single player strategy game. It was developed by TaosX and was released on December 6, 2022. It received mostly positive reviews from players.

In Final Upgrade, you will experience the role of artificial intelligence (AI), created by mankind to help spread colonists across the galaxy. In each game session, you are tasked with conquering one of the regions of the galaxy. Arriving at the site with one ship carrying minimal resources, you must build a massive factory spread over 100 sectors, producing all sorts of resources that the coloni…

Genres & Tags

Play Modes

Single-Player

Skip User Reviews

78%

Audience ScoreBased on 510 reviews

gameplay24 positive mentions

grinding10 negative mentions

The game offers a unique take on factory automation and logistics, allowing for creative ship and station designs.
The developer is highly responsive to community feedback and regularly updates the game, improving gameplay and fixing bugs.
Once the tutorial is completed, the game provides a relaxing and satisfying gameplay loop with a deep tech tree and meaningful choices.

The tutorial is excessively long and poorly structured, leaving many players confused and overwhelmed with information.
The user interface is clunky and unintuitive, making navigation and understanding game mechanics difficult.
Combat mechanics are underdeveloped and can feel frustrating, with AI behavior being inconsistent and lacking depth.

gameplay
88 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
27%
66%
7%
Gameplay reviews highlight a mix of engaging mechanics and frustrating elements. While the ship and fleet building, planet exploration, and resource management are praised, many players find the lengthy tutorial, convoluted mechanics, and counterintuitive UI detract from the experience. The game offers a chill atmosphere with various difficulty levels, but it requires significant polish and clarity to fully realize its potential.
- “As for gameplay itself, on standard difficulty, this game is very chill.”
- “There are also 7 levels of difficulty, which will change the way you need to approach the gameplay.”
- “Very chill gameplay, no time limits on anything, take your time, relax and make neat spaceships.”
- “After a tutorial that took me over two hours, you are let loose to do whatever you feel like, and gameplay for me became rather dull and complicated.”
- “Dunno what to say about this game, I tried to enjoy it, but the controls are mediocre, the game has issues with the tutorial wanting you to do something then glitching and not progressing, and the gameplay is bland.”
- “Gameplay is shallow.”
music
36 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
50%
42%
8%
The music in the game is generally described as relaxing and fitting for an automation game, though opinions vary widely. While some players appreciate the background music and find it enhances the experience, others criticize it as stock music that doesn't align well with the game's style, suggesting it could benefit from more original tracks. Overall, the soundtrack is seen as a mixed bag, with some players enjoying it and others preferring to play their own music.
- “Excellent background music and fun factory mechanics.”
- “Wonderful art style and amazing music with features being added constantly, brilliant and original :)”
- “Good vibes and music too.”
- “Right now, all the music in this game is stock music.”
- “Also, the music is awful--best played with your own.”
- “Music doesn't fit the style of the game.”
graphics
32 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
38%
53%
9%
The graphics of the game have received mixed but generally positive feedback, with many players appreciating the detailed and clean aesthetic, especially for a 2D game. While some initially hesitated due to perceived low quality, they found the actual graphics to be much better than expected, complemented by a charming art style and effective automation features. Overall, the visuals contribute positively to the gameplay experience, despite some comparisons to messier graphics in similar titles.
- “Nicely detailed graphics & automation.”
- “Graphics, sound, gameplay, all top notch and a developer who is hands-on and active in listening to folks and making improvements.”
- “Wonderful art style and amazing music with features being added constantly, brilliant and original :)”
- “I hesitated to buy it because I thought the graphics were too bad for my taste.”
- “But the screenshots don't do justice to the actual graphic quality.”
- “People liken this game to Factorio, but the main similarity is the messy graphics (although the final update does it much better).”
grinding
10 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Players find the grinding aspect of the game to be tedious and unenjoyable, particularly when it comes to reorganizing blueprints for layout efficiency. While some enjoy the engaging design elements and can overlook the grind during endgame, many still feel that the gameplay becomes rough and overly repetitive, especially in its current early alpha state.
- “Reorganizing a blueprint to maximize layout efficiency is tedious and unenjoyable.”
- “Pretty cool as it is but grindy endgame.”
- “I've played a couple, and this seems in some ways simplified compared to others (being early alpha, so fewer components), but still overly tedious.”
stability
10 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
40%
60%
The game exhibits typical early access stability, with some bugs and occasional building glitches, but overall it runs well even on lower-end hardware. Frequent updates introduce new features, making it feel like a constantly evolving experience, while the majority of users find it relatively bug-free for its stage of development. However, players note that the logistics system can be complex and challenging to navigate.
- “It runs great on my bad integrated GPU chip.”
- “A little rough around the edges (polish-wise) as is to be expected of an early access title, but seems to be fairly bug-free for early access.”
- “The game still has bugs, and the experimental version gets updated with new ideas and concepts frequently, making it feel like a whole new game.”
- “But sometimes building glitches out; it's hard to prioritize certain things. The logistics side of the game is much more convoluted than just simple supply and demand.”
- “The game still has bugs, and the experimental version gets updated with new ideas and concepts frequently, making it feel like a whole new game.”
optimization
8 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
25%
37%
38%
The game's optimization allows for significant customization and performance tuning, enabling players to push settings beyond recommended defaults without severe performance degradation, though caution is advised to avoid exceeding the 2,000 cell limit per ship due to potential issues. While the user interface may feel somewhat unpolished, the variety of resources and optimization options provide a robust gameplay experience. Overall, players can achieve impressive performance, but it may come at the cost of gameplay quality if settings are pushed too far.
- “While playing update 1, I was able to have these settings at 4-6x the recommended defaults and have the entire universe colonized, built, and supplied while the laptop was still able to keep up with a '30x' game speed (though I don't recommend this to anyone for gameplay reasons, but it was good to measure performance).”
- “Or maybe the optimization of these chains, making stations and ships more efficient, results in less time wasted?”
- “The product splash page shows uncompressed storage in ships because it looks cool, but you're not allowed to build ships greater than 2,000 cells (each square of your ship is measured, and you're limited). Sure, you could change settings, but they warn you that if you go over 2,000 cells per entity, you run the risk of performance issues.”
- “It's a little bit rough around the edges in the UI department, but there's plenty of customization and optimization, along with a huge variety of resources to play around with.”
- “Or maybe the optimization of these chains could make stations and ships more efficient, resulting in less time wasted?”
story
8 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
62%
38%
The game's story is minimal to non-existent, primarily serving as a backdrop for its focus on puzzle-solving and resource management. Players are tasked with reaching level 200 and advancing to the last sector, but the narrative is largely overshadowed by the mechanics of building and optimizing factories.
- “The story is practically non-existent.”
- “There is no story... nothing.”
- “The plot is simple so far, get to level 200 and get to the last sector, but because it's an economy simulator as well as a ship building game, you are encouraged to fulfill orders for resources and build more and more efficient and complex factories, as stations are limited.”
replayability
6 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
33%
34%
33%
Players find the game surprisingly replayable, attributing this to its variety and the engaging final upgrade. The supportive developer and fitting music enhance the experience, while the potential for procedural maps could further increase replayability in the future.
- “This game is amazing and surprisingly replayable, especially considering it is a single dev game. The developer is super responsive and supportive on Discord.”
- “I don't know if the map will be procedural later, but that would be dynamic and add replayability.”
- “I don't know if the map will be procedural later; that would be dynamic and add replayability.”
- “Final upgrade offers replayability and variety, along with music that fits perfectly.”
humor
2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Players find the humor in the game particularly enjoyable, often highlighting amusing moments such as accidentally causing friendly fire due to misplacing their ships. This element of unexpected chaos adds a lighthearted and entertaining layer to the gameplay experience.
- “It was hilarious to see one of my own ships cause friendly fire because I misplaced them.”