The Long Journey Home

“Unfortunately, pretty much every single mechanic or event lands on the wrong side of “fun challenge” vs. “frustrating.” Imagine a promising game, but all the playtesters got super good at it, and because of their feedback, the devs made the game impenetrable to new players.”

“The primary mechanic is the same one I played on a computer thirty years ago. That's all the gameplay you are going to get.”

“The biggest element of frustration, aside from the roguelike elements of RNG games, can come from the orbiting and lander mechanics. Players familiar with Kerbal Space Program may find the orbiting mechanics familiar, while those new to it will likely find it a source of extreme frustration from the learning curve.”

“While the theme looks fantastic, and teases a really cool 'faster than light but done properly' aesthetic, the technical implementation of this console port is a train wreck.”

“Not often, but clipping sometimes rears its head; or 'false jumps,' when the drive engages, sound plays and all graphics show, but... no warp, better try again (not as common on easy, too often on rogue).”

“The graphics are kinda pretty, but the core gameplay loop of flying from planet to planet to scoop up resources to repair, fuel your warp drive, etc., only to repeat this ad nauseum until you reach your destination is just utterly annoying after you've done it once.”

“Even Kai Rosenkranz's music couldn't salvage this game for me.”

“It could have been relatively easy to use some ambient sound or music to imbue this feeling, but the sound was odd and out of place.”

“$40 is way too much money for this game and then they want to charge more for the soundtrack?”

“The story and exploration it promises is walled off behind tedious resource collection, where you're lucky to get more resources than you spend in every expedition.”

“To add insult to injury, every single action eats some resource or another, crew injuries, burning fuel, damage to both hull and components in the ships and the lander during routine operations so the entire game is a huge juggling act looking for the best risk-reward play in any area, further slowing the pace down as you tediously plot the next step.”

“But gathering resources and flying is not as fun as it should and you will do this for most time spent in this game and after a while it is just too tedious, repetitive and boring.”

“Alien encounters felt insignificant, ruining the atmosphere I was expecting.”

“You do not need the atmosphere to kill you; you can easily kill yourself just trying to pilot the lander through the atmosphere.”

“You only get control after your suicidal fool of a lander pilot has flung himself into the atmosphere as fast as he can, and only get control after it's too late to prevent a collision.”

“Thus it has a rather limited replay value compared to similar games, but as the first couple of runs were fun for me, I think it's a fair deal.”

“I'm just starting and I have some doubts about its potential for longevity and long-time replayability, despite the procedural generation, but up to now it sounds very promising.”

“And last but not least, and exceptionally disappointing for a game which, by design, is meant to be replayable.”

“After a long and frustrating, extremely unfunny series of tries until I managed to land on Mars, I had some frustrating, unfunny landing attempts again on Mars with the probe.”

“Not funny aliens (although they try to be, but all they do is pollute the communication with crap mambo jambo).”

“Anyway, not forgetting... the middle of glitches, there's also map bug-outs (progression problem, map info window stuttering); a hailing/comms bug, I think communication with another or the same ship as a particular moves to intercept triggers, hope it doesn't follow within range, comms auto-trigger; often enough, another progression glitch, input malfunction upon program opening means no control, I'd say 1:6 at best, 1:3 on bad days.”

“But these systems broke so many physics rules that you can almost entirely forget about optimization tricks that might make fuel management interesting.”

“Boring, not fun and badly optimized... I'm very disappointed.”

“Boring storyline.”

“Assuming glitches don't get you either: not just seed progress, but overall starts slowdown / frame rate drop: outset game ran more smoothly.”

“Anyway, not forgetting... the middle of glitches, there's also map bug-outs (progression problem, map info window stuttering); a hailing/comms bug, I think communication with another or the same ship as a particular moves to intercept triggers, hope it doesn't follow within range, comms auto-trigger; often enough, another progression glitch, input malfunction upon program opening means no control, I'd say 1:6 at best, 1:3 on bad days.”

“If you like to figure out how a nonsensical game works that has no real mechanics and it is all about random random happening because of "reasons" or a buggy mess "fixer-upper", well here ya go.”

“Boring characters and character development, boring combat (I can kill everything with base guns, if I'm clever about it).”

“Lack of a story and character development.”

“Since so few back and forth takes place between you and these members, and between the members themselves, the execution of this form of 'character development' doesn't make them feel very human.”