Just FYI, as per their own terms you can cancel up until it ships.

It looks like I will be nearly the only dissenter here. I didn’t care for the game.

PROS:

• The music and sound design were completely appropriate and fit the world.
• An initially interesting story setup.
• Some of the planets have a SUPER cool premise and are a joy to explore.
• The DLC adds some much-needed (albeit mild) horror elements.

NEUTRALS:

• Achievements are implemented, but are mostly for irrelevant side activities. Do you like using a guide to figure out how to get all the achievements? Well, you will have to.

CONS:

• This is not an adventure game, this is a puzzle game first and foremost. If you are not down with figuring out hundreds of vague Dark Souls-style lore blurbs scattered all over in order to work out how to solve environmental puzzles to progress, do not get this game.
• In the same vein, if you are not down with having a loop end before you’re done exploring an area only to have to trek all the way back there and go through everything all over again in case you missed something, do not get this game. This could be partially solved by having the logs you find on a planet permanently NOT GLOW any more after you had read their chain, or maybe a ship notice letting you know there were undecyphered texts on a planet still. I had to re-tread an astounding amount of ground just to make sure I wasn’t missing something.
• When your ship directs you to a planet that you need something from, the navigation on some of them is so obtuse that I found several places I could not find again even after dozens of visits to their planets. A map or better signposting would alleviate this.
• The characters were deeply forgettable, and you are constantly inundated with dozens of gibberish alien names so unless you follow a lore guide or take notes, you’re not going to figure out who did what. And speaking of…
• The story has a veneer of “pretty good sci-fi” but is told quite poorly. You will beat the game, get the incredibly lacklustre ending that doesn’t close out the story in any way, and watch one of many lore explanation videos that will make things click into place. The fact that the lore videos have SO MANY HITS is endemic of the fact that this is a narrative poorly delivered. You will find the lore in random order. If spread over multiple sessions like I played, this will mean you will not make some absolutely needed connections.
• Many things do not make sense within the context of the world and there is no reason for them to be happening at the time except for the hand-waving “It’s a video game” excuse, which breaks immersion. Why only now is sand being moved from one planet to another at the beginning of a cycle? Why only now is one planet being broken by lava? These (and other that I can not speak about due to spoilers) are not explained - the systems have existed for ages and would have (and should have given the environments they set up) occurred before this, but because it makes for a more interesting setup, it all happens now.
• The controls are… an acquired taste at best. Look at many of the negative reviews; many state the controls as an issue. There is a reason for this, even though I did become accustomed to them over time. I swapped to a controller and it was less bad. The keyboard and mouse controls are abysmal.
• I played the final build after the DLC came out, and even this far in development, I had some severe bugs. Controls would get “stuck” and force a game restart, achievements didn’t unlock correctly, etc.
• I wound up quitting because I didn’t know what to do next and didn’t care to watch yet another video to figure it out. There were hundreds of text logs that may or may not have been useful, and no idea how to find what was missing to help me progress without consulting guides, and it became too much. I eventually realized that I was just throwing time into a hole with nothing to show for it. It genuinely felt like it wanted me to give up and I couldn’t help but oblige. I just… stopped. I hated it. I kept doing the same thing over and over and eventually felt that I wasn’t enjoying anything. I hate the very concept of repetition as a game mechanic unless executed well; this wasn’t executed well.
• Despite quitting, I have seen all the endings. The real ending is legitimately nonsense and is basically an appeal to emotion while leaving the reality of the universe behind. It abandons the premise with what can only be described as a narrative hug that does essentially nothing, but presents the veneer of “feel good.” It is nothing. It is empty. Everyone but me loves it for this, and I can’t figure out why.

CONCLUSION: Meh? I really don’t understand the adoration people have for this game. It’s a mediocre non-combat roguelike with about 3 hour of content they’ve spread over 20 hours. It feels very much like a case of style over substance. This game genuinely makes me sad. I really wanted to like it, but… ugh. It feels like work.

You are correct. I was dumb. I’ve fixed it now! Thanks for letting me know.

Played the OG version with all the DLC and not the Spacer’s Choice version, so take my comments with that in mind:

PROS:

• The music was completely appropriate and fit the world. It was nothing I’d listen to independently though.
• It ran very well the entire time I played it. Very little in the way of hitching, and very quick load times.
• Achievements!
• From beginning to end I was having a darn good time. It’s a “smooth” game experience that I stayed up way too late a few nights in a row to get through because I couldn’t wait to see what came next.
• Many ways to solve issues; you didn’t feel forced to end nearly anything in a certain way. The only exception was one main DLC quest I couldn’t finish the way I wanted due to the level cap being too low and not having enough points.
• Zero bugs experienced.
• Plenty to explore and loads of side stories to discover. Some stories weren’t wonderfully told and were hard to track, but many more than that were awesome.

NEUTRAL:

• It felt like it ended too soon. A game like this with two expansions should have offered more. That’s both a good thing and a bad thing in that it didn’t overstay its welcome either.

CONS:

• Some of the achievements are deeply annoying to the point that I gave up on completing the set. You’d have to waste dozens of hours to grind all of them and play in some pretty odd ways that wouldn’t match normal gameplay.
• There are no romance options for the player, and only thing even remotely like it in game is a gay asexual romance quest for a side character. You get some G-rated come-ons thrown your way, but nothing can come of it. It’s extremely puzzling in it’s puritanicality in both how the colony operates, and how everything is treated. Not that this has to be a porn game or anything, mind you, but some options to do SOMETHING romance-related (or characters that operate like they have genitals) like Mass Effect or Fallout would be nice. Heck, there aren’t even any kids in the world to show that someone had bred ever.
• Some of the environments and buildings are not terribly visibly distinct and it hurt pathfinding. It would tell me to go somewhere specific and I wasn’t sure what it was referring to, and this was after playing for hours. This has something to do with the “corporate jargon” style language they use as well. It fits stylistically, but can be confusing.
• The sidekicks stories felt exceptionally rushed and some of the outcomes were a little nonsensical.
• I beat the game and both DLCs close to 100% in under 37 hours.
• The level cap even with the DLCs is set to 36 which I hit about halfway through the game, and I felt like it needed far more. It really made that feeling of progression you love in these games stop dead. There was nothing to find for new item upgrades or interesting loot past that point. This was my largest gripe with the game by far as it disincentivized exploration because there was nothing to gain by doing so at that stage. UPDATE: The new version of the game supposedly upgrades the level cap to something a little less horrible. I wish this were available during my playthrough as the game isn’t worth going through a second time. If you’re interested, I HIGHLY recommend waiting for the newer edition.

DID YOU FINISH THE GAME?: Yup! And the DLC. Though if you’re playing now, just get the new edition since it fixes the XP progression block that I mention above.

CONCLUSION: While it won’t stick with me for years, it was great while it lasted and I would 100% play more in the series. If you enjoy story and exploration, play this. The only things stopping it from being Fallout-level good was the awful level cap and the lack of content.

I get it, but it doesn’t have to be just pure stats. Could have been mild ability improvements or something or maybe changed some of the effects or visual things that occurred around you. Hell, even walking speed improvement or something like a tone to help you locate hidden items.

There’s a lot they could have done considering we’re dealing with magical items! Still had a pretty good time with it overall though.

Never got into Harry Potter since I was too old. This game was really fun to just explore and I constantly felt a forward momentum. Some of the stories were good, and some were awful.

I would absolutely play a sequel just based on the well done sense of discovery alone. I just wish more of what you found was impactful instead of cosmetic.

And maybe a less brutally aged console to play it on.

Embracer still owns all the IP. It may still happen if they think it’s financially viable!

After that most recent Saint’s Row game, I can’t say I’m surprised.

It felt like it was designed by Tumblr, sold on an unpopular platform (Epic), left out most of what was good from the previous entries, was attrociously buggy, and had deeply disappointing DLC.

Nobody wanted it and it felt designed by committee.

Like Blizzard, most of the talent that made them great to begin with wasn’t there any more.