Just completed the base game today. As someone who loved the first game and although didn't beat "Riptide", did enjoy it; I view this game as a worthy successor. The level cap is a bit low, and I saw some complaints about there being no skill tree but the skill cards are basically the same thing and they're always swappable. The story itself is really short if you don't entertain yourself with side quests, and the plot suffers from "why don't characters just speak up instead of letting themselves be cut off and ignored" tropes, but that's to be expected with most linear narratives. Combat it smooth and the blueprints are deadly. A lot of survivors are annoying, and I didn't want to help a number of them, but I remember the original also having stupid and rude characters as well so that just seems on par for the universe.

Sammy B got a redesign which weirded me out, making every cutscene with him felt so detached. Spawn points in this game are also kind of bad, zombies spawning behind you after you clear a room or phasing into existence in front of you if you are running through an area. Music in this game is pretty good and fits every scenario, Karen O's "Drown" make for a fitting title song, and the ending track "Stay Alive" would be extremely nostalgic to me if I were a kid playing this. I played as Ryan, and he had a number of humorous dialogues often recalling his profession as a stripper. Optimization isn't terrible, only started dropping frames when I was fighting a horde with apex variants and shit was exploding all around me + my Series X had been on for 7 hours straight.

There's probably more I'll think to say, but as of now I am left with that hole in my heart after beating a game you've sunk over a literal day's worth of time into. I will be considering paying for the DLC content since I had the luxury of playing for free using Gamepass.

I loved pretending I knew what I was doing playing 1 - 5 of the original series, making accounts on WildTangent Games to use their free game tokens. Bored one day, years ago, I saw this was on the Xbox store for free and promptly downloaded it to see if it'd give me a nostalgic feeling. Nah, I couldn't operate any of the controls. I tried pressing anything, and there was no way to pick up villagers it seemed. The Island also looked underwhelming, reminding me somewhat of Virtual Villagers: The Lost Children. As I write this review I now find out there's microtransactions; at least in the PC version?! Insane, would love to see a new release from the company but not if it's going to be anything like this game.

I've got just under 2 hours in, and I can at least say I like the direction that this game is going. Street building reminds me of Frostpunk, there's Civ-style diplomatic discussions with other lords, music never became repetitive, the game is optimized enough for me to at times hit 100fps while playing on "ultra settings". I haven't gotten around to combat yet since I flubbed up and barely have a population, but with the bandit camp set to attack in less than a year, I'll definitely have to change that if I want my silly little village to survive. Game is good enough in preview form for me to consider going on Steam to purchase the Early Access while on sale, to support development...Hard to argue with day one access with PC Gamepass though lmao

Edit: The bandits ended up burning my village down.

"A decade later and this game is still just a heaping pile of mid. I get why others like it, and it’s cool they keep updating the client, but for me I’ve always had a distaste for open world sandboxes. I’m not into cars so collecting/racing has no merit for me. I think griefers are annoying. The missions and I assume heists are all the same pretty much. Flying around is boring and gun play is terrible on on controller. Overall, I see no fun in a game where I just travel around to get different colored vehicles and obtain an obscene amount of virtual cash."
- Me after giving this game a try again 8 months ago