7 Days to Die Review (Mobius Prime)
Fun game. Building mechanics are still being worked on. Weapons feel good. Melee is a lot better than it used to be, and still being improved. After over 1k hours in this game, I still enjoy it, though I have the following comments:
1. The dev team really seem to hate it when you figure out how to beat their zombie AI, which seems to be based off the mind of a civil engineer.
2. The gyrocopter is not a good addition in my opinion. It detracts from the "being on the road" adventure you get from all other vehicles. This may be different on larger maps which may justify it I guess.
3. Some talents are underpowered, and some are borderline game breakingly powerful. But this is a work in progress, so expect nerf/buffs in future.
I'm going to expand upon the AI for a moment. As of Alpha 20, the game uses AI that was intended for bandit npcs for the zombies, and, if I'm being honest, it's a bit of a problem. It makes certain base designs fundamentally unworkable during a blood moon. Without going into too many details, zombies should not be smart enough to spot and exploit weak points in a given structure. As far as i've seen from videos and my own experiences. it means that everyone sort of converges on a very similar design that exploits the AI, which kinda sucks. I would have preferred when AI was dumber and you could build a load of interesting designs just for fun. But, once again it's a work in progress.
Itemisation is weird in the game. Every major increment, there seems to be an arbitrary item in the game that is non-craftable, and relatively rare, and becomes your bottleneck for almost all activities, forcing you to invest talent points into "lucky looter" and "better barter". As of Alpha 20, this is acid, which is used for making chem stations and tyres, and forms a hard gate into vehicles. You WILL get the perks for creating vehicles long before you acquire enough acid to build a motorbike. This effectively means minibikes (which used to be a staple of the game) are useless, as by the time you have enough acid to make tyres, you can already make motorcycles, and so can skip the minibike.
This is just an example of the type of arbitrary item gating that goes on in the game. It used to be wrenches , then the minibike book, then it was glass beakers, now it's acid.
By mid game, most early game activities become redundant. If you don't take farming perks early game, there is no point taking them later, as you will be flooded with food.
The mid-late game is mainly mining, looting, trader missions, and repairing your blood moon base and making ammo.
All these issues are of a balance nature, however, and as such, are subject to change, and whilst they can be a pain, it still does not change that this game is genuinely fun, challenging, and an overall excellent time sink.