izigame.me

I am a big DotE fan (100% achievements completed) and was really looking forward to this one and bought the preorder pack. First off I have to say that I knew this was not going to be a 100% DotE sequel, I anticipated that. Also I have to say that I feel very harsh for giving this a thumbs down because it is not outright bad: I had some fun with it but now after ~20h (+ a few in closed beta) is just not fun enough for me anymore to even want to finish it at this point, which makes me not want to recommend it.
What I expected from ED was DotE with an additional action component meaning you control your character more directly and have less idle times. Conceptually this sounded great to me. Realistically it turned out quite differently.
Very good:
* Enemies have quite some variation in looks, behavior, properties, and their design is nice. I enjoyed them overall.
* The 3D environments looks great, I love the room designs
* Shadows and lights look great
* Shooting in general is fun, auto-aim works well, auto-aim also puts the focus on RPG elements rather than the player's skills
* The different guns have different effects on criticals and are handled very differently which is quite noticable and fun to play with
Very Bad:
* In DotE you had a stock of dust that you would have to use to manage which rooms to power, which controlled spawns and also allowed to unlock rooms to build big components for resource generation as well as lighting rooms with great defensive potential and arm them with turrets and buffing components. This was extremely tactical, and fun. You could even intentionally cause more spawns by not lighting several rooms just to farm them with hero/tower skills but you had to keep a balance between farming & threat while doing so. Now this tactical component has been erased entirely. Dust is now a resource that is very sparse and can either be used to light a room to unlock a big-component slot or shop/upgrader, or to roll new crystal-carrier upgrades or to deactivate some random global effects. It is way less tactical than before because the choices are now usually quite obvious and they are more rare. You also don't really manage dust in the same way and have no means of controlling dust generation as we did before. Dust + light management feel boring now.
* There is a blackout event now that completely deactivates all your buildings, darkens the room, spawns a few enemies everywhere regularly (that only attack you) and you have to walk an often large distance to then turn off two devices on the map. Not fun at all, no challenging either, and makes turrets entirely useless during this
* The characters don't have a clear level progression anymore, you randomly get to choose a generic or character-specific bonus. No new skills, just passive bonuses. Very disappointing. I used to be excited about level ups and aimed for specific skills in an order in DotE
* The room layouts in levels started boring me soon, they seems to always contain kind of the same elements. DotE was more random. Big components now only produce resources, there are almost no slots for them, no choice to free something up for them. Quite often at least a few doors are locked and need to be unlocked by finding something or moving the crystal. As a reult you often have just one door to open at a time. I preferred DotE's freedom of tactical choice
* Items can't be sold anymore, there are also only weapons + 1 generic modifier now anymore. Regression on RPG elements? Odd choice for ED
* Meta progression: You get a 3rd hero unlocked in solo after grinding for a while, making you 50% stronger out of nowhere, you also unlock upgrades for weapon types for free or give your character some passive boosts. You are at a huge disadvantage as a new player starting a run and then you just get bi bonuses as you play more, and you can even start the run with a chest with random resources/items. I did not enjoy this type of progression.
* After a while I hated the elemental weakness/resistance mechanics. It pushes you into a direction for the turrets and also the guns you should use. It is random, and not a choice for the player. Imo they completley overdid the impact of this mechanic
Bad:
* The character skills feel way less impactful than in DotE. I remember in DotE I used most skills as often as I could just waiting until they are back, now I often forget about using ultimates etc
* The spawn points are now fixed and you can't do anything about it. I really did not enjoy this change but I kinda got used to it after a while. Together with the reduced tactical value of dust, it feels like a lot has been lost that worked well in DotE. I don't see how this made the game better in any way
* The wave mechanics, especially the random timed waves, are annoying. Previously there were clear rules for when waves spawn but now, with every door you open after the last wave, the risk increases from "safe" to some "very dangerous" level. There seems to be a timer in the background that then triggers at some point. I did not enjoy this feature one bit. Nor did I enjoy having to fight 3 waves in a row if I research 3 times (without opening a door).
* Boss fights: Some bosses you need to know beforehand so you know how to defeat them. While this is okay it also makes it kind of boring and easy when you know what to expect. Some are also not beatable with turrets alone. So you can't play as you wish, you need to play how the game wants you to.
* In solo play have no good overview of the games at all and you can only control a hero at a time (or let them wait or follow you). The direct control favors that you always play a character, you can't let all characters be AI controlled.
* I did not like the character design at all, feels too much like Fortnite/Overwatch. DotE had cooler, more mysterious character designs if you asked me. I find many ED characters annoying, especially the dumb stuff they say
* Sometimes less is more: the dialogues are not interesting at all. DotE had very short character bios and only few conversation lines, those conversations would often take place in the elevator from level to level with a snippet in each transition, exciting! ED is full of lines that I don't care to read, it is mostly mundane dumb stuff
* Performance issues
Good:
* Turrets can't be permanently destroyed anymore, i like this! They resurrect after a wave or you can rebuild them by hitting them when they are down
* The seemless transitions from when you complete your area to another area in the same level is really cool. Last room becomes first room seemlessly, sweet
* UI and UX are good, HUD looks good, some things like the Minimap (doesnt show navmesh gaps) and some UX could really need improvements especially with Mouse/KB but overall good
* All turrets can permanently boosted by hitting them in melee after they gathered enough XP(?). I quite liked this addition and also that you can repair them by bashing them as well as short-term boost them, all based on your wit
* The different elemental weapon effects are cool in general
* The bar as a hub is interesting
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Bottom line: Surely, i was expecting some reduction of the strategy elements in favor of action/RPG elements, but with the loss of dust for room-management, a reduction in resource management, streamlining of big components, more linear levels, a reduction of item choices, and characters having always the same 2 active skills from start to end, I felt like they reduced so much and gave us so little in return: some boring meta progression, but no skill tree, no tech tree, just some bonuses here and there for your character, weapon types or crystal carrier. The additions were lackluster, but the removals hurt. This is why I do not recommend this in its current shape. I believe DLCs, however, could potentially turn this game around, the foundation laid is still solid, the mechanics are just too plain.