izigame.me

It's a shame I can't love this game.
Don't get me wrong, I had fun playing this game. It's very original and different in a good way. It's a roguelike, but instead of guns, you have to take down fleets of enemies and boss enemies with a harpoon and its string. Being different to every other game makes it interesting and hard as heck. The music also rocks, and the ambiance is okay. You'll feel a lot of dejá vu if you've played other games by Sleeper Games (the dev, singular).
Now, going back to the difficulty part. The dev has supported this game for a long time, and that means a healthy amount of balance patches. Having played this two and a half years after release, I do believe that the game may be seen as fair and balanced to the dev and many hardcore players. However, I can't see it the same way, and for that reason I'm missing out on a lot of this games' content.
You see, this is no casual game, and neither did I approach it as a casual gamer. I played through and thoroughly enjoyed Hyperspace Dogfights, Sleeper Games' oldest and most popular game (according to Steam reviews). After a few playthroughs, I understood what I was getting into. I also tried to strategize, used my knowledge of roguelikes to try to come up with builds. I read item descriptions and ship bonuses to see what types of playstyle were expected of me, and tried to get good at them.
However, today I unlocked my third ship and two more upgrades, and decided to give up. I was hoping to get better ships and upgrades, or at least some for different playstyles, but I don't think I can get there with the tools I've been given.
From the moment you start to the point I've got, you've got the following options for moving:
-Using the ships' engines (slow or very slow)
-Reeling yourself towards your harpoon after harpooning an object
Your ways for dealing damage are:
-Tethering two objects and making them crash
-Harpooning enemy ship attachments and reeling in as you move away
-Crashing into enemies at high speeds, usually through reeling yourself into them
-Many, many variations of the former, including using debris, missiles, mines and so on
I bring this up for you to know, but also because these were the options I considered. You can choose your upgrades focusing on ship speed and just mash your enemies together, or use long-distance harpoon upgrades for the same thing. You can also upgrade your collision damage and reeling speed to ram into your enemies. You've got many valid playstyles, right?
The problem is that just a few types of enemy ships counter any possible build. In the second world, "shark" ships become obnoxiously common, and are used to pad any encounter. Just throw in like 3 or 4 of these. Apart from that, elemental-type small ships (fire or corrosion), and asteroids with either melee attachments, or the much more broken asteroids with an assortment of attachments. All these ships use missiles (not hard to dodge, just keep moving, but they keep the pressure on you), miniguns (run), cannons (just dodge) and autocannons (dodge and pray). All of these are okay, but in combination they are just broken. A lot of these will shred you if you're still trying to move around without reeling yourself towards something, but doing so puts you in range of all the other ships and puts you in danger as well. Also, unless you are reeling while tether to an attachment, you can't deal damage. Your tool for dealing damage is also used for mobility. This would be if (a) shark ships and their attachments weren't bullet sponges, (b) autocannons, and to a lesser extent miniguns, were not way overpowered, especially if two shark ships aim at you, (c) your mobility tools were a bit better, including your tether not breaking from just staring at it (trying to pull an attachment while accelerating away from a ship feels very clunky and inconsistent, and sometimes the tether just breaks when it should just hold you in place, apparently when you start accelerating too soon after landing your harpoon).
Anyway, I don't usually buy games, but after Hyperspace Dogfights, I really wanted to check this out. While I had fund, and I think a lot of the ideas here are cool, I just won't be able to even reach the final fight. Is that okay if I still had fun? I'd say yes, but still, it leaves a sour taste. On to Swirl W@tch now.