Shapez 2 Review (yoru)
I don't want to give this game a negative review because there's nothing inherently wrong with it, but it is NOT an automation game. This is a puzzle game with belts and I can't help but feel a bit disappointed.
I saw a few reviews from Factorio and DSP players so I bought it (never played the 1st game) but this game is just not for me. In an actual automation game you are constantly trying to optimize your factory and grow it. The iron you mine from the very start is still required 5 tiers down the tech tree so you have to juggle your resources and logistics to feed 10 different new items that require that iron. You tear down what you've made because you want to improve on it and grow it to feed your constantly hungry monster of a factory. You tear it down and redo because there's bottlenecking and isn't efficient and you get a dopamine hit when you fix the problem that you created.
This is just a puzzle game that requires you to ship shapes. Say the shape required is ABC, you have to cut or rotate the mined pieces to get them to become A, B and C, then combine them to become ABC. After you ship 1000 pcs of ABC, they require DEF. You're now out of space, so you tear down your ABC pipeline because it's completely not used anymore once you're done shipping it. Then somewhere down the line you might need part B again to make a BGH, but that was so long ago you just simply build a new line to create B. There was no point in keeping my initial ABC because it just took up space and did nothing for a long time, ....which btw, is the complete opposite of automation lol
The puzzle aspect is also pretty simple. You just have to put parts together according to the recipe and ship the combined shape/colour it asks for. The game makes it cumbersome by making it so that the cutter only cuts the left side, or the swapper only swaps the left side ever and so you have to add 3 slow "rotaters" on your belts just to get it to face the right way before you cut or combine. I'm half way through the space part (chapter 4 I believe) and there's nothing really new or exciting. The tech tree is basically just shipping more shapes and earning points to pick what new 'machines' you want to unlock (which I don't feel improves the factory that much) or making the belts/machines move faster.
I don't get a dopamine hit from doing anything in this game at all because it's all so simple and pointless. Even the little bit of belt and auto-miner in Core Keeper gave me more of an "automation" dopamine hit than this and that game never claimed to be any sort of automation.
That said it's very polished for EA and I didn't encounter any bugs or issues. Everything moved smoothly, and the graphics are lovely. If you love puzzle games I'm sure you'll enjoy this very much. It's just not an automation game and if you're looking for a game "like" factorio and DSP this is genuinely not it.
---Update 31st Aug:
Thanks for all the clowns guys; I bought a nice animated background for my profile.
I gave the game a positive review because like I said, I felt it was a me-issue, but I didn't expect to offend so many people instead to the point you're coming to my profile to send me hate. Stellar upstanding community right here... all this over a POSITIVE review on a puzzle game. Scary... lol...
I can't refund because I'm 4+ hrs in, so the devs not only got my money, but also a free thumbs up, but you guys hate-bumped me to the top page, until the poor devs were forced to reply. It's a genuine review of the first 4 chapters. Even if it take 20 hours to get to any automation, my review still applies for the first 4 milestones of the game. I'm not gonna sink another 16 hours on something I'm not enjoying. Maybe one day when I'm in the mood for puzzles, I'll come back to it and the game will absolutely blow my mind and make me rewrite my entire review, but for now I meant what I wrote. If you don't agree then write your own review.
Anyway if you're still considering, read the dev's response; the future chapters might be right up your alley even if it's not up mine.