SYNTHETIK 2

This game is much like a one-hit wonder artist trying to repeat their big hit. While S1 had its own problems (looking at you multiplayer netcode) its core concept did not need to change much. Instead of expanding upon what made S1 good, S2 throws out everything good about S1 for no real reason. Every change in S2 exists because of a "why not?" mentality instead of thinking about what specific parts of S1 needed iteration. My frustration with the game can be summed by by an interaction I had with Shrike on the S2 discord regarding the balance of the Recon/sniper class. In S1, sniper had a passive which created mines when you killed enemies via headshot. Back then, that had been replaced by an explosive headshot in S2. I told Shrike that the removal of the mine was a big nerf to the defensive ability of the class, as you now got rushed way easier. He in turn, called me retarded and insisted that the mine-ability was stupid and would never return. Who could have guessed that the same ...

I'm genuinely not sure where the direction is going with this game - and why. As others have recently stated, the new 'HQ' system sucks. It's convoluted, it takes an animated transition to enter each building or menu, and it's redundantly opaque in keeping statistics, 'dictionary' information, and so on now locked behind an upgrade system. In the first 10 minutes of trying this system, I was soft-locked three, separate times, requiring an ALT+F4 since the pause menu wouldn't respond. The first game could be played within less than 20 seconds from start if you were familiar with the menu placement, now it takes about 20 seconds to get to the first screen of deployment, assuming you don't need to manage anything else. It's a frustrating, wasteful experience that actively dissuades you from starting another round, knowing that you'll have to load back into the HQ overworld and navigate through every single interface roadblock again. The worst part is that you can see that so much time...

I stopped playing this WEEKS ago because of the "Grand Operations" UI change, and I'm still left totally baffled by it. There are so many redundant menus in order to start playing the game. And the UI bloat is still prevalent in game when checking your android's stats, your weapon stats, or even just going through the pause menu. Why do I have to walk to a building in a scrap yard, view an animation to enter it, select solo or online, teleport to a helipad to select difficulty and confirm player gear, wait, then wait again for the loading screen, THEN I can play? Some of these steps can be circumnavigated by going through the pause menu in the military base(?). But just minimize the menus. I'm aware that these are the risks when paying for an early access title, but how is it that after nearly 4 years that every major update has a substantial UI change that makes me relearn how to navigate the game so I can play it? Just play the first game, it's actually finished, snappy, and fun...

UI in this game is unusable. The new "Base" system is also terrible compared to the old menus.

I will update this review now that I have played a bit more, I've progressed a bit further into the 'buildings', and have gotten a taste of whats to come. If you want the short version of this: Don't buy this for full price, pick it up when its on sale or go to G2A, or some other key distribution site. While I can't condone it, I wouldn't blame anyone for going sailing. The most recent update that took more than a year to release was an absolute nothing burger. Go play the first game, you'll probably have more fun. There have been creative additions to the game since the first that I genuinely like and appreciate, though it feels like they've also stripped a lot from the first game as well, both actual mechanics and general feel of the game, this does not feel like a sequel to the first, merely its own game. Some of the classes also just feel like they fall behind without getting good items. They don't start on equal grounds and generally fall behind quicker if you don't get lucky wit...

The game is interesting but somehow the developer seem to have mistaken the main appeal for the game. going from a stripped down, pure gameplay experience, it's now introduced base building and characters that look like mobile game slop rather than the grounded but stylized aesthetic of the original. The base building idea itself is cute, but its also kind of pointless to have and I preferred the dehumanized vibe of the original. I think the environments have become too abstract, looking more like motherboards than an industrial terrain inspired by motherboards or circuitboards. Overall the gameplay is still inferior to Synthetik 1 and the visuals are too cluttered. The only advanced it has at the moment is it's 4 player co-op mode. If they updated 1 to have 4 player co-op this game would effectively be absolete, which would be a damn shame. The developers are clearly very talented and this game still has a lot of potential. I hope it all comes together before the finale release. The...

The game has been in EA for ages, and I am legitimately confused by what it's trying to do. The core gameplay was "eh, but promising with further polish" on the earliest EA builds, and did not change one bit since. Instead, UI gets shuffled and more cluttered, new guns get added and removed, UI gets shuffled and more cluttered, whole new systems show up and leave, classes recieve changes and reverts, and UI gets shuffled and more cluttered. What is going on?

U15 was a huge mistake. - Grand Operations lobby is absolute dogwater. Why have this useless lobby map that just wastes time - Pressing escape while in a mission lobby character screen brings you out to the Grand Operations lobby, with a slow animation of your character/pilot walking out. Common sense is pressing escape to exit a menu, not exit to the main menu. - While I understand pressing Escape and you can click the other parts of the Grand Operations functions, that's too much of a pain in the A - The snow level sometimes drops your frames like crazy and make it unplayable. They apparently addressed this twice, but it still happens and throws away your run - The Voice Over is absolutely annoying and poor, and the voice lines keep overlapping. I don't want to kill a boss and hear "GOOD KIL-GOOD KIL-GOOD KIL-GOOD KIL-GOOD KIL-GOOD KIL-" - Mortar enemies are already annoying enough - now Orbital Strike Towers add to the mix. Some characters are already slow enough and lit...

What a horrendous update that completely ruins the UI and performance. This game could have been better than Synthetik 1 but after the grand operations update (which took over a year to develop fully) it quite literally is just worse. Synthetik 1 feels unique and has very pretty looking graphics and animations with equally amazing gunplay. This game is literally just worse in every possible aspect now. Somehow i get 50 fps on a 4070 super at high settings while the game looks like utter garbage. The gameplay is if Synthetik 1 got lobotomized by a railroad spike. The gunplay feels worse, the sounds are weirder, the text popups look worse. The animations in Synthetik 1 were extremely unique and cool looking because they were very choppy and precise like a robot, This game throws that all out and makes everything look way smoother and way uglier, its like watching a shitty blender animation for a meme at times. Overall really awful update with needless changes instead of actually improvin...

What the hell happened? Is this the same people who made the first one? You have to grind hard to get bare basic abilities, Enemies are infinitely more tanky then the first forcing a slow and methodical approach when the first is fast and twichy, UI is mediocre at best and i just couldn't get myself to keep playing to get into the base building. I hope a strong course correction happens because i do want to enjoy the original BUT BETTER. It seems this one is still in its rebellious teenager phase i hope it will grow (develop) out of it