Unreal Engine Subverse [v0.9] [Studio Fow]

[Kernist]

This is the first time I write in a thread other than my own. This is because I really cared about the Subverse project, so I would like to share my thoughts with you.
I hope no one will be offended, both by my way of speaking about certain elements of the game, the fetishes and the way they have served this dish to us.
The initial premise, I’m on the side of all those players who don’t like tags like NTR/Sharing/Cuckold/Monster, and that I may repeat things that many of you have already discussed. I’ve known StudioFow since their prior works, since their Sophitia with Minotaur, and when I heard about the creation of Subverse, I was intrigued, but knowing their themes, I thought it just wouldn’t be a game for me.
Until the studio itself, in one of its announcements, said that the game would be vanilla compared to their work and that monsters would be optional.
This was the trigger that attracted many people, including me, to become interested in the project.
Given also the many promotional videos that always repeated: “Create your own harem of space waifu.”
So, I decided then that I would not support the Kickstarter campaign, but would buy the game on Day One, as the developers themselves said they would release it as a full game.
Given this promise, the famous date arrives, and consequently my purchase:

View attachment 1115047

Subverse amazed me but at the same time broke me, and I’ll explain why.
I’m going to talk separately about both the SFW and NSFW sides, with the addition of broken promises and improvements.
Graphically it is very nice, with fantastic voice acting and comic acting that you may or may not like.
I don’t even have any complaints about the bullet hell and strategy sections, also because they were not made by StudioFow, but by another independent studio; I know many people have complained about their simplicity, but guys, that’s normal. That wasn’t supposed to be the focus of the game. Pointless to say go play Xcom or Touhou Project.
The backgrounds are also well done.
The only flaws in this side I would like to point to are not being able to include waifu in battle and leaving xenos aside. Why can’t I go full girls in battle? Maybe it will be added later.
Secondary, the Mary Celeste is bare, there are monsters and crew members around, why not show them?
Now let’s talk about the sore spot, the NSFW zone.
A big mistake in my opinion was the implementation of the Pandora System, where pieces of video were cut out so that everyone’s fetishes could be respected.
The result? Disconnected scenes with no logical sense.
It’s a porn game, you can’t leave these scenes out, not connecting them to the story and without giving development of the relationships with the girls that led them to do that scene.
The devs themselves said, “The game will be more Vanilla than our works, the monster scenes will be optional”. I’m fine with them being there, people who aren’t interested like me don’t watch them or unlock them, not unlocked, never happened, but the way pandora is set up, is bad. As far as girls are concerned, the sense of optional has been misused, as optional in this case means lost content. There were plenty of ways to implement this, one of which was to create side quests or scenes that happened randomly in the ship. I give an example with Killision. Side event: Crew members ask you if they can fuck her, double choice, yeah sure, you unlocked the gangbang, second choice, touch Killision and I’ll chop your dicks off, cowgirl unlocked with killision. The same thing for her Chimerina too, no monster, then doggystyle with cap. This is optional and integrated with the story, not like they did the pandora system. They got their way of advertising the game wrong, and as a result, they attracted many people like me, also because as one goal said more scenes with xenos, another one implied more scenes without.
We have to say that most of the funds came not from those who wanted the monsters, but from the other side.
Then the Lily problem, okay she’s the one who likes alien dicks, but what if I don’t want that to happen in my gameplay? Simple, unlock nothing. The problem is that the scenes I’m interested in, the ones with the MC, are two. What do I do with the others? Give us an alternative.

View attachment 1115048

Also, these days on Discord they have said that Lily will receive many scenes with the Cap, we’ll see.
I understand that vanilla fans complain about the presence of monsters, but the blame also lies with how the game was advertised.
Want a simple solution? A button that removes/hides those scenes from the listings, so even the most “visually sensitive” will stop complaining.
Returning to Discord, there you will find a beautiful list of broken promises.

View attachment 1115049

Played them all, the old ones have more interactions and last much longer than a 5-second gif.

View attachment 1115050

We have the Early Access, there are three girls and none are romanceable.

View attachment 1115054

Are you confirming that the scenes were well placed at the beginning? Possibly, since the Pandora System went from a loyalty system to a skill tree to just buy scene and watch.

View attachment 1115055

This is more roleplay style than what we have, events of scenes that unlock other scenes.

View attachment 1115056

Should we expect them later or have you reconsidered? Since the models of the off-screen characters are distorted.

View attachment 1115057

This is the biggest change since the game was initially supposed to come out complete, but then why make an Early Access? I think I know why.

Little addition I make, but why not also put female Xenos? They are still alien monsters, you said we would be able to fuck all alien races, but does that only imply male ones? I think so.

Last thing to show:

View attachment 1115059

So, StudioFow, who is the game really for? In my opinion, you have made a mistake in trying to grab as much audience as possible in an attempt to increase profit, but in doing so you have given it to everyone but in a lazy and wrong way.
You've already stated that the Pandora System will not be changed, and that's fine, but I'm hoping for improvements for that at least.
In the end, they decided to release an Early Access to test the ground and see how the public would react. Well, they've broken it in two, Vanilla people who expected a different game and monster people who expected harder scenes. I hope they can understand all the criticism we're giving them, even if some people say they're taking out the negative reviews on Steam and saying that the game is a success.
Sorry for the long speech from someone who prefers vanilla and avoids other fetishes, but I really cared about Subverse, and I really hope they improve it, the potential is there, let's hope it doesn't go to waste.

Thanks for a great read, sadly as a backer I must advice you to prepare for further disappointment. Communication with us, backers was also terrible, for example I was banned permanently in Steam discussions for my critque about EA cancellation... voiced on KS! More than that, the massive amount of simps and fanboys didn't help making people like me look bad and problematic, without even considering our voice of displeasure may have solid ground.

And now we are where we are. Just like in Cyberpunk 2077 - many things can be improved, but some are impossible to fix. Just like PANDORA here. Adding more scenes, even giving them context still will not change the fact of porn part being just short, looped GIFs totally disconnected from the rest of the game. To fix that everything would have to be rewritten. I'm sure they don't have time, resources and will to do that.

I realized in time where all of this is going and made a successful attempt issuing chargeback in my bank giving EA cancellation as a reason for breaching a contract. It was after all listed as one of the rewards. Still, after so long period of time, banning people on Steam and their discord for voicing displeasure or even using emotes they didn't like, after convincing us so strongly that it's all because they want to release full, polished, magnificent game to give us the best possible experience we ended up... with this.

For people who purchased this game now and saying "it's just EA, what did you expect, everything will be better" - you must understand that everything what was said between this release, what was promised and what was discussed fell short. This game will not be a disaster, but also it won't be premium, adult gaming experience worthy of time and resources invested in it Studio FOW promised not only to backers, but also to customers considering game had it's "release" already.

 

[Deleted member 324588]

Thanks for a great read, sadly as a backer I must advice you to prepare for further disappointment. Communication with us, backers was also terrible, for example I was banned permanently in Steam discussions for my critque about EA cancellation... voiced on KS! More than that, the massive amount of simps and fanboys didn't help making people like me look bad and problematic, without even considering our voice of displeasure may have solid ground.

And now we are where we are. Just like in Cyberpunk 2077 - many things can be improved, but some are impossible to fix. Just like PANDORA here. Adding more scenes, even giving them context still will not change the fact of porn part being just short, looped GIFs totally disconnected from the rest of the game. To fix that everything would have to be rewritten. I'm sure they don't have time, resources and will to do that.

I realized in time where all of this is going and made a successful attempt issuing chargeback in my bank giving EA cancellation as a reason for breaching a contract. It was after all listed as one of the rewards. Still, after so long period of time, banning people on Steam and their discord for voicing displeasure or even using emotes they didn't like, after convincing us so strongly that it's all because they want to release full, polished, magnificent game to give us the best possible experience we ended up... with this.

For people who purchased this game now and saying "it's just EA, what did you expect, everything will be better" - you must understand that everything what was said between this release, what was promised and what was discussed fell short. This game will not be a disaster, but also it won't be premium, adult gaming experience worthy of time and resources invested in it Studio FOW promised not only to backers, but also to customers considering game had it's "release" already.

Kernist. Surprised you didn't bring xarksas with you to keep on spreading misinformation, which is what you were banned for. FOW doesn't just remove people nilly willy the instant they have a negative opinion. But constantly spamming it to others, every single diary entry, is more than enough reason.

 

[ZimonColdres]

Well this is a lot of words, so I'm just gonna address the bits that I didn't already address here: https://f95zone.to/threads/subverse-v0-1-studio-fow.77900/page-124#post-5441938

Picking more than one waifu would simply be OP. The mantics are meant to be supports. That's simply how the game was designed.

"We have the Early Access, there are three girls and none are romanceable." I mean...they all fucked you as soon as they joined. And there's only about 3 conversations you can have at the current time. 'None are romanceable' is a stretch, considering its just started. There's clearly gonna be more talking and character building to do. Did you know everything about every crew member the moment you picked them in Mass Effect? Or did you have to talk to them more than once over the course of the story?

Systems change over development. The leveling system was initially devised to give PP capsules, which you'd choose to give to specific waifus to boost their PP levels. This changed into the current form, and the item to boost PP turned into the gifting system in the bar.

We don't know if there'll be female Xenos or not, we've seen only 4 in the game so far, and 2 others in the diaries.

Regarding scenes being implemented into the story, I think that was altered to appease folk that did not want to see Xeno, or any other content besides the Captain and a waifu.

There are just enough scenes to be unlocked by the amount of gameplay you can currently do, so they had to include a good variety of content, from teases to alien to captain to after shots. There'll be many many many more to come

The game is currently at 6/22 chapters, with the current ones being shorter due to covering the tutorial. According to dev talk in discord, the later chapters will be significantly longer. There are also devotion quests that will be added for each waifu that are about a chapter long on their own.

The initial plan for early access was chapter by chapter, but this was changed when the game devs informed FOW this wouldn't be wise to do for a story-based game. So they decided to go for a full release. Later though they decided to appease both sides, as there were many people that wanted to play the game ASAP. So rather than a 1 by 1 approach, they settled on a middle ground of dropping large sections of the game at a time. Personally I think it was the best decision, because with the amount of feedback they've gotten (most of it regarding the Pandora system), its fair to say the game will be quite different by the time it is a fully complete product.

I hope that covers your concerns, if not, feel free to respond.

Nothing to say, I agree with everything. This is the system they use now and changing it would cost money and work.
For the relationship part, I just expected it not to be a rush thing, it's 22 chapters, spread the content well.

Thanks for a great read, sadly as a backer I must advice you to prepare for further disappointment. Communication with us, backers was also terrible, for example I was banned permanently in Steam discussions for my critque about EA cancellation... voiced on KS! More than that, the massive amount of simps and fanboys didn't help making people like me look bad and problematic, without even considering our voice of displeasure may have solid ground.

And now we are where we are. Just like in Cyberpunk 2077 - many things can be improved, but some are impossible to fix. Just like PANDORA here. Adding more scenes, even giving them context still will not change the fact of porn part being just short, looped GIFs totally disconnected from the rest of the game. To fix that everything would have to be rewritten. I'm sure they don't have time, resources and will to do that.

I realized in time where all of this is going and made a successful attempt issuing chargeback in my bank giving EA cancellation as a reason for breaching a contract. It was after all listed as one of the rewards. Still, after so long period of time, banning people on Steam and their discord for voicing displeasure or even using emotes they didn't like, after convincing us so strongly that it's all because they want to release full, polished, magnificent game to give us the best possible experience we ended up... with this.

For people who purchased this game now and saying "it's just EA, what did you expect, everything will be better" - you must understand that everything what was said between this release, what was promised and what was discussed fell short. This game will not be a disaster, but also it won't be premium, adult gaming experience worthy of time and resources invested in it Studio FOW promised not only to backers, but also to customers considering game had it's "release" already.

I'm still hoping for improvements, I didn't want to participate in the Kickstarter out of fear, and I think I did the right thing, but I don't want to ask Steam for a refund either. I want to keep believing that they can surprise us, for the good.
But if the surprise will be that they change direction and go full monsters, well, I'm out of the game.

 

[Kernist]

Kernist. Surprised you didn't bring xarksas with you to keep on spreading misinformation, which is what you were banned for. FOW doesn't just remove people nilly willy the instant they have a negative opinion. But constantly spamming it to others, every single diary entry, is more than enough reason.

And here it is, the white knight of Studio FOW. I showed publicly the reason of ban that was provided to me and I will do it again so your lie about the reason being "spreading misinformation" won't slide.

And don't lie about Studio not removing people from their discord just for disagreeing with them, again, one person even showed proof about reason being using particular emote under one of the announcements.

This is F95 forum, neither you or Studio FOW don't have any power here. Neither you or me influenced people into rating this game here. And it has below 50%. I would think again which of us was spreading misinformation to others all this time.

Keep thinking the game will redeem itself. For the sake of everyone here, I really hope you are right. I am too old however to believe it. Cases of No Man's Sky comeback are very rare.

 

[Benthic Lurker]

So they outsourced the Star Control + X-Com shit...
That means they can focus more effort on the sex scenes....
And the best they could come up with is this pandora system garbage?

 

[Joshua Tree]

And here it is, the white knight of Studio FOW. I showed publicly the reason of ban that was provided to me and I will do it again so your lie about the reason being "spreading misinformation" won't slide.
View attachment 1115081
And don't lie about Studio not removing people from their discord just for disagreeing with them, again, one person even showed proof about reason being using particular emote under one of the announcements.

This is F95 forum, neither you or Studio FOW don't have any power here. Neither you or me influenced people into rating this game here. And it has below 50%. I would think again which of us was spreading misinformation to others all this time.

Keep thinking the game will redeem itself. For the sake of everyone here, I really hope you are right. I am too old however to believe it. Cases of No Man's Sky comeback are very rare.

Well going by the wording of that ban, it was deserved no?

 

[Kernist]

Well going by the wording of that ban, it was deserved no?

Judge for yourself. If banning me on Steam for my KS comments is fair, then you are right. But just to be safe I will also mention that even my post about idea of implementing controller support was removed (later I posted it again and this time it stayed, so i think it's safe to say I was on the mark for a long time).

 

[Vace234]

Judge for yourself. If banning me on Steam for my KS comments is fair, then you are right. But just to be safe I will also mention that even my post about idea of implementing controller support was removed (later I posted it again and this time it stayed, so i think it's safe to say I was on the mark for a long time).

Wow banned huh? For a company that's known to be anti-pc that was a pc move.

 

[Toudaioken]

So are we able to get Fortune as a companion yet?

 

[Deleted member 324588]

So are we able to get Fortune as a companion yet?

Not yet, just 3 ladies for now

 

[Deleted member 324588]

And here it is, the white knight of Studio FOW. I showed publicly the reason of ban that was provided to me and I will do it again so your lie about the reason being "spreading misinformation" won't slide.
View attachment 1115081
And don't lie about Studio not removing people from their discord just for disagreeing with them, again, one person even showed proof about reason being using particular emote under one of the announcements.

This is F95 forum, neither you or Studio FOW don't have any power here. Neither you or me influenced people into rating this game here. And it has below 50%. I would think again which of us was spreading misinformation to others all this time.

Keep thinking the game will redeem itself. For the sake of everyone here, I really hope you are right. I am too old however to believe it. Cases of No Man's Sky comeback are very rare.

Yeah reads like it was pretty well deserved. There's a difference between constructive criticism and just inflammatory negativity.

If people got banned from discord for emote usage, it was likely because they were trying to spell out offensive slurs, or using reaction emojis to circumvent a mute punishment. Again would also well be deserved.

Obviously. I can't control people's opinions here, but I can address their concerns and explain things as best as I can with publicly available information. As opposed to just spamming images with outdated wording.

And I will keep thinking it. Cuz FOW has never failed to finish anything. And if a lawsuit by Blizzard didn't stop them, nothing will.

 

[Razrback16]

This is the first time I write in a thread other than my own. This is because I really cared about the Subverse project, so I would like to share my thoughts with you.
I hope no one will be offended, both by my way of speaking about certain elements of the game, the fetishes and the way they have served this dish to us.
The initial premise, I’m on the side of all those players who don’t like tags like NTR/Sharing/Cuckold/Monster, and that I may repeat things that many of you have already discussed. I’ve known StudioFow since their prior works, since their Sophitia with Minotaur, and when I heard about the creation of Subverse, I was intrigued, but knowing their themes, I thought it just wouldn’t be a game for me.
Until the studio itself, in one of its announcements, said that the game would be vanilla compared to their work and that monsters would be optional.
This was the trigger that attracted many people, including me, to become interested in the project.
Given also the many promotional videos that always repeated: “Create your own harem of space waifu.”
So, I decided then that I would not support the Kickstarter campaign, but would buy the game on Day One, as the developers themselves said they would release it as a full game.
Given this promise, the famous date arrives, and consequently my purchase:

View attachment 1115047

Subverse amazed me but at the same time broke me, and I’ll explain why.
I’m going to talk separately about both the SFW and NSFW sides, with the addition of broken promises and improvements.
Graphically it is very nice, with fantastic voice acting and comic acting that you may or may not like.
I don’t even have any complaints about the bullet hell and strategy sections, also because they were not made by StudioFow, but by another independent studio; I know many people have complained about their simplicity, but guys, that’s normal. That wasn’t supposed to be the focus of the game. Pointless to say go play Xcom or Touhou Project.
The backgrounds are also well done.
The only flaws in this side I would like to point to are not being able to include waifu in battle and leaving xenos aside. Why can’t I go full girls in battle? Maybe it will be added later.
Secondary, the Mary Celeste is bare, there are monsters and crew members around, why not show them?
Now let’s talk about the sore spot, the NSFW zone.
A big mistake in my opinion was the implementation of the Pandora System, where pieces of video were cut out so that everyone’s fetishes could be respected.
The result? Disconnected scenes with no logical sense.
It’s a porn game, you can’t leave these scenes out, not connecting them to the story and without giving development of the relationships with the girls that led them to do that scene.
The devs themselves said, “The game will be more Vanilla than our works, the monster scenes will be optional”. I’m fine with them being there, people who aren’t interested like me don’t watch them or unlock them, not unlocked, never happened, but the way pandora is set up, is bad. As far as girls are concerned, the sense of optional has been misused, as optional in this case means lost content. There were plenty of ways to implement this, one of which was to create side quests or scenes that happened randomly in the ship. I give an example with Killision. Side event: Crew members ask you if they can fuck her, double choice, yeah sure, you unlocked the gangbang, second choice, touch Killision and I’ll chop your dicks off, cowgirl unlocked with killision. The same thing for her Chimerina too, no monster, then doggystyle with cap. This is optional and integrated with the story, not like they did the pandora system. They got their way of advertising the game wrong, and as a result, they attracted many people like me, also because as one goal said more scenes with xenos, another one implied more scenes without.
We have to say that most of the funds came not from those who wanted the monsters, but from the other side.
Then the Lily problem, okay she’s the one who likes alien dicks, but what if I don’t want that to happen in my gameplay? Simple, unlock nothing. The problem is that the scenes I’m interested in, the ones with the MC, are two. What do I do with the others? Give us an alternative.

View attachment 1115048

Also, these days on Discord they have said that Lily will receive many scenes with the Cap, we’ll see.
I understand that vanilla fans complain about the presence of monsters, but the blame also lies with how the game was advertised.
Want a simple solution? A button that removes/hides those scenes from the listings, so even the most “visually sensitive” will stop complaining.
Returning to Discord, there you will find a beautiful list of broken promises.

View attachment 1115049

Played them all, the old ones have more interactions and last much longer than a 5-second gif.

View attachment 1115050

We have the Early Access, there are three girls and none are romanceable.

View attachment 1115054

Are you confirming that the scenes were well placed at the beginning? Possibly, since the Pandora System went from a loyalty system to a skill tree to just buy scene and watch.

View attachment 1115055

This is more roleplay style than what we have, events of scenes that unlock other scenes.

View attachment 1115056

Should we expect them later or have you reconsidered? Since the models of the off-screen characters are distorted.

View attachment 1115057

This is the biggest change since the game was initially supposed to come out complete, but then why make an Early Access? I think I know why.

Little addition I make, but why not also put female Xenos? They are still alien monsters, you said we would be able to fuck all alien races, but does that only imply male ones? I think so.

Last thing to show:

View attachment 1115059

So, StudioFow, who is the game really for? In my opinion, you have made a mistake in trying to grab as much audience as possible in an attempt to increase profit, but in doing so you have given it to everyone but in a lazy and wrong way.
You've already stated that the Pandora System will not be changed, and that's fine, but I'm hoping for improvements for that at least.
In the end, they decided to release an Early Access to test the ground and see how the public would react. Well, they've broken it in two, Vanilla people who expected a different game and monster people who expected harder scenes. I hope they can understand all the criticism we're giving them, even if some people say they're taking out the negative reviews on Steam and saying that the game is a success.
Sorry for the long speech from someone who prefers vanilla and avoids other fetishes, but I really cared about Subverse, and I really hope they improve it, the potential is there, let's hope it doesn't go to waste.

Dude, this is a really good post. Echoes a lot of my own feelings, and I LOVE your idea of the choice system for the narrative based scenes being based on options as you described. Your example with the crew and Killision is fantastic and allows the player to actually shape the Captain's personality a bit as well as the content.

If you haven't already, I'd strongly recommend you post what you stated above into the Steam discussion thread stickied to the top of its general forum for Subverse titled "REQUEST/FEEDBACK THREAD". I've read that the Devs intend to check out people's comments in that thread, and despite some exceptionally good commentary in this thread, I am skeptical that Studio FOW actually checks out F95, even though, despite it being a pirate site, there are lots of folks here who are willing to spend money on games when they feel they are worth it, many of us back games and developers we like on Patreon as well. I own a number of F95 games on Steam and have backed on Patreon myself. The fact that you have experience as a game dev adds further clout to your post as well, IMHO.

 

[Deleted member 324588]

Dude, this is a really good post. Echoes a lot of my own feelings, and I LOVE your idea of the choice system for the narrative based scenes being based on options as you described. Your example with the crew and Killision is fantastic and allows the player to actually shape the Captain's personality a bit as well as the content.

If you haven't already, I'd strongly recommend you post what you stated above into the Steam discussion thread stickied to the top of its general forum for Subverse titled "REQUEST/FEEDBACK THREAD". I've read that the Devs intend to check out people's comments in that thread, and despite some exceptionally good commentary in this thread, I am skeptical that Studio FOW actually checks out F95, even though, despite it being a pirate site, there are lots of folks here who are willing to spend money on games when they feel they are worth it, many of us back games and developers we like on Patreon as well. I own a number of F95 games on Steam and have backed on Patreon myself. The fact that you have experience as a game dev adds further clout to your post as well, IMHO.

I don't know if they are checking it, but I can certainly confirm that a lot of opinions here match up to what they've been saying on discord. Aside from the obvious inflammatory conspiracy crap, of course.

 

[Kernist]

Yeah reads like it was pretty well deserved. There's a difference between constructive criticism and just inflammatory negativity.

If people got banned from discord for emote usage, it was likely because they were trying to spell out offensive slurs, or using reaction emojis to circumvent a mute punishment. Again would also well be deserved.

Obviously. I can't control people's opinions here, but I can address their concerns and explain things as best as I can with publicly available information. As opposed to just spamming images with outdated wording.

And I will keep thinking it. Cuz FOW has never failed to finish anything. And if a lawsuit by Blizzard didn't stop them, nothing will.

That's fair. You have your beliefs, I have mine. To be honest I also think the game will be finished, i just don't believe it will be anything more than 'average" (again, let's hope you are right in this situation).

Even I will admit that you are doing a great job about informing people what is/isn't in the game and what Studio FOW's plans for the future are. I would recommend others however to be careful when asking you about opinion regarding anything concerning this game. Yes, I am biased when it comes to negativity towards Studio FOW. All my experiences with them between KS campaign and this release made me unable to promise I can give 100% neutral opinion here. Even I however was able to admit when something looked promising (examples being I praised VA when they gave us samples, I praised SHMUP backgrounds, I praised animations shown in the trailer). Please, prove me wrong, but I don't remember you saying anything bad about any aspect of the game before release. You never had any shadow of doubt, you were arguing constantly with me and me alike in KS comments.

My point is maybe I am biased, but you are too. And you won't convince me otherwise, we interacted with each other too much before.

 

[Razrback16]

I'm still hoping for improvements, I didn't want to participate in the Kickstarter out of fear, and I think I did the right thing, but I don't want to ask Steam for a refund either. I want to keep believing that they can surprise us, for the good.
But if the surprise will be that they change direction and go full monsters, well, I'm out of the game.

Ya, I probably would have participated in the KS if I had seen it in time, but at this point I'm really glad I didn't. I had also intended on buying the game on day 1 and possibly even pre-ordering it, had that been an option (and I NEVER pre-order, so that should convey how excited I was for this game), but a post here on F95 saved me from that would-be error and made me very skeptical. At this point I will be very curious to see v1.0 and hoping for major improvements. The XXX content is bad so far, and Pandora is terrible for all of the reasons you outlined in your earlier post. I do consider the art to be really well-done in the game, and the schmup missions to be enjoyable, along with exceptional voice acting, and that is the only reason I will likely buy the game at a $10-15 price point currently at v1.0 release unless MAJOR changes are made to the game that I am happy with.

I will admit, I'm incredibly skeptical on Studio FOW fixing the issues many of us have with the game. I expect them to make 'improvements' but I'm not sure it'll be enough, as to fix these issues, they will likely need an overhaul, which would be expensive, and they are a small studio.

 

[Deleted member 324588]

That's fair. You have your beliefs, I have mine. To be honest I also think the game will be finished, i just don't believe it will be anything more than 'average" (again, let's hope you are right in this situation).

Even I will admit that you are doing a great job about informing people what is/isn't in the game and what Studio FOW's plans for the future are. I would recommend others however to be careful when asking you about opinion regarding anything concerning this game. Yes, I am biased when it comes to negativity towards Studio FOW. All my experiences with them between KS campaign and this release made me unable to promise I can give 100% neutral opinion here. Even I however was able to admit when something looked promising (examples being I praised VA when they gave us samples, I praised SHMUP backgrounds, I praised animations shown in the trailer). Please, prove me wrong, but I don't remember you saying anything bad about any aspect of the game before release. You never had any shadow of doubt, you were arguing constantly with me and me alike in KS comments.

My point is maybe I am biased, but you are too. And you won't convince me otherwise, we interacted with each other too much before.

I didn't have doubts because I had no reason to doubt. FOW has kept their word throughout their movie making time with SFM. And any decision they made during the campaign was given with an explanation. I understand that you and many others felt 'betrayed' by the first cancellation of early access, but I feel what we got now is a much better version than if they had just done it each chapter one by one back in 2019.

 

[Razrback16]

I don't know if they are checking it, but I can certainly confirm that a lot of opinions here match up to what they've been saying on discord. Aside from the obvious inflammatory conspiracy crap, of course.

That's good to hear - I hate Discord so I never use it for any games I follow. I've tried to give meaningful feedback on the Steam forums though in the hope it's heard. I'm doubtful it amounts to the type of changes I'm seeking, but I feel better at least doing what I can, though.

 

[Deleted member 324588]

That's good to hear - I hate Discord so I never use it for any games I follow. I've tried to give meaningful feedback on the Steam forums though in the hope it's heard. I'm doubtful it amounts to the type of changes I'm seeking, but I feel better at least doing what I can, though.

Well Mr. K said this a few days ago, so I'm sure they're listening.

 

[Razrback16]

Well Mr. K said this a few days ago, so I'm sure they're listening.

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Ya I saw where you posted that previously, also - guess only time will tell at this point. Do you have any information as far as how long they are thinking releases will be spaced out? Given the amount of heavy criticism I'm going to speculate that it'll be months before the next release.

 

[Kernist]

I didn't have doubts because I had no reason to doubt. FOW has kept their word throughout their movie making time with SFM. And any decision they made during the campaign was given with an explanation. I understand that you and many others felt 'betrayed' by the first cancellation of early access, but I feel what we got now is a much better version than if they had just done it each chapter one by one back in 2019.

You are probably right, after all original plan was constructed without expectation of the project being so much of a success. The only advantage of releasing chapter one by one would be that reported early on it could be still possible to fix PANDORA to satisfy more people.

75% of my complaints was about cancelling one of the rewards, promised EA. At the end of the day, we still got it. It's kinda funny. On purpose or not, they DID fulfill this reward. Ironic indeed.