First off: I bought this game on Steam after it came out and I didn't support it on Kickstarter, so you know where I'm coming from. I'm reviewing the first release, which for once actually seems reasonably representative of what the game will look like.
Rather than my usual summary, I'ma pros and cons this game, because...well...I prefer not to lead with the negatives on a game that I ultimately think is bad.
Pros:
Gameplay - it's okay. Not amazing, not groundbreaking, and weirdly non-sexual for a game that's supposed to be an overt porn game, but it's fine. I think if the game wasn't so badly designed or self-indulgent I'd think more highly of this part, but some fun can be had here. Fortunately, I actually like Asteroids and X-Com, so this wasn't as much of a chore as it seems to be for some players.
Graphics - Pretty decent. I've definitely seen better, but it's absolutely good enough in my opinion. The boobs look a bit more fake than I'm used to, but that's probably an engine problem (or they just leaned into everybody having falsies, which at least fits in with the story).
Worldbuilding - not great, but on a basic level I'm glad it's there. The biggest problem here is that it's a 'parody story,' where they just kinda smashed together a few video game backstories and occasionally added sex ideas to things. It's not very deep, not very thoughtful, very generic, but it's fine. Note that worldbuilding is different from story or cutscenes, which do NOT belong on the 'pros' list.
Sci-fi - Yeah, I know. Not everybody's cup of tea. But I actually really like sci-fi, so I'm down for them having made a big Mass Effect-esque sci-fi porn game.
That's kinda all I've got for the pros list.
Cons:
Boring - Absolutely this game's worst problem. What's funny is that the main selling points of this game, its porn scenes and the gameplay, are both fine. But the porn part is barely any of your playtime (what, 15 seconds per scene?), the mediocre gameplay is more of the game than that, and the AWFUL cutscenes and dialogues are at least half of the Goddamn game. Fuck. Every. Dialogue. Oh, and don't worry: nobody (at least, not that I've seen) gets naked in cutscenes or dialogue so far. So as a porn game, most of the game is a complete waste of time. I'm suspicious they did this to make the game more streamable, but this is a boring fucking game for some pornphobic sci-fi fan to try streaming. Worst of both worlds. Seriously, who is the intended audience here?
Characters - Who the fuck are these people? Yes, I get it in a general sense: they're loose parodies of characters from other games or genres of media. But there's no seduction, no build-up of anything, and the game spends so much time saying how they're basically just generic ladies to fuck that I never felt any connection with them whatsoever. Hell, there don't even seem to be any dialogue choices (even aesthetic ones where whatever you say the story keeps moving), so you're just watching some Australian asshole have girls hurled at him because the genre of game requires it. At this point, I'm not demanding that they be the main character's sisters or ex-teachers or whatever, just that they have some kind of relationship whatsoever beyond co-worker/person-main-character-fucks. But yes, obviously, it would indeed be better if some of them were the main character's blood relatives.
The story - Blah blah blah blah blah. Maybe it's all some extended Hideo Kojima joke or something that we have what feels like years of cutscenes about this or that faction doing some nonsense, but this is just some terribly dull writing. And it's not even particularly wacky! The best they could think of as far as recurring jokes was putting an umlaut over the 'u' in Nu Vegas and saying that as often as possible. I get it, people liked Fallout: New Vegas (I'm more of a Fallout 4 fan, myself), but this game has, so far, absolutely no relationship with that game. That's not always a bad thing, since this game isn't afraid of heterosexual relationships unlike F:NV, but it's just pointless and irritating like most of this game's story.
Tone - Maybe this criticism won't land for everybody, but Subverse feels absolutely full of itself. It's so self-indulgent, takes so long to get through anything, and is so proud of everything it's done, that I have a distinct impression that it's going to take them a WHILE to be able to accept any criticism that's clearly about to get leveled in their direction.
Overall, this game is a fucking MESS. It's a pretty mess, and it has some decent ideas in it (I may be alone in this, but I actually think Asteroids is a perfectly reasonable way to do space combat for a game like this), but this game just does not understand how to put its best foot forward. Lead with the porn, gameplay's about the right amount, stick the plot on the backburner. And for fuck's sake, don't give us a long cutscene involving a character until we've gone on a few missions with that character and have actually learned to give a shit about them. Oh, and get their fucking tits out for some dialogues and cutscenes! This is a porn game, Goddamn it!
There's definitely still time to save it (my gut says they'll get good sales numbers for now, which should drive further development), but they have to acknowledge that for right now, they done fucked up, if they want to right this ship.
Overall score: 2.5 stars (I rounded up to 3 in the perhaps benightedly optimistic hope that this gets better with later updates that are a little less infodump-heavy). It works, it looks decent, but it's just fucking hard to imagine recommending this to anybody in its current state. And for once, that has nothing to do with the game being unfinished. There's actually a decent amount of content here! It's just currently boring as hell.
