Random thoughts:
I played it a bunch.
The combat devolves into slowly sneaking while aiming (so you can see as far as possible) and taking guys out from either beyond their vision range or behind, or really fast up close.
Playing a melee char probably involves sneaking really well or something? Can't imagine running up to people. You'll get murdered in less than a second depending on their weapon, even with decent armor.
Some of the guns fire so fast it's hilarious, the suppressed m4 empties 30 rounds in like half a second tops... That's not how that works, dev ;D
Might be framerate related though? It runs at a smooth 144 for me btw. Nice. Was expecting disaster because unity, but it's fine.
Slower firing weapons feel fine-ish. No way to switch fire modes though.
I had grenades and only used them once to throw at a guy's feet who I knew was just behind a corner. Other than that, there's no time once combat is joined imo unless you're suicidal.
Basic armor looks realistic-ish, better armor looks whacky as hell. Them huge fucking pauldrons haha.
No matter what armor I wear (so far) I can die super fast. You can make yourself tankier with perks and stats, but that takes away from other things you need.
You can get good guns relatively quickly, but what spawns off the enemies seems to be randomized. Beam guns get through most armor easier, but otherwise just feel like regular guns with different sounds and recolored tracers.
Had to give a guy a quest item which I was supposed to get off a certain other guy. Slaughtered that other guy's faction (died a time or two before I got it right). Then I found the same item as a duplicate in a box 10 meters from the questgiver lol.
The game starts with a dream sequence you can play through (like a real level). After that, you wake up and meet 2 npcs. You can follow them to their base but they walk through a hostile zone and wreck the enemies in seconds, I ended up looting those and losing the guys who just kept moving.
The day/night cycle is too fast imo, and your char gets tired and loses stamina very quickly. You can literally walk 2 blocks and your guy wants to rest. Hurray for energy drinks. Food/drink consumption is a bit weird, it replaces rest, more or less, but you can get negative perk for it randomly :/ Generally have to consume something annoyingly often if you don't just rest all the time. Your char can barely jog 15-20 meters before running out of stamina without certain perks. Jogging is default speed when moving towards where you look. Otherwise you just walk (recovers stamina). Sprint empties your stamina so fast, you can go maybe 10m...
Picked a char that was young and thus needed only 1 negative perk (picked the "no drugs ever" -one). Even if you start with mediocre stats, you can level them up well enough. A lot of the negative perks are a bit much... Like taking control away from your character etc. Might work in a turn-based game, but in this? Oof. In general I kind of wish it was turn-based JA2 style tbh. It's a bit too frantic when the action gets going, and the save-system is basically that you have to rest in a safe place (or maybe you can rest wherever, not sure safety is implemented fully?). So taking out an enemy stronghold in one go can be a bit daunting. Fortunately there are lots of perks to help you shoot with high accuracy and fast aiming speed while moving, for those close quarters firefights.
Overall, if you sneak/aim from outside range the combat is easy-ish. Not much in the way of tactics once you engage.
You have a cone of vision as well as awareness of a small circle directly around your char. Everything else is shadow-y.
Really weird that most of the screen is basically shit your char can't see (i.e. characters, items). This might work better if the perspective turned with your character, but that's not happening in a 2d game.
The vision thing is kind of annoying imo. I get having lines of sight, but I perpetually feel like my char has tunnel vision in combat. Also you generally don't see very far. Super annoying sometimes.
Writing is a little out-there at times.
I feel like the pacing of the pacing of the world/map is kind of whacky. You can go a block from a friendly base and get fired at from out of your sight range (if you don't already know to aim in that direction).
Graphics are a mix of fallout-ish style for the environments and then there are the weird black/white characters lol. Dev has stated that he may color them, but depends on testing and whatnot.
At lest they stand out from the environment. Sadly it can be a bit slow to identify friend/foe in quests where you defend allies and such because they all look too similar and have the same b/w color. I think there are colored elements above their heads but those aren't that easy to see.
All that being said, this appears to be an early version of the game. There are 3 maps (I think) so far, including the first dream sequence. Dev has been patching it and plans to add a lot more.
I'd say give it a try if you don't mind the somewhat abrupt nature of the combat and the general weirdness. It's actually quite fun. Might develop into a good game, aside from the writing
I would prefer if the game was a bit less frantic with stuff you have to worry about, like keeping your stamina up by drinking/eating constantly, worrying about negative perks you may pick up based on a chance or something when you perform certain actions, that sort of thing. The experience is a bit too compressed, like the fallout 4 map where locations are quite close to each other. Add the stamina system and whatnot and I feel like I can't quite focus on the core gameplay as much as I'd want.
This might all be because it's sort of like a demo, though.
You know what, it reminds me of a top-down version of stalker or something, except no non-human enemies so far (mutants are coming, apparently, along with an overworld map).
TL;DR it's interesting but quite rough around the edges. 2d stalker-ish with an interesting but somewhat attention-seeking char system that can distract you some from the actual gameplay at times.