Well I finished the game, got the protectors of the mission ending. My review:
Stats and skills:
Looking at the statistics and skills, I can't help but feel they're a clear downgrade compared to AoD, namely in that 1. stats in AoD were more impactful (you really FELT every point in every cathegory) 2. learn by doing is decline (I'll elaborate on that below) and, perhaps worst of all, 3. they present a simple puzzle that can be solved. And by that I mean that it's not hard to create a build that passes EVERY presented check in the game, essentially 100%ing it (save exclusive story paths, naturally). This was my case as well – I have explored every bit of accessible content, won every single fight in the game, didn't leave a single check unpassed... This wasn't an option in AoD. While you COULD get past the majority of checks in a single playthrough if you knew what you were doing, I don't think you could ever do EVERYTHING. For reference, my starting build was 6 STR, 12 CON (Healing factor starting feat), 4 DEX, 4 PER, 10 INT, 6 CHAR. That way, I could maximize the amount of implants (thus raising my stats even higher), tag all the skills I needed (biotech and electronics from science skills, rest was for combat + streetwise. Faythe took care of all the stealth + computers), and still have the maximum amount of 3 followers (2 form CHAR + 1 from feat).
Moving onto Learn By Doing, it removes the entire aspect of character building from the game. Where in AoD, I often found myself agonizingly deciding which skill to invest my points into, here it was reduced to "Computers? Faythe. Electronics? Me. Oh, Steal? Faythe again" and so on. There was zero thought put into any of it, and while training tokens offered some versatility, they were too rare to really make it a meaningful gameplay consideration. Furthermore, I didn't really enjoy how it affected the speech skills. At times, I found myself skipping fights I'd have liked to fight just to pump that shit higher, which I don't think is good design. In any case, I brought every stealth and science skill to 10 (or 11, in the case of Biotech) thus passing any check they threw at me (and with 8 in both persuasion and streetwise, I passed pretty much every speech check too in the end).
Combat:
I know some people here disliked it, but I enjoyed it. It was good enough and offered enough challenge with varied mechanics to counter different scenarios. Trashmobs were comparatively rare (I think the only place where I ran into a series of seriously boring, uninspired combat encounters were Hydroponics Yellow and Red), looting enemies of all they had was always a pleasure (either they had goodies I wanted, or stuff I could sell. Game economy suffered from there being very little in shops that the player would want, but implants tuning created enough of a money need to make me scrounge up every credit up until late game), and many combats were tactically interesting in some manner.
Exploration, maps, and quests:
This was the game's weakpoint for me. It started off great – Chapter 1 had the best locations, each interesting in some way, each offering interesting places to explore, and most having a smattering of quests about just to make things interesting even narratively. I absolutely loved Mission Control, for example. Then comes chapter 2. Factory is meh, but okay, but then comes the Habitat. Holy fucking shit it's bad. Shuttle Bay is something I'd expect from a high school student in terms of overall design – a single quest placed into what's basically two linear corridors crossing each other, with nothing to explore, nothing of interest, just NOTHING overall. A terrible location. And the various faction compounds aren't much better – not only are the designs very similar in each, but most quests boil down to "go here and pass speech check" or "go here and fight a really easy fight". So fucking boring. You know it's bad when the mission where I was supposed to just go and kill a bunch of random brotherhood soldiers in a tunnel somewhere (which is as basic as it can get) was one of my favorites in that whole stretch of the game. Honestly, if the game teleported me to a faction leader right after Factory, and then to the maintenance tunnels, I'd think the game was better for it. Maintenance tunnels were better in that there was interesting stuff to do and good fights to fight, even if there wasn't that much of it due to their small size.
Then came chapter 3 and I happily returned to mission control to explore every last bit of it that I couldn't before (again, loved it), then fought some fights in the Pit, and then it was off to the Heart... which wasn't as bad as the Habitat but still a far cry from the maps in Chapter 1. It was at this point that I realized the game probably wasn't gonna get any better, but hey, I liked some of the fights there, so why not push on? In any case, you're then presented with Hydroponics Yellow and Red, which are both basically a corridor full of trashmobs and little of interest (when they should be so interesting given the lore behind them!), nor side quests or other things. And then you go onto a LONG sequence of main quest fights, and win the game. Game proper pretty much ends with Heart, everything after it is a prolonged ending scene, as far as I'm concerned.
World:
I found the game to be constantly confused about its own scale. Like it tried to be big and tiny at the same time. For example, consider the factory: narratively a lawless zone where whole 15 gangs warred it out until only 2 remained, and those then raid any traders that dare pass through, while Thy Brother's Keepers offer escort services of the non-sexual kind. Cool, right? But then, after eliminating both those gangs, you realize it was like 30 people in total, or something along those lines. Uh... something doesn't add up, dude. Were those 15 gangs made of two or three people each? Lol. There were many cases like this throughout the game, where the narrative was bombastic and made you think of something grand, but the execution then showed tiny areas or handfuls of people.
Still, if you got past that, things weren't so bad. The narrative made me intrigued about many places, there were mysteries raised, and so on. What I did NOT like at all was the lack of attention to detail in any of it though. The world is very static, with changes only being made in-between chapters, and minimal ones at that (usually just placing NPCs in different spots, often not even that). Compared to how, say, Teron changes once you enter chapter 2 in AoD, this was really disappointing. NPCs are especially offending in that regard. Like you'd think that after removing the spores in Hydroponics Yellow and massacring all the critters there, the Granger leader might be a little intrigued, given he's been trying to make a headway there for years, right? Nope. Unless you secure the red zone too, you may as well go fuck yourself, that nigga doesn't give a shit. Or Tanner. He's chatty in the main quest scenes, but talk to him otherwise and he has fuck all to say. Companions, while often speaking unprompted, are also guilty of this. They deliver their blurbs about pointless shit, but aside from that, you can't coax a word out of them. "Hey Faythe, we finally found where that shitty key goes. Now you know what your family died for." FAYTHE: "K. Do you need anything else, or...?"
Overall the game feels rushed. Like after Chapter 1, everything got made quickly rather than properly, with the last chapter especially being made ASAP. I also dearly miss some of the little fun things from AoD, such as each level of each skill having it's own unique description. I know they're inconsequential, but I found it fun to find out what different levels said, and I'm sure it can't be that much work to implement (same for NPCs reacting to the stuff you do more).
Overall:
I'd say it was alright, despite the shortcomings, but "alright" isn't very flattering either. Where I've replayed AoD many, many times by now, I cannot see myself giving CS more than one more playthrough sometime in the future, MAYBE, and mostly because I'm interested in what happens to the Pit under a different leadership (which is, again, Chapter 1 stuff... I really wish the whole game was like Chapter 1). I hope the game sold well, at least, and that whatever Iron Tower makes next will be better.
