Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden

Times like these I wish there was a thumbs-up-point-five sort of button. At the time of writing I've beaten the base game on hard mode and am about to head to the dlc, Seed of Evil, and plan on playing on a harder difficulty to play around because I did have a good time. I adore tactical turn based games and this one is, I think, fascinating. Survival turn based tactics sounds like an awesome time. And this *sort of* manages it.
I think the game's trailer paints a poor picture of what the game will be like, especially if you've played games like Fallout or wasteland. This is even worse, I think, if you've even glanced at the tabletop RPG. I'd say this game follows the basic idea of the TTRPG, but only the basic idea. You don't really scrounge for resources. You certainly collect metal, which you use to shop with, and you find weapon parts to upgrade your guns. But you don't really do much with it yourself. You have to fast travel back to the home base to spend the scrap for weapon attachments, grenades of various sorts, medkits and the occasional weapon if that's your thing. You take the weapon parts to the mechanic to make your guns better. Or you might not want to do that because then you can't upgrade the obviously better guns you can get later, kicking yourself for having wasted parts for 1 extra damage when that extra damage could have been put on a gun that will always outclass a fully upgraded version of the level 1 gun.
Not that the game promised it, but the trailer had me assume one could find and use food in some way, but your health is restored from medkits (which heal you to full between fights but only a small amount in battles). The main source of increasing your HP, as opposed to leveling up, is finding better armor. You don't make armor, get armor from your home (often), you find it and guns laying around in chest. You cannot collect perfectly good guns or armor from enemies, for some reason, with no explanation.
That last part sort of hones in on the problem overall, I think. This game is tagged as an RPG, but this is not one. You level up, certainly, but there's more to a Role Playing Game than that. You don't need to have a talking skill box thing and choose dialogue options to roleplay. Nay, you don't need a great deal of story-based choices to to role play. Sometimes it's nice to simply play the role handed to you. But you do not play the role of a Stalker in this game except in the barest sense of sneaking up on opponents to thin out the herd, a task that grows more and more difficult as the silent weapons in the game are drastically outpaced by newer weapons, the actual reach of 'loud' weapons' noise not made clear, the amount of enemies in groups increase and their health values get so huge that even a full team of 3 characters shooting at 1 enemy can take 1 and a third turns to get through. You can't really be a stalker as much as you can participate in a really good set of game mechanics.
You don't really get to be part of the Ark's, your home's, community. You talk to only a few people, and that's only to shop. There's no conversations that really makes it feel like your characters are part of the community. There's no hustle and bustle, no sense of people living here and your characters living with them. The most egregious is, towards the end of the main campaign, you're manage to complete your main objective and, somehow, the elder (leader) of the Ark thanks you and berates you for wanting to go to the titular Eden to learn the characters past in the same breath. Then you leave his cabin and he thanks you for letting an old man ramble. BUT THEN, you inevitably while traveling the road to Eden will collect materials and a trinket (if you're a completionist) that will take you back to the Ark and the Elder will berate you more for going farther along to Eden. But he won't, like. Stop you. Or have other Stalkers stop you. He just kinda yells. And then again thanks you for letting an old man ramble.
The game mechanics themselves are good and they are polished. As a tactical psudo-survival tactics game, they are fabulous, as far as the direct combat goes, even if the moments between combat aren't quite so good like newer XCOM games are. But while it feels like the developers knew their limits on the game portion of this experience, their writing and story telling ambitions were much higher. This creates a very uncanny valley sort of feeling where the challenging, chunky gameplay doesn't match the end of the world aesthetics and the story feels like lots of style and no substance.
Calling this game a fusion between Fallout and XCOM is incorrect. Go play Wasteland 2 or 3 for that feeling. But if you have a lot of hours to kill and some patience (and don't mind some save scumming to learn the mechanics and experiment), this can spark the imagination and be a good time.

It's like x-com only I'm a pig 10/10

I just finished the game, here is my thought:
Game description:
-It is a turn based tactical strategy game, with linear storyline.
Positive:
-combat is fun and satisfying
-stealth is satisfying when successfully executed.
-sound effects is good and satisfying
-characters designs are okay, a bit to the oversized head art style, but overall is good
-world design is beautiful.
-voice over is top notch. although the fact that every in game interraction give different lines based on the character that start the interraction.
Negative:
-Game time wise, not enough battles. the game is short for a turn based game. There are only 5 problems you will encounter: going back to ark, finding hammon's team, finding hammon, dealing with lux, finding eden.
-Only 1 side mission
-Story wise, it is too short for a linear story.
-The ending is a cliff hanger. it feels intentionally left incomplete for DLC or further game series.
-Last boss fight is not epic.
suggestion:
-more side mission
-multiple choices and endings
-longer story
-satisfying ending
-more epic fights
-more interaction with the world through side quests instead of elder telling story.
conclusion score: 7/10

One of my favourite games I've ever played. I enjoy it so much, I've bought it on multiple platforms. It's a solid stealth based strategy rpg. The characters are unique and fantastic, and the mystery of the world is interesting. It takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where a group of mutants first set out to find supplies to keep their sanctuary known as the Ark alive. Eventually, they begin to learn who they are and the truth about the world they've been living in.

You can have a duck in your party called Dux

The game is worth 10 bucks.

Played through the main game and just got the DLC.
- Nice setting and graphics. Lots of details like Posters, signs and so on. I also like the charakters, nothing beats a grumpy duck!
- Satisfying story. Reminds me (of course) of Fallout 1+2, but the focus is more on tactics.
- On normal not to demanding for the more casual player, but the harder modes are difficult enough for the tacticians.
Would buy again :-)