Im curious, who bought this? I wanna know more about if its as immersive as they try to display or if its just a disappointment. Looks interesting but to me, im questioning the fun factor and if im gonna be more angry trying to play it vs enjoying the experience.

Anyone who has played this, care to explain? I enjoy permadeath so long as its a optional in whatever runthrough i wanna play through as permadeath mode. Can it be turned off?

Thanks. That's what I wanted to know

You can also copy saves manually after every mission. This is what I do when I don't want to actually bother with no save/loading systems.

Real time using tiny fonts... :/

Im kind of frustrated with about 5 missions in. The equipment and clone management feels copy pasted out of XCOM, without the attendant clarity. Trying to figure out how and where to attach the tech upgrade gubbinz is not clear, nor is how to effectively use combat hacking. Ostensibly it can do lots of things, but so far the hacking specialist only allows me to see that there is extra loot that the lack the knowledge to extract.

Similarly, making the bonus loot attempts timed and reflex/rhythm based is also frustrating. I have some injuries that make fast twitch response stuff much more difficult for me, making those minigames all the more painful.

Third, agent memory or skill allocation on unit cloning is not explained nearly well enough, especially given its apparent permanence at this point in the game.

Fourth, Damage over Time apply a status effect, but the healer unit that removes all Debuffs does not affect DoTs. Or Poison. Or Pain. And for some reason, your medic can only dispense pain meds during combat. Not during any of the rest of the wandering around the map time.

Turn economy seems to be distilling towards, just kill everything as fast as possible. Health, Pain, Shields, Intoxication, are all distinct resources that can only be managed by using combat turns, or lumps of credits and clone recovery time. I like complexity, but dislike how opaque and obtuse nature of the system is as presented.

Sixth, unless things change wildly, weapons are just another gubbinz attachment slot. You do not seem to be able to alter what kind of weapon, only the special abilities you append to it. Your soldier might be way more effective in the Anthill if you could swap out his heavy weapon for a shotgun, but that simply isnt doable. Multiple divergent cybernetic enhancements, sure. Different gun type? No can do boss. The clones can't handle that.

Overall, I think Bionic Dues https://www.gog.com/game/bionic_dues manages to implement a lot of similar features, with more player clarity, and more interesting equipment variability. Its far closer to the traditional rogue like, rather than the Bards Tale that this approaches. However, the core game mechanics are more clear, more refined, and don't rely real time one shot only crap either.

TLDR; Caveat Emptor

*edited for spelling*

Immersive it is not. Disappointment is the right word.

All maps are random generated from a very limited set of rooms, after 10 missions you have seen them all.

There are absolutely NO puzzles. It is combat, combat, combat with no story, no challenges, really just combat.

Combat mechanics are poorly executed and partly broken. You end up mashing the same buttons over and over again in every single fight, no tactics, no finesse.

Only three of all the available agent types (namely the three you start with) actually work well. Most abilities sound interesting but are ultimately useless.

Implants (except one) may look important, but don't actually give you noticeable benefits.

Neither your agents nor your employees have any personality. You can't talk to them. There is no backstory, no overarching quests - let alone side-quests - to speak of. Not even your opponents utter as much as a single word.

You can't change the equipment of your agents, not even swap weapons.

Money is useless. You always have too many credits and never enough tech.

Hacking mechanics is entirely pointless, don't even bother.

Story mode: There is no story. You are supposed to reduce influence of 4 companies and kill their bosses. By week 30 of 75 in story mode, you will have achieved that. But instead of an epic finale, the game just continues. Another week, another mission on the same handful maps with the same enemies fighting an opponent you already defeated until you reach week 75 and the game just ends. There is not even a proper ending sequence. Just some text, credits, the end.

In case you were hoping for some sort of Syndicate-style first person retro dungeon crawler, you are most likely going to be disappointed.

Thanks all who replied. I see its a game i would like just for a mindless throw and go sort of game, where i just rampage against enemies with little to no story. Was hoping for more immersive like a actual story, world building, etc... but that isn't the case. I still picked it up though solely because i thought it would be fun when i just don't care for story and wanna just run through it for a quick play.

As for permadeath... automated backups in 1min intervals is as detailed as ill get if i really wanna work around the save system but i was hoping for it to be more of a optional feature. If i wanna play permadeath mode, lets gooooo. But if i don't want perma death i can disable that on a seperate save thats not in permadeath mode or some sorta checkpoint/recovery system.

It's not a permadeath for the player: I mean, you cannot have a game over situation. The agents on the field have the permadeath BUT you can develop a technology to resurrect them (a sort of backup system).

It's been quite some time since a game put me off this much. I didn't even get through the tutorial before I quit and uninstalled it due to extremely cumbersome controls, obnoxious mini games and horrible optimisation. I've never refunded anything on GOG, but I've requested a refund on Conglomerate 451 because I feel so ripped off.

The developers really need to take a close look at Legend of Grimrock to see how a game of this style should be made.