4.9 hours played
Written 25 days ago
Empty Shell, A gorgeous shell that is sadly quite indeed empty.
This game looked very interesting so I figured I'd give it a purchase and try it, and honestly I am conflicted, unsure and eventually disappointed with what the game tries to achieve.
[h2]Pros[/h2]
- One of the most immersive and well designed UIs I've seen in a while, its stellar for the theme, honest 10/10
- Interesting view, graphics match the tone of the game well
- Shooting/inventory looks inspired by Signalis, and its fine, works okay
- Adding notes on the map is a very nice touch
- Using the terminal on the PCs looks incredibly well themed, albeit I didn't find any use on it on my playthrough besides adding some light irrelevant details on the environment
- Buying specific shields only after you finish a level is an interesting way to progress besides buying guns or ammo
- Few interesting puzzles, not too complex, simple and good
- The steam badges look really good
[h2]Cons[/h2]
My main 2 issues are on story and difficulty.
Story
I get that the point of the story is to be light on details to keep you guessing, "super secret facility" and all that, but its a bit too light for me, it doesn't give you any reason to care besides "scary secret facility doing evil experiments because yes". Most of the story is teased via mostly irrelevant document snippets, which would be great IF there was a solid story behind it, with the snippets adding flavour/depth to the world, but with just the snippets alone its just not enough. Teasing barely 5% of the story via documents, and all you have to go with is "follow instructions X from people Y to do Z because you just have to", makes it really hard for me to care. Furthermore, there isn't any definite goal besides "go do X whilst killing anything that moves"
Difficulty
I honestly found the game quite hard even on normal, with a weird balance of difficulty being that small enemies get wiped out in 1 melee hit but then slightly bigger enemies/bosses being damage sponges that do a ton of dmg and take multiple mags to kill. Sadly its yet another "higher difficulty = enemies get +dmg and +hp" system, very boring, they could have made enemies slightly faster, or add more enemies, or later stage enemies appear in earlier stages. shame
[h2]Neutral[/h2]
- The game calls itself a roguelike with each run being a new character with a random selection of 1 weapon and 1 melee weapon, running the same level, which honestly I consider a joke, considering a single run took me over 4 hours to reach what I'd assume to be the HALFWAY point by looking at achievements.
- The only roguelite elements present is when you die you might find your old corpse in the level with some stuff you dropped to loot, and the fact that you restart on whichever level you last died on, everything else is roguelike.
- Due to difficulty the roguelike gameplay is a bit of a hassle, as when you do restart the same level, the generation is actually different, but at least I can my old corpse and loot some stuff which is a neat touch, so I guess -1 & +1 = 0
- Character looks like a 32x32 when hes walking, but looks way more detailed when sprinting?
- Perhaps wrong expectations, but the game is a bit floaty, was expecting more snappy movement, there's some drift in character movement, if that was their intent I guess I'm fine with it
- Multiple mentions of people being alive and hiding in documents, yet not a single friendly on sight
- Money system gives you options to buy upgrades, albeit a bit limited, not many miscellaneous items besides health kits, ammo and the occasional gadget, impactful items come way later on and cost a lot, and if you don't play very effective that money is going towards health kits
I really wanted to finish the game, willing to see if it gets better, but after being in the "activate the lasers" level, activating the 2 batteries, the door locking behind me and getting flooded by 20 enemies that spawned instantly, killing me, I kinda gave up on trying to push through for the gameplay since there is no story anyways.
[h2]Conclusion[/h2]
Empty Shell is a game with a stellar UI and a good atmosphere, with no main story and a roguelike experience that is too long paired with a surprisingly hard difficulty making for an unpleasant experience. There's simply just too much story missing for me to care.
