It's a long read, but if you're on the fence about buying this game, it's worth it.

The Game’s Developers
Throughout my time playing this game, the devs have made significant changes to aid the current player base. If you contribute to their discord and reviews to voice your opinion of glitches or bugs in the game, they will likely get fixed in the next patch. This game has a roadmap which is something that I think every game should include.

Players versus Monsters (Player alien)
In this game, light is your best friend. I have been the monster and killed people spraying at me with an MP-7 & SKAR and they have lost. I have also been on the other side trying to spray a full clip of my SKAR into a monster and died; only to ask my teammates if I could have played it better and they told me there was a light switch next to me. You must utilize your flares, glowsticks, flashlight, and the map lights versus the monster otherwise you will die trying to shoot it with your weapon. The only time you should be shooting your weapon at a monster is to get it out of cloak.

Playing monster:
To kill mercs you must play strategically, and you must use all your abilities to their maximum potential. It is best to coordinate with your fellow monster (as there are two monsters in each game) otherwise you are not going to kill many mercs. I find myself playing monster when I get burnt out from merc and here are a couple of tips. People will probably hate me for saying this but the best time to hunt down mercs is when they are fighting people. Become the biggest nuisance you possibly can & try and drain people of their stims. USE EGGS because damn are they annoying as hell to run into and on top of that they deal 15 damage (trust me this adds up). Finally, as a monster, electricity is your best friend as it speeds up the time you get your energy back.

Early Game:
The early game in this game is absolutely fantastic but extremely rage inducing if you get mad at games like I do. When I say early game, I mean when the game fresh wipes. As of the time I am writing this review, if you joined the game mid-wipe, you will verse players with guns (pistols and ARs), and the likelihood of you surviving those fights aren’t high. However, when you do succeed, and I have before, those moments are extremely rewarding, and you will not forget it (trust). The weapons are balanced enough so you have somewhat of a fighting chance if you have NGs and the players you are versing have pistols or ARs.

PvP Tips:
When moving around the map, you should try to be quiet to not catch the attention of aliens (PvE) which force you to shoot and give away your position (stealth is your friend). With your player flashlight (on keyboard this is ‘T’) it is really easy to see this from afar and you should only use it when you absolutely need to. I could not even begin to tell you how many times I have killed somebody or was able to put good shots on a person because they had their flashlight on. Use perks!!! I feel like I never really kill people who are running perks even when they bring in decked-out SKARs. The second I unlocked the ‘electricity resistance’ perk, I have never run a raid without it as it is something you can forget about as a merc (which is useful when running around the map). I remember healing to max health only to get hit by electricity and lose 10 health, this can make a difference in a fight.

Mid–Late Game & Traders:
This is where I currently am in the game. I think this portion of the game needs some serious work done to it. I have built up 1.6 million in this game (no achievement though ☹) and I have millions more in my stash. The absolute biggest letdown was the key cards. I will go into more detail below. Besides that, why are traders so hard to rank up when this game wipes monthly?? Marc is the easiest to rank up but for a good reason. He only takes trades, and unless you have them unlocked/know what they are it does not help too much (but god do not sleep on him like I did). Taras is harddd to max out, but I can completely understand that. What I can not understand is having him only reputation 18 when he maxes at 46 with the number of hours I have in this game (I did miss the reputation events, but my weekends are busy). I wish he leveled up easier as the amount of money you would need to run the kits you get late game is mind-boggling. I have Isabella rank 9 and it unlocks nothing past that but to fully max her I need another 7.5K rep. WHY? There is nothing more for me to unlock. Magnus is another trader that I find hard to rank up once you get him to a certain level. I currently have him level 11 out of 14, but it feels sluggish as I try and max him out. Rafael is the biggest letdown of them all. Once you unlock his extraction tools, I find him utterly useless after that. The key cards cost way too much for the little loot you get. I have run all key cards already, and I have found that running them is not worth the risk right now. I lost a purple key card and was more upset about the gun I lost versus the key card as the loot was straight trash. Why do I get better loot from running loot crate than from opening yellow and blue key cards??
Key Cards Cont.
Just to emphasize how annoyed and frustrated I am with how much key cards cost versus their loot pool; I wrote down my most recent run before writing this review:
Yellow Key Card ($46,000):
• Glue (1)
• Duct tape (1)
• Shotgun (1)
• 12 Gauge Buckshot (8)
• 12 Gauge Slugs (16)
• Grenade
• Foregrip (SGG)
• AH-28 Compensator
• 9mm (50)
Devs, most of the time I have run a yellow key card I have found nails that I believe are a static spawn. When you get to the point of running key cards, nobody is going to be running NGs. Please change this.
Blue Key Card ($64,000)
• Metadole (1)
• Fingerprint scanner (3)
With the amount of space in this room, WHY IS THERE NO STATIC SPAWNS????

While I do not expect to get an absurd amount of loot out of each room, I think the current loot pools are inadequate for how much you are risking. I get better loot out of the loot crate while running NGs. I get better loot running two emps and a fire axe (IYKYK). FIX THIS!!! I will regularly kill an alien outside or on the way to the key card room and will find better loot on those aliens than I will in the room (their pools are crazy but please do not change that). Overall, the loot inside the rooms should be changed, whether that is adding more static loot spawns or making those chests similar to the loot crate or airdrop, I shall leave that up to you.

Conclusion:
I played this game so often every day I possibly could for so long and this game has a promising future, but there needs to be some changes. I think buying this game is similar to Tarkov, but not at the same price point. If you like Tarkov mechanics, you will like this game. In the 250 raids I have I only ran into one cheater. In the 30 raids, I have in Tarkov this wipe, I have run into four confirmed cheaters (though I suspect more). This game has a lot of potential, and I truly look forward to what is to come in future updates.

Walked in a dark room. Made eye contact with the alien. Used all my masculine energy to submit the alien with my sexual gaze.

Acquired a new pet.

This game has so much potential, unfortunately this game is plagued with cheaters and hackers which is very frustrating to play this game at this point. It also has a good concept of having an alien player which makes it different from any other extraction looter shooter game play by adding another faction in the PVE-PVP concept. Though the Chinese hackers and cheaters are not just the biggest issue in the game but other exploiting alien players and mercenaries find ways to team up with each other to fight other fair playing players.

very unbalanced right now mercenary's are much more lethal than straight up being an alien you will die very very easily as an alien iv never felt more useless as an alien controls are easy to master but you cant do ♥♥♥♥ to the mercs as an alien you just gotta pray they slip up fresh players are easy to kill well geared guys you have no chance of killing them as an alien dispite my review its still an addictive game has a lot of potential

Before I go into any of my criticism I want to state that the idea as a whole is incredible fun and Unique, the Beta's have been a fun play but as it is right now the game is just in a terrible and unfun state and here's why:

Alien's at the time of writing this may as well be nonexistent. The Alien playerbase has essentially died out due to Devs listening to Mercs complaining that Aliens are to OP when they are only really a threat to solo players because it ends up being a 2v1 and that's about where their 'scariness' ends. Mercs have so many light supplies to deal with the Alien that it really is more of a joke than a threat to a team or mercs. Furthermore there are so many glitches and bugs surrounding the Aliens kit that it only makes it that much harder to accomplish anything at all. A simple way to start fixing this is to make the EMP affect all electronics on or off, stored or in hand. It shouldn't matter whether or not an item is in your inventory or not when the EMP goes off. Mercs should also not be able to loot light resources of off other people, the environment or even be able to buy/trade for them. There's a reason they're already limited with how big the group size is so I don't understand why this limitation doesn't exist.

On to Merc and in all honesty this mostly plays like your typical Looter Shooter experience with the difference being as a beginner starting out you are the doormat of the lobby. Unless you run into other new players you simply lost, the only weapons available to you as a beginner is a Nail Gun and a Syringe Gun which both do next to no damage where as the rest of the lobby run either fully kitted SMGs, ARs or Shotguns. You simply are not able to fight them and are left to run and hide any time you see a player as a beginner provided you live long enough to even react. That is not even considering the issue surrounding Lumen and it's advantages at the moment.

All of that said, the devs are far from inactive. They're cracking down on cheaters hard and it honestly has significantly improved since then. However when it comes to balancing they are just listening to the wrong feedback.. they're listening to the loud whiny part of the community and not to any actual suggestions

All in all there's some severe balancing issues with the game and I simply can not recommend playing it until this stuff gets addressed. It is just plain frustrating to play in it's current state and instead of prioritising patches we get an event that by all means is very helpful to close that powergap issue that merc has but is still not addressing the core issue.

???
who balanced this
"ok so the aliens can come behind a merc, backstab him and combo him for like 10 seconds, but if he turns around at some point and turns his flashlight on, the alien is just DEAD"

who tf would ever want to player alien? the trope is "glass-canon", not "glass-noodle-fingers"

Honestly, this my first review so bear with me. I loved this game since the Beta, spending my time learning to survive and learning the map, in fact a week ago I would have given a positive review. The game just is-int fun to me anymore. The game has slowly been leaning toward a glorified Free for all. The first 5 minutes is just player mercs rushing each other spawns to kill each other, which can be fun but more likely than not every single match, you'll run into a fully decked out merc team with assault rifles that instantly drop you. Fair enough, but even if you dont do that and try to survive first 5 minutes, you'll always run into the fully decked out player or players with an assault rifle that intantly drop you every single match. The map is just that small. The game is just caterd towards try hards making the new player experience, terrible, and pushing casuals away when who don't grind 100 hours in the first week and dont have an assault rifle every raid. Its good game and concept but there just a lot of reasons people are dropping this game.

-Dont expect an easy/finished game and you will love this -

-Solo is fun-

-Better/easier with friends -

alien is boring to play, you just get 1 shot by any light and there is nothing you can do to kill people because everyone teams together and always has a light.

There's a lot of potential here, but in its current state I can not recommend it. poor optimization and loaded with cheaters in its current state which is honestly surprising considering the playtest was a lot of fun and ran a lot smoother. I'm gonna let this one cook for a few updates.