♥♥♥♥ YOU, STARBOUND GLADIATOR.

I'm frustrated, because this game has the potential to be amazing. Good gear and stat system, deep story of which i ignored most, and fun combat that teeters just on the strategic, but just barely runs out of steam and turns into a stat based hack and slash. And jokes on you, because your stats are gonna suck unless you like cheating.

95% of this game is far too easy. You can crush every opponent in 3 turns with no issue. 4% of this game is way too difficult comparatively, stats 10x higher, stats higher than it's even possible for you to get, and levels higher than it's possible for you to achieve. Unfortunately, it's also the type of game that thinks making the game "harder" means pumping enemies up to get impossibly stronger. There really isn't any strategy involved... except for savescumming. All the guides you look up will tell you "Save before you do anything, and reload to get the option you want." For a game that depends on randomness, it takes all the fun out of it. there isn't any real replayability, because no matter what, you're savescumming for the perfect stats and perfect build. Or aside from that, the guides are literally to abuse the game mechanics. Use an electric item in a very particular build, stunlock the enemies, and try 10-15-20 times until you get lucky enough that you happen trigger the 56% stun every single time, while you whittle away 8000 hp 250 at a time.

This game isn't really challenging, just annoying. I'm sure people have beaten it, but not in any way that inspires any sort of creativity or joy, mostly just by abusing the game mechanics to create perfect runs. The game is addictive, but you could get the same result sitting at your kitchen table and rolling 20 sided dice while calling out numbers, and waiting until you guess one correct.

This doesn't even touch on the bugs of the forge not forging items properly, the cheesing you need to do of restarting dungeons and quests for the exact results you want, or the random factor that means every once in a while, your head explodes for no reason. Happens to enemies too, but all that does is cheapen the victory.

One sale at 9 dollars, still not really worth it. When the game drops below 5 dollars, it could be worth it to check out if your a fan of the original SAS, but no matter what, prepare for a confusing and frustrating time that confuses gameplay with resetting your save every 5 minutes to get the correct "random" outcome. If you like bashing your head repeatedly into objects until they just so happen to break, then this is the game for you.