Subset Games Forum

This is a bit of a rant, but I hope you can understand it as feedback.

The game is wonderful. Very masterfully designed and is addictive in the most pleasant sense. I've played about 30+ missions since its official release.

The following are the issues I'm encountering that prompted this post.

I am dreadfully sick of the "final boss". I usually clear games on easy to save time, and if I find they're good enough I'll go back and play on harder difficulties, but the difficulty specifically of the final bossin this games easy mode pretty much guarantees I won't ever touch "normal", if I even make it through easy. I'm burnt, and my patience is worn out.

I'm not a novice to this. I've been playing both PC and console games since the late 70's, and I've worked as a designer in the professional game industry for over 10 years. I'm confident saying I've played every major game release on every platform ever, in no exaggerated way, so you understand that I have both a practical grasp of game design, and I live and breath games as a fan of the medium.

So my issue is this: I am still playing on easy mode, and have yet to defeat the final boss. Out of 30-something games played I've made it to the boss about 90% of the time. I've tried so many different strategies, ship-builds, crew combinations, etc, that I feel like I've literally exhausted the games potential for such things. My frustration is at the point where I'm reluctant to pick the game up again.

Clearly you guys are talented developers. I would hire you for any project in a heartbeat. So it makes me angry and depressed that you would create such a largely-masterful campaign, and then have a difficulty spike at the end that prevents any sense of reward. Were you afraid that people would complete the game too quickly and put it down? I can tell you very firmly that the type of game you've created is one that would garner replays ad-infinitude regardless of player-completion.

So please... ease up dudes. Please make "Easy" actually easy. I've honed my game to the point that in any other game I'd be flooring normal, if not hard, difficulties. But this... this is ridiculous, and the last fragment of the game entirely removes the fun of the first 90% of the adventure.

I have to say. I don't understand how people have so much trouble with the final boss.

*Spoilers*

It's practically set up with weaknesses. His weapons are all single rooms with one guy in and the super-weapons can be avoid easily with a cloak, and you don't even need that with full shields and high evade. Take out his missiles first thing, either with a boarding party or enough weapons fire to kill the crew member, and you're practically invulnerable.

Easy is easy. I've been playing quite a bit of easy to unlock all the ships (got all but one). Since I'm going for ships, I usually just quit/restart before the boss. I think I've only actually played the boss on easy 2-3 times. I've beaten the boss on easy twice.

Simply put, the extra scrap you get (and the easier ships) makes it's so ludicrously simple to upgrade nearly everything. The second time I beat the boss on easy, I had maxed out power, maxed out weapons, maxed shields, max stealth... I had so much stuff I didn't have enough power to power everything, even with maxed power. I can't remember what weapons I had exactly, but hey, max weapons, they were probably pretty nasty.

Try playing on normal for a bit. The boss isn't that big a of a worry. The problem is even GETTING to the boss on normal. I was just doing a Mantis B ship run, doing great, maxed crew, 4 elite mantis boarders, Burst Laser III. Really good run. Then I got a asteroid field with an automated ship that had a drone or two. Wrecked me. Game over right there. I was only in sector 5 I think.

To finish off, one of my easy runs got me TWO THOUSAND scrap. Easy really is "easy" if you know what you're doing.