I am 53 hours into the main game with an endgame-decked Storm (494 level). I enjoy the base game. It just feels nice to play flying around (using a controller on PC) and kill things. I just enjoy the loop, as basic as it is.
There are some things I just can't believe exist in a game like this after 7 years of development and after releasing in 2019:
No stat pages. Holy fucking shit, this is crazy. I can't see my total health, shield, damage, reload time, gear recharge, anything - it's all fucking guesswork. That's absolutely goddamned wild. People complain that they can't understand modifier descriptions, but 90% of those are just a symptom of us not being able to see how they modify our total stats.
The forced Tarsis. Start up the game, then spend 45 seconds waddling up to your suit just to get into a loading animation of choosing how you want to play. Don't forget to go get some contracts. If I could replace everything important with Tarsis with just a menu, I'd feel like my time is halfway respected. My friends are waiting for me, don't make me waddle to npcs and skip some dialog just to move on and get ready to do actual gameplay.
GM1 is a decent difficulty level. GM2 and GM3 are head-scratching bullet sponge borefests that don't offer exclusive loot, just more frequent drops of the same top tier loot. Well it doesn't take a mathematician to figure out that a mode that drops 2x as much good loot but takes 4x longer to finish isn't worth it whatsoever. Even if you're geared the fuck out, you might as well stomp GM1 multiple times over than die of boredom unloading 2000 bullets into the same armored elite on GM2. And GM3 is the most ridiculous sponging I have ever seen in a game. There should videos on how long it takes to kill the most basic of enemies on GM3 in freeplay.
It took me until endgame to get an interesting and unique weapon - one at does a good chunk of lihghtning damage 33% of the time. It's great for ruining shields as a Storm. It boggles my mind that there wasn't a chance for interesting guns like this during the level up process.
If the game got out of its own way, actually presented basic stat information, and made a effort toward respecting my time, I'd be much less frustrated and ranty because I'm a simple guy and I like the straightforward loop. I'll keep playing it for now because I enjoy it despite the glaring oversights and boggling design decisions.
