POLARIS™

This review is purely based on my experience of this game. I tried my best not to let other games affect my view of this game too much and rate everything on an for this game appropriate scale! This review does contain spoilers, some of which may not be marked as such!

ALSO. I received 4 keys for this game via Lurkit. The condition was to test the game and stream it at least once. That does not change anything about my opinion of the game though.

Links:

• Website
  
• Steam
• Our Steam Curator Page

☐ You forget what reality is

☐ Beautiful

☑ Good

☐ Decent

☐ Bad

☐ Don‘t look too long at it

☐ MS-DOS

The game doesn't necessarily look bad even though a lot of people don't seem to enjoy the cel shading look, sadly there's a bit more to "looks" than what the game is offering.
While the cel shading look as such is fine, the maps still look pretty empty which makes the graphics in general seem pretty basic.

☐ Very good

☐ Good

☑ It's just gameplay

☐ Mehh

☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't

Don't get me wrong. The game can be fun, especially with friends. At least for a few runs, because that's the games HUGE problem. Lack in content.

You basically got 2 different missions, not counting the sandbox mode in which you cant do much other than destroying the map and hunt down your squad (thanks to friendly fire).

In the first mission type you have one or more gunships of the "Regime" which you have to destroy. The amount of gunships depends on the difficulty. After an update which dropped shortly after release, the game currently has 15 difficulties.

Anyways.. In order to damage those gunships you have to destroy a few shield generators first. Those shield generators will come back after some time, so you will have to deal as much damage as possible to the gunships before that happens.

The big problem is. The gunships don't really pose much of a thread and are super easy to hit. The shield generators don't do anything but floating around and can only take a few hits.

The second mode is basically the same. Instead of gunships you have worms which are called drill platforms. They consist of several parts which you have to destroy to win. So no shield generators, instead just straight up shooting the worms.

Both modes have smaller ships attacking you regularly. By destroying those you get some currency which you can use to request weapons, ships and other stuff like your grav boots which allow you to fly.

At release it was, in my opinion, well balanced for playing with friends, after their balancing update which added those 5 new difficulties the game became way too easy though, and now, instead of first farming for your grav boots, you now just go straight up for a ship and you've pretty much already won.

But that was also a problem at release too. All you did was calling in grav boots, flying to some buildings and pick up the ship which could usually be found there, which also had pretty op rockets, and then just go straight for the targets and exfiltrate. Done.

Now.. There is some kinda progression in the game too. You've got levels, which are kind of useless. You've got points which you get by leveling up, which you can use to unlock new weapons and ships to request while on a mission.. But it takes way too long to unlock something.

The weapons feel pretty useless, as the starting pistol is already more than enough to finish a difficulty 15 mission with only grav boots and that pistol. Makes you wonder why you would want to destroy small ships, just to call in a new weapon which doesn't really deal more damage than your starting pistol.

The ships are super expensive. At least those which you now can't really find standing around on the map anymore. So you already have to grind to unlock a single useful ship. Which then makes the whole game even easier, as it is super cheap to call in on a mission after you've unlocked it.

That in return means that you don't really have any reason to unlock anything else except for the sake of it. BUT as there aren't any achievements either, it doesn't feel as satisfying to unlock everything.

Anyways. TLDR:

• The game is way too easy, especially with friends
• There is barely any content and even the 2 different modes are pretty much the same, destroy the target and exfiltrate.
• Unlocking stuff feels unsatisfying, especially since it takes long and weapons and ships are kind of unnecessary as the starting equipment is already pretty op

Some extra points: It's really hard to find people to play with and if you do find a random person, you can't really communicate with them. There is no chat and they don't plan on adding one, there is no ping system, though the devs said that this might be a compromise they could agree on.

☐ Eargasm

☐ Very good

☐ Good

☑ Not too bad

☐ Bad

☐ I'm now deaf

Sounds.. Yea.. There aren't too many of them, they are pretty loud. And that's it.

☐ Kids

☑ Teens

☑ Adults

☐ Grandma

I think there isn't much to say here. You run around, shoot at flying targets and then run away. Just saw that the game is USK 16 in germany. "drastic violence" is what they call it. Yea can't agree with that.

☐ Check if you can run paint

☐ Potato

☑ Decent

☐ Fast

☐ Rich boi

☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

Honestly I can't say much about this. With my setup running the game at 4k it's usually running fine, but on higher difficulties I do have lags like every second run.
My friends had similar issues with smaller setups at lower resolutions.

Minimum:

• Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
• OS: Windows 10
• Processor: Intel Core i7-4790K or AMD Ryzen 5 1500X
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 or AMD Radeon RX Vega 56
• DirectX: Version 12
• Storage: 30 GB available space
• Additional Notes: SSD Recommended

Recommended:

• Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
• OS: Windows 10
• Processor: Intel Core i7-9700K or AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 or AMD Radeon RX 6600XT
• DirectX: Version 12
• Storage: 30 GB available space
• Additional Notes: SSD Recommended

☐ Floppy Disk

☐ Old Fashioned

☐ Workable

☑ Big

☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive

☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it

☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data

At the time of writing this review the game was a whopping 25GB on Steam!

☐ Just press 'W'

☑ Easy

☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master

☐ Significant brain usage

☐ Difficult

☐ Dark Souls

I already mentioned this on the gameplay tab.. The game now has 15 (initially 10) difficulties. And as long as you're playing with friends, even difficulty 15 is way too easy. All you do is destroying some small ships, call in your own ship, destroy the target and exfiltrate.

☐ Nothing to grind

☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks

☑ Isn't necessary to progress

☐ Average grind level

☐ Too much grind

☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

Man these are always hard.. I mean if you wan't to unlock everything, then it'll take you ages. Especially since it's really just running one mission after another. If you go for the desert map, it'll be a lot easier to farm "valuables" which give extra XP at the end of the mission, which means faster leveling and more unlock points to spend.
On the other hand you don't have to unlock anything. Even with the starter weapons you can easily play both missions on the highest difficulty. And that's all the game has to offer. There is nothing after that. It's just playing the 2 mission types.. Going higher in difficulty.. Possibly unlocking new weapons and ships..

☑ No Story

☐ Some lore

☐ Average

☐ Good

☐ Lovely

☐ It'll replace your life

Story.. Yea..

Quote

Skylancer: Our planets have been overtaken by the Regime. Join us and together we will shatter the yoke of their oppression.

This is from the games steam store page. And that's all there is to the story I guess. The players are called "Skylancers". The enemy is the "Regime".

☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee

☐ Short

☑ Average

☐ Long

☐ To infinity and beyond

Yea. I dunno. You can spend a good amount of time on the game, if you plan on at least unlocking every difficulty. If you want to unlock every single item, you will be able to spend a very long time on it..
On the other hand, there really isn't a way to say.. Not even our usual friend howlongtobeat.com has any data on it.

☐ It's free!

☐ Worth the price

☐ If it's on sale

☑ If u have some spare money left

☐ Not recommended

☐ You could also just burn your money

Yea I don't know. I received 4 keys for free.. The game itself is 9.75€ on Steam. While that isn't really a lot, the content you get for it also isn't really a lot.
If you have a bunch of friends to play with and you think you could enjoy playing the same 2 missions over and over again, then I'd say sure go for it.
There are people who really enjoy the game with their friends, it's just that it gets repetitive really fast.

☐ Never heard of

☑ Minor bugs

☐ Can get annoying

☐ ARK: Survival Evolved

☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

There have been a few bugs in the game. The team behind it did their best to fix most of them, though they also sometimes said they fixed something even though they didn't. Closed my ticket 2x and the problem still wasn't gone afterwards.
But if there are still bugs, they're really rare and don't really hurt too much. Not like there is anything they could really break anyways I guess.

☐ 1

☐ 2

☐ 3

☐ 4

☐ 5

☑ 6

☐ 7

☐ 8

☐ 9

☐ 10

Seriously I'd like to give the game a better rating. It does have potential, sadly it's just lacking content big time and it doesn't really feel like there is any serious progression which would keep you playing.. the "2" very similar game modes which you can play to "progress".
So now the game really is just fun for maybe a few runs and that's it. I can't really give more than a 6/10 for this.