Ulasan

• gamedeal user

  Sep 8, 2021

  No, just no. Stay away from it, even at the lowest price it's not worth. It's a poorly made dlc that's not in the spirit of the game. Seems like Paradox just fired up their famous dlc-conveyor and hired a Studio that has no idea of how this game works. First DLC - Green Planet, I'm no talking about content packs, was great, even more than great. It enormously™ expanded the main game, it gave us a new goal to achieve, a way to call mars our own, to make it our home. And it's just beautiful. It was perfectly integrated in the base game, its content wasn't just floating somewhere around, it was a logical continuation and conclusion of the game. Player directly benefited from terraforming, there was a reason to shape planet, from both gameplay and narrative standpoints. Below and Beyond has little to no connections to the game, and it also doesn't anyhow benefit or work together with GP. Its content and gameplay exist on its own plane of marsian reality. There's no reason to go beyond, apart from some "rare"© crystals that you need, mostly, for underground buildings. But at the same time there's also no reason to go below, apart from some story bits and Jules Verne vibes. There's nothing important for us underground to exploit and at the same time building there is too costly to use it a safespace from meteorit showers and dust storms. And underground gameplay isn't much different from the surface, you just need "rare"™ crystals and some Lamp posts, they are free and need no maintenance btw, what a design! Even mining is the same underground same extractors, shooot, underground even has its own deep deposits, imagine how deep they are since we're already deep enough. Deep deep deposits. So basically underground is the surface, minus light, plus "rare"™ crystals and that's it. No reason to go there! Also you can't use your energy and life grids underground and have to manually transport resources between underground-surface and asteroid-Mars and it's a big pain in the ass. Big enough so I don't want to do so more than I need to get the achievements and forget about this mistake-of-a-dlc One-time dlc - see some buried wonders and that's. Player doesn't have a reason to interact with its content. Nuff said. Get yourself Green Planet instead. [spoiler]For all English teachers out here, I'm sorry for any spelling mistakes I've made, sticky fingers.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 10, 2021

  A list of things that are added by this DLC, for prospective purchasers: 1. You can go to the new underground map via two or three entry points on the surface. It's pitch-black down there, and you have to light it up with about a hundred lamps that cost nothing to build and don't require maintenance or power. Most of the underground map is blocked off by cave-ins. You won't be able to clear them out until you research a tech that, for me, took about 4-5 hours to reach while managing my surface colony. 2. You can build a dome underground. You can build extractors to collect water, metals and rare metals. It is otherwise the same as the surface, except your colonists will be sad (because they are underground). You can build struts to support the caves and prevent cave-ins, but I never got any cave-ins near my structures anyway, so they didn't do anything for me. 3. You can send a rocket to an asteroid, which is Mars but smaller and re-skinned, what feels like once every two hours at max speed. You can stay for a maximum of about thirty minutes. If you don't send your stuff back in time, you lose everything. 4. There's a new line of technology, Recon & Expansion. It's full of techs that let you do the previous 3 items faster. About the only thing I cared about in R&E was the Drone Hub Extender, which is admittedly pretty nice, but costs exotic minerals to build and maintain. There's also the tech, RIGHT at the end, that lets you dismantle buildings back into prefabs. 5. A new resource is added: exotic minerals. You can mine exotic minerals from asteroids, but only some of them. 6. EVERYTHING added by this DLC requires a shit-ton of exotic minerals to build and PASSIVELY MAINTAIN, and you can't get them passively. You have to send mining expeditions to asteroids and actively manage them. 7. You can send colonists to the asteroids to help with mining. I don't know why you would want to do that though, since the auto-extractors work just fine on their own. 8. Resources of the underground and of the surface are not shared - they're like two separate colonies. Any time you want to transfer something from the surface to the underground, or vice versa, you have to manually count things out and wait for drones to deliver them to the elevator, then get them from the elevator to where they're needed, through all those long twisty tunnels (i.e. you need to research shuttle hubs AND the tech that lets them operate underground). That includes prefabs. So you buy a couple moisture vaporator prefabs, but you can't build them until you tell the underground map, "Yes, this is for YOU". Finally, if you were expecting new mysteries, new commander profiles, new sponsors: Congratulations! :) There are none. I personally felt the previous DLC was a little disconnected from the game as a whole, but this one is... ignore-able, tbh. I've seen reviews saying it'll be great once the bugs are fixed (oh yeah, the bugs) but I don't know about that.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 16, 2021

  B&B is the best example how to kill great idea! I do not talk about the overwhelming bugs: sooner or later they will be hopefully fixed (at least most of them) like in case of previous expansions. SM is my favorite game (365 hours and counting) and I was very enthusistic about this expansion. OK, what we have: - playing on 3 maps simultaniously. At glance cool, but somehow confusing and irritating - two new maps: underground and asteroids HAS NO ADDED VALUE to the game - maps are complete independed from each other: everything which connests them is MANUAL resource transfer - there is no sense to go underground: no special minerals, unique production or whatever intersting but piece of story. Colonisation undergrounds is totally unnessesary and not needed - there is no sense to go to asteroids, only you can get is resourse which is needed undergroud, where you don't need to go... - temporary asteroids makes any construction neither needed nor possible: just go, build minimun buildings to extract all exotic minerals and escape. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. You need this exotic minerals to go maintain structures. - hell-and-be-damned micromenagment How it should looks like IHMO? - Undergrounds should give unique possibilities (unique resources, science, bonuses and so on). Also there should be possibility of linking surface and underground cables and pipes. - Asteroids should be like permanent outposts creating something really cool, some new game objective (e.g. building collosal colony ship modules to Alpha Centauri! Why not?). Something really crowning the game. - Surface should provide resources for both asteroids and underground. - All three layers should be a single "ecosystem" with possibility of full logistic automatisation. My suggestion: apologize, remove this DLC from game and do it as it should be done. And release again. I can wait. I do not want refund. I want cool DLC. Survining Mars is outstanding game, but this expansion got only 16% of positives! It's total discredit! It will be the best and most honorable solution.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 25, 2021

  Even if we discount the bugs (Which some have been fixed since launch, credit where credit is due; but some of them linger, like the game freezing when trying to move colonists between the underground and the surface), this is the prime example of an idea that should have never left the drawing board. This DLC adds two new "areas": The underground, a sprawling web of tunnels and caves and the asteroids, very small maps geared toward resource extraction on a time limit. The main component is the underground, which requires a new resource (Exotic minerals) which can only be obtained in the asteroids; so there's the justification for asteroid mining. The Mars-sized elephant in the room is...why should people even bother to settle the underground to begin with? 1) Space is incredibly limited compared to the surface. 2) Logistics between underground and surface are a bother at best and an absolute drag at the worst. 3) Building pretty much anything requires a very hard to obtain resource which requires further planning and puts another bottleneck on any kind of growth. 4) Your colonists get penalties to morale and sanity while living underground which can only be partially negated through a relatively late game tech or a background that literally only helps with that (So you have to forgo better advantages). 5) You can only build the equivalent of medium-sized domes and below (Which are already a pain to set due to the space limitations), which means a soft cap on population, and a pretty low one at that. 6) You're further limited by not being able to build anything that relies on solar power or wind (Not only power generators, but things like farms as well) The only purported advantage there is the resources are more abundant packed tighter compared to the surface (Which never was that much of an issue, unless you're playing with minimal resources) and that there are no risk of disasters like meteors, dust storms and the like, which would be fine if...uh...we didn't have a DLC that gives you late game projects to negate all these disasters with way less hassle already (Green Mars). Also, there's the pretty significant issue that you're basically now playing three separate instances of the same game at once (Surface, Underground and 1-3 asteroids), which do not share the same resources and getting things from one to the other can be a bit clunky at best. Having to babysit 3-5 different maps is really a chore and turned a fun game into a drag. Unfortunately, I don't think there is a way to patch these issues around, since they are baked into the design. The only possible way it could be made into somewhat remotely enjoyable is including an additional mode with a specific "Mystery", in which the surface of Mars is going to be rendered uninhabitable for whatever reason in X amount of time, and the only alternative is to develop a new colony in the underground of Mars, with all the issues it entails; but as it stands, once I get the achievements, I'm toggling off Below and Beyond moving forward.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 19, 2021

  I have spend some 600+ hours in surviving mars. I love the game, but it has its problems, and those problems, are exacerbated by this expansion. The many bugs introduced with this expansion has made the gamexperience even worse. I do NOT reccomend this expansion, and i will list my reasons below. First, i just want to make it clear, that the original game, has problems too, related to gamebalance and endgame. The first 100-150 sols, is amazing, but after that, the game balance gets broken. I think it is fair to simply list all the negative problems i experience with the game, as i am sure that is why you read this. 1) This expansion will break the already broken gameblance even more with the recon center. The recon center, throws you random cash often in the 2 billion - 5 billion range. Its overpowered and there is nothing to spend it on. 2) The many bugs and problems makes for a bad gamexperience. Some of the gamebreaking bugs have been patched, but it is still in need of improvements. 3) The expansion content is okay for a onetime playtrough, but there is absolutely no reason to visit the asteriods or the underground. There are no new resources that will aid you on the surface, and the only new resource you get, is exotic minerals, that only allows you to build domes and support structures underground. There is no other use for them, and you will get all the resources you could ever want from the surface and from the wonders. 4) The elevator that brings you to the underground, is extremely micromanage intensive. It does not share power, oxygen and water from the surface. I just wish it was functioning like a tunnel. 5) The wonders you discover underground is buggy and meaningless. One wonder gives you research, if you complete the wonder, build a dome, and send in colonists to operate it. By the time you can do it, you can expand faster, cheaper and avoid the micromanage aspect entirely, by doing this on the surface. There is just no point. The other wonder, is basically a dronehub that allows control in the entire underground, but its buggy and not working properly. The last wonder is essentially lighting up a very large area. - This is by far the worst expansion i have ever gotten. Not worth your money, unless you are comfortable spending it for a onetime playtrough. I cant see any reason why you would bother with it ever again as its stands today. This expansion needs alot of work to come good. There needs to be a reason, to expand into the underground and visit the asteriods. There is currently no such reason. I wish they would add even more uniqe resources that you can only get from the underground and asteriods, to use it on developing the surface and terraform the planet. But first, they MUST rebalance the game. - After the first 100-150 sols, colonists become useless and a burden to deal with. The wonders as so unbalanced, that you get a ton of cash, alot more than you can handle. There is no reason to expand, because there is no need for colonists. You get way too much resources, research and cash. You are flying trough the research tree, and once complete, you only do cash giving repeatable techs. - Seniors are a huge problem aswell, and you need to create domes just for them. They cant do anything and become a burden on your colony, because its hard to force them out with the filters. So they end up taking housing space inside a production dome, and reducing the efficiency of the dome. This add micromanagement and it becomes tedious. - I just dont see a way forward for this game, if they dont tackle the balance issues. The game is fantastic earlygame, beautiful graphics. Love it. But endgame is terrible, and its poor gamedesign to make colonists useless as you progress. STAY AWAY FROM THIS CASH GRAB EXPANSION.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 9, 2021

  Here's what I got for $20 bucks: 1. Start a new save file, because all my old files are now broken and unplayable. 2. Unlock a new, very expensive tech tree that lets me do the same stuff as the base game, but on new maps. 3. A new asteroid map that looks like a tiny rock on a black square, with a motionless stock image of space behind it. How lazy. 4. A new underground map that is the same as above, but really dark and with more obstacles and uneven terrain to make building a pain in the butt. 5. Both of these new maps give you the same stuff you'd find in the base game, except even less, and now you have to tediously micromanage all your resources between the surface and underground/asteroid by elevators/rockets. Who wanted more micromanaging with their paid DLC? 6. Can't refund because you have to replay the whole game just to experience this trash. I loved the main game and even the last expansion (Green Planet) but this is just a lazy and unimaginative cashgrab. I paid $20 for this, but in hindsight I wouldn't pay $1. I won't be touching anything Paradox/Abstraction release in the future if they are this creatively bankrupt.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 8, 2021

  Honestly disappointed by the quality, this DLC has introduced a lot of bugs into the base game bringing down the overall quality of Surviving Mars as a whole. This DLC and Surviving Mars itself suddenly feels and plays more like an Early Access title lately. With the downward trend in quality from Paradox games I think its safe to say there is more pressure to release content early even if they know it is buggy. I hope Abstraction are allowed to take a break from the DLC churn to fix up the game before they even think about new content. This was my favourite game but I don't see it being my favourite for long if the games quality continues to decline with more and more bugs being introduced into the base game. -edit: Every patch that comes out breaks more things, after 5 patches I tried the game once again only to realise they've introduced more game breaking bugs. If only this DLC was finished before it went on sale. I'm afraid Surviving Mars is dead, eventually Paradox will once again abandon this game when they realise playing wack a mole with this disastrous DLC is a fruitless effort, and we'll be left with a scrambled mess of a game that can never be rolled back to a version that actually works.... Or they continue the trend of taking half baked DLC away from the devs and throwing it at their customers. I'm not mad that I wasted my money on this pre-alpha content, I'm mad that my perfectly working game has been reduce to a broken mess with no option to roll back to a working state. I spent money on the base game and all the other DLCs that were awesome and now I cannot access them due to this broken DLC being stapled on top of them. I want my game back!
• gamedeal user

  Feb 9, 2022

  Let's leave aside the disastrous launch. Suviving Mars was a complete game. The terraforming expansion added end-game goals that were plausbile (but I didn't like the implementation). This one is a completely unnecessary tack-on expansion that contributes almost nothing to the base game. You have "Below" which is sill buggy. It allows you to house colonists underground. Why would you want to do that? No, seriously, if you can think of a good reason, let me know. So anyway, you know all of those surface drones that automatically distribute all of your resources to wherever you need them so your only worry is to make sure production is balanced? Well, you will need to manually control all transfers (such as FOOD) between surface and below. There's no way to fully automate logistics management. And you can't produce exotic metals, so if you do want to build underground (why?) then you have to go Beyond. So you have "Beyond" which is essentially a limited-time "mine everything and get out" event on a small map. It honestly felt more like busy work to me. Instead of building infrastructure that was improving my city and making citizens happier & wealthier, I was repeatedly extracting building and demolishing explictly temporary infrastructure just to get a few exotic materials. Once I realized that (1) the only real need for exotic materials was to support an underground base, and (2) I had no need or interest in an underground base I lost interest. My verdict: Get the base game. Consider green planet maybe. Skip this one.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 7, 2022

  I have played Surviving Mars half to death. Loved all the expansions. This one is awful and every second I waste writing about it is another second wasted. It adds nothing to your experience, adds more tech trees and expenses, and is extremely boring. Does absolutely nothing worth messing around with. Avoid at all costs.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 10, 2021

  Few months and patches since the release of Below and Beyond I think I can make final review for this DLC. TLDR: worthwhile buying for techs and new interactions, but don't expect to have a whole new gameplay underground. However, it's will be nice to have more crystal uses. Beyond: It was fixed and adds interesting interaction with asteroid hopping. This part: recommended fully as it works as intended. Below: 1. While considerably less glitchy at the start you still can get progression blocking bugs (can't clear the rubble). 2. There is no incentive to settle below compared to surface and at the same time it requiters way more effort, tech and headache. This is my main problem with below 3. However, it's still cool to play with caves, you can explore them for juicy anomalies and breakthroughs. PS. As you can see by my activity with the game and this DLC, I really loved it and want it to shine and I am sad it it ended this way. Old review: (!) Wait until fixed before buying (!) While I find this DLC amazing and great addition to base game, it bugged to oblivion and has bad, yet fixable game design decisions. Edit: After two hotfixes game is no longer completely broken and could be played again. However gameplay fixes are yet to come. (I hope). Gameplay review (not mentioning bugs and glitches) "Asteroids" I assume initial game wasn't designed to have multiple maps, that's why devs make them sorta separate entities when you have manually manage resource movement. In case of asteroids it's feels legit. You make short in-and-out runs. Grab what you can and get away. Due to limited time and amount of things to do on asteroid it doesn't feel like a choir and feels refreshing. The only issue, the main feature of asteroids is crystals and they have very limited borderline useless application besides Caverns (which are pretty much useless on their own, see below), so, once you get couple runs you just don't have incentive to do it. Solid feature, but crystals need expansion to add more flavor to base game. (Stimulate terraforming, boost buildings, upgrade to sanatorium heal idiots etc, so many potential applications). "Caverns" This part, as you can see, took a lot of work for devs. While looks interesting as a concept, implementation is flawed. 1. Separate resource grids and lift micromanaging while feels natural for asteroid part (yes, they are technically Very far from your base) are horrendous choir and pain in the rear. 2. Second big map takes a while to load even on powerful PC with SSD. Very immersion breaking. 3. Most important, it just duplicated surface and brings barely anything to your game. You have zero incentive to go there except for couple extra anomalies or you really love micromanagement. This part of the game need "back to drawing board" attention. (I'll edit my review, when it's fixed)