Star Trek Online: Here We Go Again!

[Malakili]

Ah yes, Klingons, see, I had forgotten about Klingons.  They are effectively PvP only (i think they might have 1 or 2 throw away repeatable quests).  In a game with no real "open" PvP this basically means that to play Klingons is to queue for battlegrounds.

[kildorn]

Ah yes, Klingons, see, I had forgotten about Klingons.  They are effectively PvP only (i think they might have 1 or 2 throw away repeatable quests).  In a game with no real "open" PvP this basically means that to play Klingons is to queue for battlegrounds.

There was a bit of a stir when one of the higher company officers decided to sit down and play nothing but Klingons for a week or two. Essentially he started playing and went "what the shit, there's no content, the PVP queue system is fucked, none of this makes any goddamned sense!"

Sadly, I believe that to be the beginning and the end of that saga, and it won't be changed for months. There's literally no content for them. Hell, their freaking upgrade currency is still called "Starfleet Merits". Nobody's even done as much as a UI pass for them yet.

[Numtini]

It's pretty awful, though it looks a lot better than I thought it would. They seem to have learned something from CO.

Things that jumped out at me and made me want to scream:

On the tutorial, you run around a ship. In order to get from level 1 to level 3, you need to go to the turbolift. I'm with you there Cryptic. But that gets you to level 2. To get to level 3 you have to run to the other end of the zone to get to the level 2-3 turbolift. In other words, the exact same elevators from COX. (I'll bet it's the same code.)

The space combat is a really really slow fighter plane game from ten years ago... in... space... To turn, you bank. It reminded me of the space combat in SWG except really slow. But for Trek, that's totally inappropriate. Most of it was about waiting for my weapons to refresh and spamming them. Not really exciting.

Also, it's buggy. I had a crash. I ran into all sorts of massive lag spikes. They're still pushing out 1gig+ patches and the patcher was doing the 8-12 hour thing, so I only got in to play on one day--which was a special day they added because so few people got in the previous day because the patch took longer than their playtest lasted.

I never made it out of the tutorial before I got bored.

My impression was exactly what's been discussed here: shovelware conversion of CO.

[DaZog]

Do I let this download live and partake in the trainwreck, or would it better off to just stand on the wayside and watch it burn, burn, burn?

Hmmmmm.

[Numtini]

Schadenfreude is always best experienced firsthand.

[Cadaverine]

I'll echo the shallow but sorta fun comment.

There's no real depth to the game.  It's essentially running missions ad nauseum.  There's pvp as well, but I didn't get around to trying that.  The missions are all your basic fodder.  Kill x bad guys, escort the npc, or clicking on some object.  There are some public quests, but the ones I've run into, the other players may as well have been NPCs for all the interaction there was.

Character development consists of gathering a variety of skill points mainly from running missions.  You did get some points from killing things, etc, but it's only a handful at most.  There are a number of skills available which add passive bonuses to your actions when flying ships.  There are also skill trees which basically buff your npc officers both in space, and on away missions.  These do add some skills which you can use as well.  Each skill has 9 ranks, and from what I saw, cost the same number of points to increase regardless of the skill's rank.  There are similar skills that you can buy for your officers that improve their skills in a similar manner.

You also get something akin to faction points with the Federation which allows you to promote your officers once you reach a certain rank, and have spent enough points on them.  I never got around to attaining a high enough rank with my character to do so.

Increasing your characters rank doesn't improve your character in the traditional sense, it just unlocks the ships available to you, as well as skills that are restricted by rank.  I don't think it increases your hit points, but I could be wrong.  Not sure if there was a way to respec or not, though I would assume there was some option.

My biggest gripe was that it was nothing more than Champions Online reskinned with Star Trek skins.  More than once, I heard sounds from CO re-used in the game, which was off-putting for me.  

If I had never played an MMO before, I could see myself picking the game up, and playing it for a month, maybe two before I got bored with the lack of depth.  As it stands, I don't see any reason to pick up this game, when I could just fire up Sins of a Solar Empire, or Eve, and get my space fix.

[Riggswolfe]

Ok, I managed to get in for about 20 minutes. So far my impressions:

1) Zachary Quinto literally phoned his lines in as the hologram. What the hell? Unless they told him to act all boring because he was a computer program.
2) The "sets" and stuff looked fairly Star Trekky to me. So I guess that's a plus. It did seem kind of "dark" though, like everything was a sort of gun metal grey instead of bright like Next Gen or TOS.
3) Combat - I only did the ground part of things before I got disconnected. Shoot stuff, slap them with my palm if they got close. About what I expected at a tutorial level in an MMO. I'll really have to wait until I play more to get a feel for how varied ground combat is.
4) Space - I got maybe 5 minutes of space time. It looked pretty but that's about all I can say right now. The controls are easy enough right now.
5) Bridge Officer - I got to choose one. I think this is a part of the game I will come to enjoy assuming it doesn't totally suck. Something about "collecting" a crew appeals to me. God help me if they make Bridge Officer "sets".
6) Voice Overs - They need to change these. The borg are attacking us, ships are being overwhelmed and what does the captain's voice over say? *Bored voice* "Hello ensign". Maybe he's just made of stone but still...
7) Graphics - This is touching a bit more on point 2. The sets and stuff looked decent. The character models seemed kind of low rez or something though. Space was beautiful. I wonder if there is something akin to LOTRO's high res texture pack you can download? Overall it felt like the textures were very "flat".

[kildorn]

I'll echo the shallow but sorta fun comment.

There's no real depth to the game.  It's essentially running missions ad nauseum.  There's pvp as well, but I didn't get around to trying that.  The missions are all your basic fodder.  Kill x bad guys, escort the npc, or clicking on some object.  There are some public quests, but the ones I've run into, the other players may as well have been NPCs for all the interaction there was.

Character development consists of gathering a variety of skill points mainly from running missions.  You did get some points from killing things, etc, but it's only a handful at most.  There are a number of skills available which add passive bonuses to your actions when flying ships.  There are also skill trees which basically buff your npc officers both in space, and on away missions.  These do add some skills which you can use as well.  Each skill has 9 ranks, and from what I saw, cost the same number of points to increase regardless of the skill's rank.  There are similar skills that you can buy for your officers that improve their skills in a similar manner.

You also get something akin to faction points with the Federation which allows you to promote your officers once you reach a certain rank, and have spent enough points on them.  I never got around to attaining a high enough rank with my character to do so.

Increasing your characters rank doesn't improve your character in the traditional sense, it just unlocks the ships available to you, as well as skills that are restricted by rank.  I don't think it increases your hit points, but I could be wrong.  Not sure if there was a way to respec or not, though I would assume there was some option.

My biggest gripe was that it was nothing more than Champions Online reskinned with Star Trek skins.  More than once, I heard sounds from CO re-used in the game, which was off-putting for me.  

If I had never played an MMO before, I could see myself picking the game up, and playing it for a month, maybe two before I got bored with the lack of depth.  As it stands, I don't see any reason to pick up this game, when I could just fire up Sins of a Solar Empire, or Eve, and get my space fix.

Just to clarify what some things do: "promoting" an officer unlocks his next tier of abilities to spend points on. A large complaint on a lot of the skills is that they increase things that nobody has any idea what they do. Science officers are prone to this, where I've picked up items that have bonuses to stats that as far as I can tell don't exist. Plus even the obvious ones make little sense with no formula to plug them into. What the hell does +0.1 accuracy buy me? How much is +15 turn rate? So much undocumented.

I do find Fleet Actions (their public quests) to be amusing. They are too large for the lack of friendlies on the map unless grouped, though. The map will start swarming with large fleets of hostiles, and you'll have no idea where the hell anyone else is to join the fight.

[Ingmar]

So it sounds in general like space stuff is OK, and ground stuff is lame.

Can you play the game without screwing around with the ground stuff?

[kildorn]

Sometimes you'll get randomly generated ground missions, and plot missions will deal with it (there's also ground pvp, which sounds lolworthy)

Ground combat is lame, but thankfully really fucking easy, so you can breeze through it.

Also: I take back any level of "it's kinda fun" if they enable any form of death penalty. You WILL die. A lot. Often. Especially if you enjoy Fleet Actions.

[Malakili]

So it sounds in general like space stuff is OK, and ground stuff is lame.

Can you play the game without screwing around with the ground stuff?

Not really.  The basic episode (mission) is something like:  Go to a space area -> kill things there -> beam down to the planet -> kill things there -> beam back up to your starship -> kill more things in space -> turn in.

I suppose it is theoretically possible to avoid most of it, but since you really need to do missions to gain skill points at any sort of reasonable rate, you can't possibly totally avoid it.

[Lantyssa]

Keys if anyone is still looking

[Ratman_tf]

Fuckit. I haven't done a beta in years.

Got my key, added it to my Cryptic account, and now I wait for 60+ minutes for the non-sub Fileplanet download. 

[Riggswolfe]

Ok, I've been able to play a little more past the tutorial now. I love starship customization. The ground game is slightly better though I find the concept of loot drops somewhat funny in Star Trek. The space game is decent fun but a bit slow.

[kildorn]

I will say that the space game in fleet actions suffers from an issue CoX had: alpha strikes are fucking stupid and make PVE difficult. Since the game ramps up spawns based on the number of people in an instance, you can get fleet actions with 7-9 battleships and assorted cruiser support in a spawn. And due to how they handle opening salvos, this means whoever fires first on this pack will now eat all that phaser fire and the delayed 20-30 torps while every NPC unloads all their cooldowns and weapons fire into the initial target.

Unlike CoX, there isn't really a tank character who can actually eat this initial damage, so it's 90% likely that in a large fleet action whoever fires first dies horribly, and then the spawn is taken apart by the masses. This also seems to lead to everyone hanging out 11km from a spawn and waiting for some idiot to take the alpha.

Oh, and loot in the open instances seems to be handled by damage (group damage counts) followed by group. So a high DPS escort out of group will get a lot of drops and be high on the score list for the final rewards (everyone seems to get something, but the top 5ish get better shit) and a group with a a high DPS person in it will get a lot of drops round robined through the group.

Still seems like a stupid way to distribute loot, however. My escort commonly walked away from fleet actions with entirely new gear just by picking a random target at the start of a fight and burning it as hard as I could to win loot on it.

[Riggswolfe]

I've been trying to figure out what ships would be fun. I'm torn between Cruiser and Escort. Escorts seem like typical glass cannons while cruisers seem tougher and more versatile.

[Malakili]

I've been trying to figure out what ships would be fun. I'm torn between Cruiser and Escort. Escorts seem like typical glass cannons while cruisers seem tougher and more versatile.

By Cryptics standards: Escort  is dps, cruiser is tank, science is healing

[kildorn]

I've been trying to figure out what ships would be fun. I'm torn between Cruiser and Escort. Escorts seem like typical glass cannons while cruisers seem tougher and more versatile.

By Cryptics standards: Escort  is dps, cruiser is tank, science is healing

Slightly more complex due to officer class being able to fly any ship, so you get a lot of real odd skill mixes.

But in general: Cruisers have a balanced weapon loadout, are SLOW AS BALLS and turn slower than planets in the high end. Science Ships have a low weapon loadout, and a bonus to shields. Escorts have a penalty to shields, and pack larger than normal numbers of frontal weapon mounts. Also the only class that can mount Cannon weapons (small arc high dps weapons). Each also has an extra tactical slot for gear of their standard type (cruisers have engineering, escorts have tactical, science has .. science) which essentially gives them additional gear for survival, dps, or random shit.

My beta character was an engineer character who flew an escort. So I had class skills that regen shields rapidly, and made for a lower dps but more survivable escort.

[Riggswolfe]

Well, I was playing a tactical officer. So far it obviously doesn't matter but I had been thinking. When I think Star Trek I tend to think Cruisers. Then again, the escort could be fun for kicking the shit out of stuff but I worry about survivability especially when I have to go head on to use those cannons.

Edit: So far I'm having decent fun playing the game. It seems a bit slow paced so we'll see if that ends up being a turn off for me.

[Malakili]

I've been trying to figure out what ships would be fun. I'm torn between Cruiser and Escort. Escorts seem like typical glass cannons while cruisers seem tougher and more versatile.

By Cryptics standards: Escort  is dps, cruiser is tank, science is healing

Slightly more complex due to officer class being able to fly any ship, so you get a lot of real odd skill mixes.

But in general: Cruisers have a balanced weapon loadout, are SLOW AS BALLS and turn slower than planets in the high end. Science Ships have a low weapon loadout, and a bonus to shields. Escorts have a penalty to shields, and pack larger than normal numbers of frontal weapon mounts. Also the only class that can mount Cannon weapons (small arc high dps weapons). Each also has an extra tactical slot for gear of their standard type (cruisers have engineering, escorts have tactical, science has .. science) which essentially gives them additional gear for survival, dps, or random shit.

My beta character was an engineer character who flew an escort. So I had class skills that regen shields rapidly, and made for a lower dps but more survivable escort.

Well yeah, I was talking in terms of ships, but those weren't even an oversimplificiation on my part, that is what Cryptic themselves described them as.

[Montague]

Edit: So far I'm having decent fun playing the game. It seems a bit slow paced so we'll see if that ends up being a turn off for me.

ChampO was fun at first blush too. Though STO may have more carrot with the bigger ships, something CO desperately lacked.

[Riggswolfe]

Edit: So far I'm having decent fun playing the game. It seems a bit slow paced so we'll see if that ends up being a turn off for me.

ChampO was fun at first blush too. Though STO may have more carrot with the bigger ships, something CO desperately lacked.

Well, it could get old who knows. I'll play it for a few days in Open Beta. Like I said earlier, at worst I waste the money on a box sale and get a couple of weeks of fun out of it. At best I end up having fun for a few months.

[LK]

The inverse is also possible; space-ship on land.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is not an MMOG release. This is Cryptic shitting on its fans, trekkies, and anyone with positive expectations for future MMOG releases.

[Riggswolfe]

That happened to me once. I just logged out and back in and it was fixed.

[Ghambit]

In short, the game is more entertaining, deeper, and more "polished" (in a subjective sense) than ChampO at release imo... even in its current state.  Once they add the social areas (your bridge, lounges, more stations), people start digging into the ships and collectibility, and the other races open up... things will get even better.  BUT, it's still not the Trek it needed to be.  It's Cryptic-Trek as they say.

I found ground combat more akin to Gods and Heroes (which I also closed betaed) minus the screenful of squadie abilities.  Obviously, that was Perpetual's baby so it got ported into Cryptic's version along with some art assets.  Ground combat in its latest form is leaps and bounds better than previous CB versions.  They've got it balanced enough right now where you also have to actually USE flanking, cover, weapon and/or kit switches, the Kirk-roll, etc.  And yah, feel free to send in the redshirts.  Anyways, I found the squad-based combat pretty entertaining in many cases.  But, as with any MMO - it's much better in a group.  The fatal flaw in the ground combat is as everyone says, it can get repetitive outside the storyline.  To break this up, ground-based pvp in groups is the way to go.  If it ever gets working as it should.

Space combat is essentially (as someone already said) a more entertaining and appealing version of PotBS.  They've tweaked the difficulty back and forth so it's hard for me to really comment fully, but overall I found it engaging and challenging in many cases - especially when outnumbered, which happens every now and then.  Smart players know which weapons, shields, etc. to loadout once a ship is identified, and the tactics to handle them.  Adjusting shield-strength and power distro. is a must in high-lvl play - or you will die... lots.  This is a fact I like and one they havent been losing face on with their tweaks.  Also, there IS an ability to call for Help (something I actually had in my closet Trek-mmo design), but as of last CB it didnt work.

Which brings me to the another fact; that much of the game is beneath the veil.  There are buttons, features, and UI tweaks that arent covered anywhere that you just have to find out for yourself.  Understandable since they've changed a few times over CB.  It's imperative in STO that you play with every button you see and especially learn how to distro. power levels.  (many people still seem to forget how to ramp aux. power to enhance turn-fighting).  Later on in the lvls much more tactical opportunity opens up... such as bracing for impact, emergency repairs, more buffs/debuffs and so on.  There's a helluva lotta skills - more akin to SWG then any other game (actually, probably more).  And yah, it's a mystery on what they do - but hey, it's Cryptic.  No big surprise.

I will say that calculating dmg. is pretty straightforward.  If you have a +5 torpedo tactical console, you get +5 dmg.  Period.  Beyond that, I havent the foggiest notion how the die is cast.  And yah, you can miss shots.

Oh, Klingon play (which is more than just being Klingon btw; you can be Orion, Nausican, and more) was never meant to be a complete game in itself.  It was always designed to be something like LotROs monster play.  Your "alter-ego" so to speak.  Hell, you can still chat freely even when you're on the other side.  I also believe your Klingon gains as much skill points as your Fed character does (although this might have been a function of beta).  So you're not stuck lvling 2+ characters of differing factions.  This also serves the function of maintaining balance between the two, especially once the open pvp areas get populated.  Anyways, Klingon play is a nice diversion - especially if you like insurmountable odds and pirate-like play...  hey, it's the Klingon way.

Crafting??  Didnt get to play with it beyond scanning for stuff, beaming it aboard, and having someone at Mem. Alpha look at it.  Basically though, you collect rarish elements and hand them in for upgrades to weapons, shields, etc.  So a "crafter" in STO is essentially someone with high sensor skill and a penchant for wandering around aimlessly.  Having a frakkin cloak doing this is key, otherwise you're blown to glass most of the time since no one will be with you on your collection runs.  The items you upgrade get sold in the exchange.  Items you sell while roaming in space get sent to the replicator for less "money."  Basically a vendor-trash dump in space.  

Bank and mail wasnt working in CB so I have no clue the limits of their use (mailing between factions for instance).  But ya, you can mail stuff to other players.  btw, I do believe ingame mail is also posted to your web account, so you dont need to be logged into the game to send mails.  Not sure if it notifies you via email though.

<trek-bias incoming> I believe there's enough nuance, entertainment, and dork nirvana in the game to satiate me enough for a purchase (unlike ChampO).  BUT, the game is still lacking greatly.  High lvl play just seems to be "oooh, lookie my NX galaxy-class ship with quantums."  The game is also way too instanced and there's no sense of a sandbox whatsoever outside your own bridge (thankfully, you can invite others) and toon.  As vast as space should be, unless you fly off doing random encounters, get lost in high lvl space (wherein you'll die), and do cluster exploration, things get cramped pretty quickly.  And all those things get pretty repetitive, only being worthwhile to Title-junkies and crafters.

Overall, not an MMORPG in its grande sense.  Just a small, shiny, multiplayer game in trek uniform.  I'm not gonna say it's a bad game, but it's definitely not the game it shoulda been.  What it shoulda been I'm sure we'll light up this forum talking about.

[Riggswolfe]

In short, the game is more entertaining, deeper, and more "polished" (in a subjective sense) than ChampO at release imo... even in its current state.  Once they add the social areas (your bridge, lounges, more stations), people start digging into the ships and collectibility, and the other races open up... things will get even better.  BUT, it's still not the Trek it needed to be.  It's Cryptic-Trek as they say.

Interesting review. I was able to go to a lounge on the main Earth station and to my bridge but there didn't seem to be much point to it.

[Ghambit]

In short, the game is more entertaining, deeper, and more "polished" (in a subjective sense) than ChampO at release imo... even in its current state.  Once they add the social areas (your bridge, lounges, more stations), people start digging into the ships and collectibility, and the other races open up... things will get even better.  BUT, it's still not the Trek it needed to be.  It's Cryptic-Trek as they say.

Interesting review. I was able to go to a lounge on the main Earth station and to my bridge but there didn't seem to be much point to it.

DS9 is supposed to be a pretty phat area, but that's later in the levels.  Regardless, the social areas are just places to show off your wares.  There is TALK of the bridge view being an option for navigation in sector mode, but it's little more than speculation right now. 

[UnSub]

I write as someone who still likes CoH/V, enjoys ChampO in short bursts (when it works): I'm neutral on STO.

Positive

 - The space and ground combat is a better version of POTBS. Space combat is swinging your ship around to keep enemies attacking your undamaged shields while you try to take one of theirs down. Beam ships (ships that don't use photon torpedoes - you have some ability to outfit your ship) apparently have a much greater DPS. Ground combat is a better version of POTBS's / ChampO's: you've got two weapons and a kit (extra ability e.g. grenades) and a crew behind you. Double-tapping a movement key does a defensive roll. An aimed mode gives you a bonus to attack.

 - Customisation of ships and your character is solid.

 - Better condition than ChampO was at launch.

Negative

 - Stability.

 - Limited testing on everything due to limited test times.

 - Major systems only just implemented (i.e. final patch before OB) include the Genesis / Exploration system and crafting, some significant changes came in the most recent patch, areas of space outside of Sol are still very rough, lots of things still to come, etc.

 - As indicated elsewhere, you'll get items where you'll have no idea what they do.

 - Non-combat missions (the ones I've seen) are laughably simplistic. No diplomacy options in STO - it's all combat.

 - I can see it becoming repetitive.
--

It's Trek enough - it's action Trek rather than diplomacy Trek, but it is good enough for the non-discerning (i.e. me). Some players hate that space combat is only pseudo-3D (all ships level out to a horizon, no "top" and "bottom" shields - just the four side ones) but that doesn't phase me. The biggest issue is that it needs more time polishing up all those kinks in systems just implemented, fix more bugs and nail down things that aren't vital but are going to irritate players.

Earlier, someone asked about auto-teaming. In certain situations you enter an area and you'll be auto-teamed with others in the area. It works like an open team, but I'm sure players (like WAR) will join a team, not say anything, do the area and leave.

[Modern Angel]

I have to say that in my limited time I'm pleasantly surprised. Note, here, that it does not mean I love it. I just thought this was going to be an obvious turd from the first nanosecond of play based on the godawful videos they released. So far it's actually not bad... god help me, it's not bad.

[Shatter]

Reading multiple forums and reviews I havent read much that would convince me to buy it.  Sounds like the game in its current state is still a far reach from launch ready and I have doubts it will be in 1 month especially with the open beta startign today.  Reading a lot about tedious boring quests/missions and medicore combat wrapped in pretty graphics.  My current feel for this after today is they will launch an incomplete game with lots of bugs and low content making the game fun for 2 weeks then it gets shelved.  Luckily i got a beta key today and will try it this week sometime so I can decide.   Oh well, all this sounds too familiar

[Riggswolfe]

I have to say that in my limited time I'm pleasantly surprised. Note, here, that it does not mean I love it. I just thought this was going to be an obvious turd from the first nanosecond of play based on the godawful videos they released. So far it's actually not bad... god help me, it's not bad.

You and I have had the same experience. I think it helps going in with low expectations. It's fun but I can see where it would get repetitive. I'm definitely going to go ahead and keep my preorder and play for a bit to see what they do with it.

[Koyasha]

One thing I actually like so far, at least when soloing, I can pause the ground combat zone for 45 seconds max.  This timer apparently recharges after a pause, and it looks like it works in a group too, so a number of ideas come up, such as pausing if a fight is turning against you, in order to rethink strategy with your team.

As UnSub mentioned about the non-combat missions, I was left kind of 'huh?' when one mission apparently involved negotiating with some miners to get them to go back to work, and it consisted of going and talking to four or five miners to see what their complaints were, then repeating the complaints to the guy in charge.  And...that was it.  "Captain's Log, Supplemental: Next time, Starfleet should send an ambulatory recording and playback device."

I do see from time to time, concepts or thoughts which could, theoretically, be fun, if executed well.  Of course they're not executed well.  Still, overall I stand by my former position that Star Trek does not, and cannot, make for a good MMOG, since it's not about fighting, and MMOG's kind of have to be mostly about fighting.  Unless the game can let the player get really, truly creative with both diplomacy and technological tricks, it's never gonna be a really good Trek game.  But there are some ideas in this game that have an inkling of being potentially good.

[Riggswolfe]

Well, the ship combat is fun and is pretty much what I wanted. It seems to be a simpler Starfleet Battles in space so I'm down with that. I like having a "crew" that goes down to the planet with me. Hell, to my surprise they're actually competent. My engineer almost always kept me healed unless I got overwhelmed while his cooldowns were still cycling. That's much more than I honestly thought the bridge crew would be capable of.

The only minus I am seeing right now is the content and some of the texture work. The content just feels bland so far. This is something they can fix if they have the tools and the time so I'll give them a box sale and see how it works out. If it doesn't I have LOTRO to fall back on.

[Ghambit]

Eh, there's a Captain's Log.  I forgot to mention that.  Why exactly?  Who knows.  There's not really a whole lot to write about 'cept perhaps areas rich in anomalies.  "Freewarping" really doesnt net anything except the occasional random meaningless encounter.  The game does leave some potential room for a more involved exploratory experience, but I dont yet see it as of now.  Especiially since they give you a system list for every sector.  We shall see.

Next order of biz is figuring out if/how Fleet Management works.  "Bat Sector" anyone?

[Kageru]

Sounds like the shine is going to wear off fairly fast. Though for cryptic having something that doesn't outright suck from minute 1 is quite an achievement.