Quasimorph Review Summary

Despite customizable difficulty and engaging tactical combat with great art and music, confusing difficulty, poor tutorials, heavy RNG, and harsh death penalties lead to frustration.

Highly customizable difficulty: Players appreciate the ability to customize the difficulty to their liking, including adjustable sliders and options to start low and increase the challenge. This flexibility allows a wide range of players to enjoy the game at their own pace.

Overall great quality: Many players describe the game as excellent, phenomenal, and highly enjoyable. The general sentiment is very positive, with strong recommendations.

Extensive weapon variety: A large variety of weapons, armor, and gear is noted, including many options for customization. The diverse arsenal enhances replayability and strategic choice.

Excellent soundtrack: The soundtrack is consistently praised as excellent, amazing, and a banger. Great music and sound effects contribute positively to the immersive experience.

Challenging yet rewarding: The game is repeatedly described as challenging yet rewarding and enjoyable. Players find the difficulty engaging and motivating.

Difficulty system is confusing: Multiple clusters report that the difficulty system is opaque, with confusing skull indicators, unclear power levels, and inconsistent scaling. Players find missions labeled as easy are often harder than high-difficulty ones, and even normal difficulty feels extreme.

Mission difficulty is inconsistent: Missions with lower skull ratings frequently spawn overpowered enemies or excessive numbers, making the difficulty curve unpredictable. This undermines trust in the difficulty indicators.

Tutorials are woefully inadequate: The game fails to provide basic tutorials or in-game explanations, leaving players to guess at mechanics after the initial training. This lack of guidance compounds the difficulty issues.

Excessive RNG undermines gameplay: RNG heavily influences meta-progression and combat, with high-percentage shots missing repeatedly. This creates a luck-dependent experience that feels unfair.

Overall balance is terrible: Fundamental balance issues permeate the game, making it feel broken and unenjoyable. This broad complaint ties together many specific grievances.

Turn-based tactical combat: Gameplay is turn-based tactical, reminiscent of XCOM or Jagged Alliance, with RNG hit chances, strategic depth, and potential for one-hit kills in a military sci-fi setting.

Extraction roguelike hybrid: The game combines extraction mechanics with roguelike elements, featuring turn-based tactics, resource management, and permadeath in a mystery dungeon style.

Permadeath with equipment retention: Clone characters face permadeath, but equipment can be retained, creating a risk-reward dynamic where losing a clone means losing progress but gear persists.

Evolving faction relationships: Multiple factions with backstories evolve based on player actions, affecting relationships, mission availability, and access to upgrades, creating dynamic narrative systems.

Weapons and gear variety: A wide variety of weapons, armor, implants, and explosives provides strategic variety and replayability, letting players experiment with different loadouts.

Flawless Linux performance: The game runs flawlessly on Linux, including Arch Linux, indicating strong Linux support.

Excellent Steam Deck performance: The game runs fantastically on the Steam Deck, indicating good optimization for portable hardware.

High GPU usage on RX 7800 XT: Version 1.0 suffers from poor optimization on the RX 7800 XT, causing 99% GPU usage and loud fan noise, indicating a performance issue.

Runs on diverse hardware setups: The game runs well on various hardware configurations, showing broad compatibility across different systems.

Crashes reset mission progress: The game can crash and reset mission progress to the beginning, causing loss of player advancement.

Recommended for strategic fans: A significant number of reviews specifically recommend the game to fans of turn-based combat, tactical strategy, and challenging gameplay.

Highly recommended overall: A strong group of players give the game a perfect score and recommend it without reservation, emphasizing its value and quality.

Not for casual gamers: Several reviews explicitly state the game is not for everyone, warning away casual or average players due to its extreme difficulty and complexity.

Negative purchase advice: A notable minority strongly advise against purchase, citing the game as a waste of time or not worth its current price or state, often without mentioning difficulty.

Use easy mode first: A cluster of reviews recommends beginners start on easy mode to get a better experience, suggesting the default difficulty is too punishing.

Community fair range: $14.99 - $19.99.

Session length: 2.0h.

After a steep initial learning curve lasting approximately 6 hours, the game's complex systems click into place, making it deeply engaging, though some players experience a drop in enjoyment in the mid-to-late game.

Reported time to anchor: 6h.

Friction: steep learning curve; lackluster tutorial; inconsistent difficulty; tedious missions; inventory management complexity; need to consult external guides.

Unlock drivers: understanding movement and combat mechanics; learning enemy weaknesses and resistances; proper mission planning; mastering scavenging and economy; discovering broken builds.

Hardcore Extraction Veteran: Methodical turn-based tactical extraction with careful resource and action point management. Motivation: Mastering the challenging extraction loop and achieving satisfying escapes. Stance: buy.

Systems Progression Enthusiast: Experimental and optimizing, focusing on unlocking and customizing classes, upgrading gear, and maximizing synergies. Motivation: Discovering and exploiting complex system interactions and character builds. Stance: buy.

Frustrated Newcomer: Struggling through early game, often dying due to lack of knowledge and harsh mechanics, seeking clear guidance. Motivation: Wants a fair challenge but feels overwhelmed by opaque mechanics and punishing difficulty. Stance: deep sale.

Most hardware cohorts report good performance, but the 8-11GB VRAM group shows mixed stability with lag and memory issues.

Windows <8GB VRAM: positive. Users report the game runs well and is lightweight, even on 4GB VRAM systems.

Windows 12-15GB VRAM: positive. No performance issues reported; the sole review focuses on gameplay and is positive.

Windows 8-11GB VRAM: mixed. Mixed reports: one user mentions severe lag from stackable loot, another reports memory leaks and crashes.

Steam Deck: The Steam Deck experience is marred by severe controller and UI issues, including a bug that prevents item selling and a clunky interface requiring touchscreen workarounds. Crashes causing data loss further degrade reliability, though Linux performance itself is often praised. The game falls short of a seamless experience.

Linux and Proton: The game shows excellent Proton compatibility on Linux, with multiple users reporting perfect out-of-box performance and no issues.

External guides: The majority of user feedback highlights a severe dependency on external wiki resources due to insufficient in-game tutorials and explanations. Players must consult the wiki for basic mechanics, quest progression, and build strategies. The issue is worsened by an outdated wiki, leading to frustration and a perception that the game is unplayable without external guidance.

Transition to 1.0 release: Multiple clusters highlight the transition from early access to 1.0 release, with some noting the game left early access but still has flaws. Others mention ongoing development and upcoming DLC.

Early access expectations dominate: Players acknowledge the game is still in early access, which explains certain issues and incomplete content. Many await the full 1.0 release expected soon.

Frequent developer updates praised: Clusters indicate that developers frequently release updates, are active in balancing, and add new content, reflecting strong developer engagement.

High replayability and playtime: Players report high playtime and long-term replayability, with many investing hundreds of hours into the game.

Comparison to Stoneshard: The game is often compared favorably to Stoneshard, with some finding it more addictive, though one mentions it is completely different.