Kerbal Space Program: Making History Expansion Review Summary

Offers great new parts, a powerful mission builder, and historical rocket parts, but suffers from poor career mode integration, overpriced value, and a buggy, disappointing DLC.

Great new parts: Many reviews praise the new parts for being well-balanced, useful, detailed, and visually appealing. The parts are seen as a breath of fresh air for stock players and include engines, fuel tanks, command modules, and structural components.

Powerful mission builder: Players highlight a robust mission editor that allows creating custom missions with predetermined failures, objectives, and goals. The editor is described as beautifully complex, extensive, and a cool utility for challenges, greatly improving replayability.

Historical rocket parts: Several reviews commend parts inspired by real-life historical rockets, including Apollo, Gemini, Soyuz, and Saturn V. This adds a layer of education and authenticity for enthusiasts of space history.

Good DLC value: Players find the DLC to be a good value, especially when on sale, offering a lot of content for the price. It is described as cheap, adding core functionality, and worth purchasing for stock players.

KSP base game praised: Some reviews emphasize that the base Kerbal Space Program is already a brilliant and high-quality game, which justifies purchasing the DLC to support its development.

Poor integration with career mode: The Mission Builder and its missions are completely separate from the career mode, with no way to import or play them in the main game. This lack of integration is a major complaint.

Overpriced for the value provided: The DLC is considered not worth its full price, with players stating it is too expensive for the limited content. Many suggest a lower price point or that it is not worth the money.

DLC is disappointing and buggy: The DLC is widely criticized as being buggy, low quality, and feeling like a pre-release product. Players report game-breaking bugs and crashes after installing it.

New parts are inferior to free mods: Players feel the DLC's new parts are lower quality, less interesting, and easily replaced by numerous free mods. Mods offer more and better parts at no cost.

Missions are poorly designed and buggy: New missions are badly put together with poor interfaces, lack of explanations, and bugs or crashes during gameplay. The mission system feels incomplete and unreliable.

Mission creation and editor: The DLC adds a mission creator or mission builder feature that allows players to design, edit, and play custom missions, often with grading and achievements. It includes both player-created and pre-made missions based on historical events.

Historical rocket parts: The DLC includes parts based on historical rockets from the US and Soviet space programs, such as capsules, fuel tanks, engines, and structural components from the 70s and 80s. These are designed for authenticity and complement existing parts.

Mission grading and achievements: Missions come with a scoring system, grading, and achievements, providing goals and replayability. This includes challenge modes and pre-made missions with specific difficulty settings.

Engine balancing: New engines are added that fill gaps in the existing lineup, such as the Kodiak, Bobcat, Mastodon, and Pollux SRB, creating a more balanced progression for rocket building.

Historical missions: Pre-made missions based on historical events such as the space race and famous Apollo missions are included, though some have quality issues like poorly constructed rockets.

Frequent game crashes: Multiple players report that the game crashes during missions or when continuing a mission. One player specifically identifies a memory leak as the cause, and another notes that crashes to desktop have increased after installing DLC.

Not worth full price: A large group of reviewers feel the DLC is overpriced and not worth buying at full price, advising to wait for a significant sale or bundle deal.

Buy only on sale: Many reviewers recommend purchasing this DLC only when it is on sale, often suggesting a 50% to 75% discount. They view the content as not valuable enough at its standard price.

Support developers by buying: A portion of the community recommends buying the DLC as a way to support the developers and fund future updates or content, especially for players who love the base game.

Cash-grab and overpriced: Some reviewers call the DLC a cash-grab, noting its small amount of content compared to the price. They express regret or advise against buying it outright.

Recommended for mod-free players: Some reviewers recommend the DLC for players who do not use mods and rely on stock parts. It can provide additional official content and scenarios for those who play vanilla.

Community fair range: $10.00 - $38.00.

Kerbal Space Program offers deep emergent fun after overcoming early friction from buggy tutorials, boring launch sites, and tedious orbital adjustments, with enjoyment stemming from exploration and progression.

Friction: Bugged tutorial mission for the mission builder that cannot be completed; Launch sites placed in boring, useless locations; Initial RCS maneuvers described as boring for two minutes; Missions and builder content isolated from the main career progression; Unbalanced paid part in a singleplayer game.

Unlock drivers: Focusing on exploration and scientific progression; Persisting through early tedious maneuvers to reach specific orbits.

Value-Conscious Pragmatist: Compares DLC to free mods, expects high quality and bug-free content, may engage with the base game modding community. Motivation: Getting fair value for money, avoiding frustration with poor content. Stance: no buy.

Loyal Supporter Veteran: Has extensive playtime, often hundreds of hours, comfortable with game mechanics, may use both stock and modded content but values supporting the developers. Motivation: Supporting the game's further development and expanding existing content. Stance: sale.

Creative Mission Builder: Focuses on the mission builder and editor, creates scenarios and roleplay missions, prefers structured goals and uses stock parts. Motivation: Creative expression through building custom missions and official-feeling roleplay. Stance: buy.

Monetization: The user reviews for Kerbal Space Program primarily criticize its DLC expansions as overpriced and lacking content compared to free mods, with some perceiving them as cash grabs by the publisher. However, there is no evidence of predatory microtransactions within the base game; all monetization is through traditional DLC purchases. The score is low because the complaints fall under base price/DLC value issues, not predatory in-game monetization.

Developer time costs concern: A player noted that developer time is expensive, implying concerns about game development costs or pricing.

Anti-DRM stance expressed: A player made an anti-DRM statement, indicating opposition to digital rights management systems.

Donation wallet suggestion: A player suggested implementing a donation wallet, possibly to support developers outside of traditional purchases.

Comparison to US Space Program: A player mentioned the game works for the US Space Program, which seems to be an off-topic or metaphorical comment.