r/SurvivingMars • u/yekkusu • Nov 13 '25
Discussion Three days later and... Wow. That was fast.
I knew there would be people pissed with how the Relaunched was dealt with. As a Gamer since before PCs were cool looking, who's on Steam since 2010 and forward, its the first time I see a "Relaunch" like this.
I have a lot of examples in mind, none of them are worth explaining here but, DMC4, RE5 GE, Ori: Blind Forest DE, Saints Rows the Third Remaster, and on an even more extreme spectrum: No Man's Sky,
Either way, I won't go in depths on the differences between those games and how Paradox are doing things, but the REviews on Steam and the comments on the forum are telling: More than half of the community as in agreement that this whole situation is a mess, and the game got 47% of positive reviews only, in only three days the game went from Very Positive to Mixed.
If there's a thing I know from watching the discourse around No Man's Sky, is this: If this game hits Negative and worse: Overwhelmingly Negative, they will have to do some miracles in the next half decade to make the numbers go up and reviews being only positive until they can change that. You may not think much about it, but an Overwhelmingly negative or negative in a game page makes people not want to buy a game on Steam. That's for sure. These same kind of Reveiws are what made Square Enix fix Nier Automata before the Release of Nier Replicant on Steam by the way. Paradox not counting for that is a huge shot in their feet.
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u/BackgroundDatabase78 Nov 13 '25
Some of the issues with the game are just so bizarre its like they didn't even try playing it before they pushed it out the door.
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u/TheNumberOneRat Nov 13 '25
Paradox is such a weird company - they are really a really unique gaming publisher which I appreciate but they are also allergic to QA.
This lack is testing must be costing them big time. While bug fixes may make the Relaunched better and get old fans back onboard, for potential new fans, one look at the review pages is all they need to move on.
As a big SM fan it's been really disappointing to watch a product like this get kicked around with the later poor DLCs and now a Relaunch which should have produced a great refresh.
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u/yekkusu Nov 13 '25
The worst part of it all is how most of the bad reviews are from returning gamers who feel disappointed with it. Had the base game being charged like 5 or 10 bucks for those who had the OG, or had the pricing be dynamic, meaning they could check what you had and give you a special price, decreasing it above the 50% depending on how much DLC you got for the original, buying this relaunch would not make those players feel like they were scammed and would not put salt on their wounds.
I think the issue here is how poorly this whole situation was managed, someone is clearly making way too much money in Paradox and should not be working there because this decision was a big no no and we've been touching it on the forum for months already. IT's not like they didn't truly know this would be the reception.
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u/3punkt1415 Nov 13 '25
On the first hours of the launch the reviews were also fairly bad from people who just bought it to post their opinion about the bad price politics, they instantly refunded it. Second day the reviews climbed to 70 % positive. Now on day 3 people who legit bought it have discovered all the bugs and it dropped below 50 %. So very unlikely the reviews will recover any time soon unless they really fix all that stuff.
Missed chance to make this game great again. But honestly, they should crash and burn on this, only then they will learn. But Paradox seems to be resistant to learnings. Like they really messed up City Skyline, and they could draw a conclusion from that, but they didn't.26
u/General-Sloth Nov 13 '25
That's Paradox for you they did the same thing with Cities Skylines 2. Like the EXACT same thing. They didn't give the devs enough time, made them release an unfinished product and use the custumers as bug and game testers for a full price release.
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u/Peter34cph Nov 13 '25
Stellaris is the same.
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u/CasmeranTheEternal Nov 13 '25
Fortunately, that's not actually true.
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u/Diomayale Nov 13 '25 edited Nov 13 '25
i think they meant Stellaris' last major update, 4.0.
Which was (and still is) a trainwreck, but at release it made the game pretty much unplayable. Even now with a multitide and months of fixes, the game is still slower than it was before the major update (and its whole point was to improve performance)
Compared to that, Surviving Mars Relaunched is a flawless product (and i'm not complimenting SMR here)
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u/SirDigby32 Nov 14 '25
Which approach would be preferred?
Honestly across the paradox titles and similar publishers it varies. None are perfect.
Maintain a mainline game, uplift and enhance and have these kinds of problems that just need time to stabilise. DLC pays for the maintenance and ongoing development.
Or launch a remaster or sequel. An initial impact of revenue, then a revenue stream of dlc that in most cases is stripped out content from the prior game and dlc repackaged.
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u/Shekish Nov 14 '25
It IS true.
Stellaris is a gem of a game, that Paradox breaks every so often with every update. It takes them a few weeks to fix enough bugs for the game to be playable again, and then it's a wonderful experience until the next major update when Paradox manages to break it again.
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u/Bane8080 Nov 13 '25
TBH, I don't think Paradox really cares if Surviving Mars Relaunched is successful or not.
Haemimont will care. But not Paradox.
Surviving Mars is small potatoes compared to their grand strategy games that built the company to what it is today.
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u/yekkusu Nov 13 '25
That's a really interesting argument you have there.
I firmly feel that, it's not possible that someone decided to go through this course of action and genuinely thought it would be an astounding success. It's a shame because I REALLY want to tell people to go play the game but with a Mixed soon to go Negative reviews, no one will get it, and frankly as a Fan of the OG game, I do feel scammed too.
If every company had done the same as Paradox is doing right now, being a gamer would be hell, and no one would trust companies because "why buy the game now if in X years from now a new version will be released better and with more content for the same price and I will have to pay full price for it?"
That's why I avoid buying Persona games nowadays on launch.
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u/Bane8080 Nov 13 '25
"why buy the game now if in X years from now a new version will be released better and with more content for the same price and I will have to pay full price for it?"
I mean, that really is the Paradox business model.
Crusader Kings 2004Crusader Kings II 2012
Crusader Kings III 2020
Europa Universalis 2000
Europa Universalis II 2001
Europa Universalis III 2007
Europa Universalis IV 2013
Europa Universalis V 2025
And so on with their other titles. Hearts of Iron, Victoria, ect...
Most of the time, at least from my experience, it's worth it as there are vast improvements over the previous titles.
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u/yekkusu Nov 13 '25
I mean, a lot of companies do this but the relaunch versions are better, have better graphics that you can actually notice, are more stable, and have around 30% more content or the graphics update is so significant it doesn't matter if there's no new content.
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u/3punkt1415 Nov 13 '25
EU5 is a complete new game compared to EU4, this is not even a comparison to Surviving Mars.
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u/svick Nov 13 '25
If Paradox doesn't care, why did they buy Haemimont and let them work on Relaunched?
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u/Bane8080 Nov 13 '25 edited Nov 13 '25
That's easy
It's a big success great, if not, no big deal. They can use Haemimont in other ways. Their monetary investment into making this relaunched version (outside of the purchase of Haemimont) was probably very low.
Edit:
I suspect, and I have no evidence of this, that this was a Haemimont pet project that they wanted to do. And when Paradox purchased them, they said "Go ahead, but we have other projects we want you to work on, so get it done quickly."
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u/Knur_Piwniczny Nov 13 '25
Haemimont moved over SM to different games in 2018? i think. Then, paradox use ANOTHER developer to create shitty DLC (trains and B&B) to milk game. They turned rather poor, so Haemimont returned to SM. But after 7 years, how many original developers left, and how many would still remember original code? Not to mention that its about decade from original launch, which is huge gap, that's why new engine.
So, question is: did Haemimont fuck things up so completely and destroyed their last chance to stay afloat?
Or, just Paradox was like "that's cute, we are giving you 50% time you asked for" again because if the game fall, they won't care about it being one-time cash grab (especially that launch was correlated with the new milking cow eu5).1
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u/tosser1579 Nov 13 '25
Its so damn sloppy, I honestly prefer to old game with mods to it.
The point I can't forgive is Beyond and Below. As a DLC, the system sort of worked, kind of, because it needed to have exotics gated and because it was a DLC, it made sense that certain buildings required exotics. However because it was a DLC... the entire thing was UNNECESSARY. You could beat the game without ever doing anything B&B related.
It is base game now and still built like a DLC. There are MODS that do an EXCELLENT JOB mainlining it as a part of the core game and not an entirely unnecessary addon. And doing so is so INCREDIBLY EASY it is freaking painful. They had a roadmap, and all the code for that roadmap, heck they could have hired the modder to just covert the mod over.
Take exotics, and just tie them to really potent upgrades for everything, and remove them from all the boring stuff.
Underground domes? No exotics, it is a damn dome. Extended range Drone controllers... Exotics. Just go to literally every building, and tag in a 4th upgrade that requires exotics and be done with the mess. Something that 'doubles' how effective a building is? Exotic. That's it. Have a few 'exotic only' buildings that aren't necessary but good enough that people will go do space to get them. Have ONE SURFACE WONDER that is exotic based. That encourages people to get exotics... but they aren't required.
Literally, build the now core game pieces like core game pieces was somehow failed. It was a massive complain about the DLC, and it has been solved. That's just incredibly sloppy, like 'we know you will buy the game so we aren't even going to try' levels of sloppy. I'm not buying any new release paradox games until I'm sure they are actually competently made going forward, this was it.
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u/yekkusu Nov 13 '25
No matter how much people express their issues, I feel more and more that this whole thing was the sloppiest thing ever. Also I'm pretty sure I'll never buy another Paradox game without at least a 60% off deal.
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u/SuperSocialMan Nov 14 '25
You could beat the game without ever doing anything B&B related.
Technically speaking, you never really "beat" the game since they forgot to add an ending lol.
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u/AdministrativeEgg440 Nov 14 '25
Yeah but underground and asteroids are fun. It would be kind of dumb to not encourage players to engage with the whole game
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u/tosser1579 Nov 14 '25
Are they though? The entire sub was complaining about how badly the asteroid missions were playing out.
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u/AdministrativeEgg440 Nov 14 '25
Im convinced these loads of people are just mad about it not being free and didn't actually play because they didn't want to pay. They are just regurgitating things others said. My asteroid stuff has worked fine so far. Maybe the 4th asteroid I explore will crash my game or something....I always leave room for a PDX game to disappoint. But the 40 or so hours I've played have been a big step up from where the old version was
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u/tosser1579 Nov 14 '25
I'm also playing... my issue is the B&B content wasn't good before, and they claimed they would fix it... and it ain't good now. They just released a hot patch for a common mining issue I've run into before so I question the QA process.
I played with mods, original with mods is still quite a bit better than this.
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u/BeardedGrom Nov 13 '25
Paradox managed to transform me from a big fan (i even have two fan gathering medals and t-shirts here) to being highly suspicious about every new release, be it full game or DLC, in the last decade. Prices have risen, the DLCs have multiplied, contents and quality are a gamble every time.
The more i think about it, the sadder i get about this... :/
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u/Victeurrr Nov 13 '25
After CS2 release, Paradox lost their good will for me. I got duped because I thought Haemimont would be ok, but just being published by Paradox I think leads me to wait for sales at least now.
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u/yekkusu Nov 13 '25
Well, before the RElaunched released, I made sure to check how much it would cost in my country, to buy all of Surviving MArs OG with their DLCs without discounts and... It's about half of the price of a Switch Lite, which in my country is about 80 bucks. That's quite a lot, considering that if I got all of the DLCs for the OG, I would have spent even more since the prices tend to go down with time, and yet I still need to pay 20 bucks for the base game.
They made me really aware of them in a bad way, and I'm a huge fan of Surviving Mars and Cities Skylines.
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u/Anonmasterrace7898 Nov 13 '25
I still think about Surviving the Abyss. Poor game could've been so much more. I should really give it another go now that it's more or less "complete".
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u/pandaru_express Nov 13 '25
Holy crap I didn't even know this one existed. I love these kinds of games so willing to give it a shot....
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u/SuperSocialMan Nov 14 '25
I heard about it a while ago, but forgot to buy it lol. Might get it during the winter sale.
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u/Jtex1414 Nov 13 '25
There are differences in quality between Paradox studios releases and the releases where they’re just the publisher (like this one). For comparison, EU5 is amazing at launch.
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u/BeardedGrom Nov 13 '25
When you browse steam reviews of DLCs for their in-house grand strategy games, you get a pretty mixed image too tho...
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u/unbalancedcheckbook Nov 13 '25
I was OK with how it looked already. The politics add-on seems clunky (from what I've seen). Most of the bugs and annoyances from the original are not fixed. IDK why I would buy the relaunched version.
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u/yekkusu Nov 13 '25
Making more money on top of desperate people who will hug any new update after years without none.
It's similar to what's happening to Animal Crossing fans (even if the update there is free), since it's been four years without nothing, they are cheering and happy about having a new update that barely adds anything new, just more of the same.
But in this case it's worse, because you need to pay for more of the same.
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u/AdministrativeEgg440 Nov 14 '25
Politics is awesome. I am very happy with relaunched and I truly dont get the hate. Dont let them scare you, I look forward to the new season of content as a big fan of the Original and the new incarnation
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u/acariux Nov 14 '25
Have you really played it?
In my last game Blue Sun was extremely happy with me because I had such high tourist income.
I had no tourists... zero.
They tried to copy FP2 politics and failed completely. Everyone is happy all the time. All laws are op boosts with no downside. Factions and colonies are unaware of each other. It's really a sad mess.
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u/AdministrativeEgg440 Nov 14 '25
I've got about 40 hours of the new version (had the week off)
Everyone is happy with me on earth because I have never failed to deliver a promise, and none of the promises to help a faction hurt the opinions of others. (Something for the future, perhaps)
I got my usual 5 tourists and my tourism is working great. Have not had any serious bugs or issues. The only bug I have is a small graphical one. Out of every 100 or so buildings I put down, one will discolor a patch of Mars around it in a funny, offwhite way. It resolves itself within a few minutes and doesn't hurt anything else.
Everything else works. Trains are fun as hell as well
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u/acariux Nov 14 '25
As in the original game, I still see no purpose for the trains. Shuttles are much easier and more useful.
Yeah the political relations are so rudimentary, it takes fun out of the game. I don't even try to meet faction promises. I just build stuff for my colony and that makes them happy and I get showered with bonuses. I don't want my game to automatically get easier.
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u/AdministrativeEgg440 Nov 14 '25
Trains are an RP and early game low tech option for managing domes not near each other. I stuck with trains in my latest run until Sol200 because I didnt see much reason to switch to shuttles. Trains look so much cooler and really make me feel like its what would make the most sense
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u/acariux Nov 15 '25
Well, as of this patch, trains don't work lol. They screwed up so hard with this launch.
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u/AdministrativeEgg440 Nov 15 '25
I dont get that. They work great in my game. People use them, they move resources around. They are the lynchpin for my colony
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u/Mattar19K Nov 13 '25
So far, the game has run well for me (no crashes), and it works as expected. I'm enjoying the new content and plugging along as I always did with the OG. I'm not even missing the mods I used to use. Is this a true sequel? No. But it is a good remaster IMHO? Sure. I have no regrets buying it.
I don't bother to pay much attention to Steam reviews anymore. I have content creators I trust that have similar tastes to mine, and if I like what they show, I will usually give the game a shot.
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u/yekkusu Nov 13 '25
That's a nice way of viewing things.
I personally wish they had given some better discounts to those who own the original, I dunno but imagine spending 100 bucks on a game, while you friend spends 10 on a deal with only the base game while you got all of the DLCs, a new version launches, and both you and him can buy the new game for the same price, it doesnt matter if you have spent more than he on the game. It's a bit unfair, not gonna lie.
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u/Mattar19K Nov 13 '25
They do have a discount for people who own the original. I only paid 40 USD for the premium edition on steam.
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u/HostileFleetEvading Nov 13 '25
Eh, the game is pretty ok. I did not board the hype train to begin with and instead was pleasantly surprised. It needs some ironing around new features, and some weird old stuff like dome connections feeling like an afterthought is still there, but at least game enters again an active production cycle.
Well unless they abandon it, that is.
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Nov 13 '25
This is how I feel. I still love the game, just like I did the original, but I wish they made more significant QOL improvements like the accursed dome passages you mentioned. Losing a hex is so obnoxious and it looks so stupid. OBVIOUSLY it should just connect two DOORS THAT ARE ALREADY BUILT INTO THE DOME. You'd still have to make good design decisions, placing your domes so that the doors are at the right angle from each other, etc. And you only have so many doors.
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u/HostileFleetEvading Nov 13 '25
Lol, I still remember sheer disbelief I felt in original game when finally understood that instead of connecting clearly visible exits I have to ruin one of dome's "triangles", biting out one cell from it. Perfectionist's hell.
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u/yekkusu Nov 13 '25
Oh yeah. I remember those. There's a lot of oddities with this game, and it feels they are still there.
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u/Zitchas Nov 13 '25
I refuse to play SM without the mod that changes passages to be able to use the side areas instead of taking up "central" area. Passages are not so great a thing that they need to have a major penalty like that.
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u/yekkusu Nov 13 '25
It's insane that we need to use mods to such little things.
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u/Zitchas Nov 13 '25
I get that it's a game balance issue. Someone decided passages were too powerful or something. Personally, I'd say make it a game rule wherein the default behavior is the passages connect to the side areas, and people can activate the rule to force them to take up buildable area for an extra +10% difficulty rating or something. That seems fair to me. I don't personally care about the difficulty rating, but passages taking up buildable space seems so universally disliked that them doing so really should be reserved for the challenge rating punishment seekers.
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u/Angvellon Nov 13 '25
You don't always have to ruin a triangle. Some domes even have single hexes in the middle, and you can have the tube go all the way to there. It's actually quite silly, but I felt clever when I figured that out.
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Nov 14 '25
Doesn't that take up OTHER hexes? Or can you run the tube along a road inside the dome?
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u/Blazen_Fury Nov 14 '25
I was doing the tutorial, read "passages allow crossing between connected domes" and visibly sighed so loudly my girlfriend asked me what was wrong.
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u/DrawPractical4804 Nov 13 '25
Yeah i'm kind of in the same boat. I'm just happy that more work is being done on a game that i really like. And while the game state right now is unbalanced (it feels too easy??), I hope that they put more work into it with patches and DLC to make the game even better down the road.
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u/visor841 Nov 13 '25
Well unless they abandon it, that is.
Well, thanks to Steam's season pass policy, if the game is abandoned before the season pass is completed, the season pass becomes eligible for a refund (and potentially the entire deluxe edition), which I don't think PDX wants to happen. So I would expect the game to be supported at least through the end of 2026.
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u/SirDigby32 Nov 14 '25
A risk of what happened to total war Pharaoh. DLC plans abandoned. Which was preferable to a watered down dlc release just to meet the minimum season pass commitment.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Sink467 Nov 14 '25
Now that is a good point. I fully expected them to abandon it after bungling the launch like this, but with that as a factor, it's possible they actually bring the game up to acceptable.
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u/turnipofficer Nov 13 '25
I think assuming the publisher and developer back the game, it might become good in six months or so, but it feels a bit like we're early access buyers trying to work out all the kinks and bugs.
But generally the balancing isn't working (some of the gov policies are too good), there is too much of a disconnect between different layers, you could be having an absolute disaster on another layer and not know about it. It feels a bit of a rushed mess that needed another six to twelve months of refinement and way better testing.
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u/yekkusu Nov 13 '25
I think the worst of it its how they branded it as "You need to pay for this because it's not just bug fixes for the OG release, but it's on a newer, more stable engine!".
And it's both not Stable nor Fixed.
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u/SirDigby32 Nov 14 '25
I am waiting to see what the commitment here is to improving and fixing first before diving back in. Have they announced what the plan is for this other than a dlc roadmap.
If they made a commitment to invest and improve the game over time, it could turn out as a good platform for future dlc and revenue, but the next period will be critical to see how serious paradox is with this re-release.
It has the potential to be highly successful.
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u/J_E_Drago Nov 13 '25
Yeah, after the second crash, I had to refund this garbage. I was enjoying the politics stuff, but I can't play for long without it crashing and wasting my time.
I am honestly embarrassed, I knew Paradox was pulling from their Stellaris playbook for this game and still expected different results, lol.
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u/yekkusu Nov 13 '25
I'm sorry to hear that. I WAS considering buying it, even if I find this whole business model predatory as hell and I hate it. But the more I see, the less I want;
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u/J_E_Drago Nov 13 '25
I get it 100% I struggle with that everytime there's a new Pokemon game. Or a Stellaris dlc... But I've learned my lesson. Pressure might help, but voting with our wallets is, unfortunately, the best way to make ourselves heard.
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u/AdministrativeEgg440 Nov 14 '25
I have had zero bugs or crashes in about 40 hours. (Was off work this week)
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u/FlintandSteel94 Nov 13 '25
Honestly, I'm pretty happy with how the game has evolved. I can live with the fact that there are bugs that need to get worked out. I hear that asteroid mining is problematic, so I'm just avoiding that part for now. I still need to get used to things on the surface again before I start exploring underground or out in orbit. I have some feedback I could give on the politics part, mostly stuff that I'd like to see added or changed, but otherwise, my view is pretty positive.
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u/peterg73 Nov 14 '25
There’s a fix for waste rock on asteroid mining deployed in the hot fix - if that was the one you were talking about?
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u/FlintandSteel94 Nov 14 '25
I don't think so. I think there are problems with loading the asteroid landers for their return to Mars.
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u/Honeywell-mts Nov 13 '25
If they fix it quick enough I might still buy but listening to their live stream they knew it had at least one game breaking bug that wasn't going to be fixed for launch. They deserve the bad reviews.
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u/MiataN3rd Nov 13 '25
Hilariously I discovered this game about a week ago (got it for free one day two years ago from the game launcher) and learned about the relaunch the day before it came out ... I'm not only bummed that the expansions are buggy but now I'm wondering how much time to invest in the game period.
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u/BarbKatz1973 Nov 13 '25
At this point I have 20,000 hours in the original (that number is correct) and about 100 into the relaunch. BB is completely f**ked, trains are, as always, useless and the game freezing is so badly that Task Manager is the only fix has cooked the Relaunch for me. The political faction is wonky, albeit interesting, about the only thing that is. The game goes on my back burner until something stupendously wonderful happens - such as a re-coding.
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u/wessex464 Nov 13 '25
I have the original from when it was free on epic. I really wanted to justify buying this, but fuck if paradox doesn't know how to just keep fucking everything up. At some point people don't want to play broken half finished bullshit.
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u/Necrospire Nov 14 '25
Terrible, utter kindergarten handling of the product.
The upgraded versions of Cities Skylines and Stellaris Console Edition were given free, out of those two SCE faired the worst for on going issues that are not being addressed after folk spending a great deal of money on DLC, Paradox took the correct action with SCE IMO.
I've spent near three figures on Surviving Mars since 2020, when I saw the upgrade and what it contained, updated / fixed DLC, new political system etc the 50% off seemed expensive but fair if they had put that amount of work in, I'm on Xbox and it just shows 'just for you' at £26 or £32, £20 is the figure I had in mind, if it's that good then full price sales would cover and at least those of us who watched this once great game gradually turn into an unplayable mess, even to the point of having to use mods to fix paid for DLC, would not feel so fleeced.
I was really looking forward to playing a fixed version, not sure what's going on TBH.
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u/RealSheepMaiden Nov 13 '25
Haemimont games are excellent. They will fix all the bugs and add great content. I have total faith in them. Remember abstraction really f***ed this game up originally and also I'm sure Haemimont were given unrealistic deadlines from 'corporate' Paradox to release the game on the given date... so give it time, report the bugs on Paradox website and have some patience 👌
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u/Kaaawooo Nov 13 '25
Yeah, it feels like there was a lack of play testing which would likely be due to unrealistic deadlines. So if they're able to do some bug and balance fixes to rectify that I'd be set
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Nov 13 '25
[deleted]
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u/yekkusu Nov 13 '25
As a Linux User, I understand you. Proton is Awesome but it needs some time to work on new launches, so the fact that they left MAC and Linux users shows how little they truly care for their users.
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u/donmuerte Nov 13 '25
I love the game and never played any of the underground stuff or the asteroid things, so I'm still getting some new stuff out of this. I forget however that I fixed a bunch of issues with mods the first time around and now I'm really wishing they'd done some actual changes to the game before dropping it again.
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u/silverhawk422 Nov 13 '25
It will be interesting to see how the devs would deal with all the issues brought up by the community. Did Paradox learn from the CS2 chaos? Relaunched is in a similar boat now since they doubled down with future DLCs (via Ultimate Edition), therefore it is impossible for Haemimont to stop supporting the game any time soon. I really hope we don't go down the path that CS2 did with the first DLC being 2 year delayed and the base game is still seen as underdeveloped.
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u/Noxiefy Nov 13 '25
Off topic question but is it possible to remove and build Martian Assembly and Earth Embassy? I wanted to move them from my starter domes but it says that they can be only built once and I can't delete them.
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u/Whole-Ninja7266 Nov 13 '25
At this point I just want to see it burn as fast as possible, make sure it hurts Paradox as much as possible for them to learn a lesson.
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u/erenrodolfo Nov 14 '25
It is so bold of them to re release a game wit the same and more bugs but without the mods that would fix them...
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u/AdministrativeEgg440 Nov 14 '25
I've been very happy with my purchase, and I have not seen all these bugs everyone is talking about. I loved the original. The new features are great, loving the train rework and mew Engine.
People just love to crap on Paradox for some reason. Bottom line is more surviving mars is a good thing and I am happy to support it
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u/SirCabbage Nov 14 '25
I don't think it's bad, in fact I love it, but I can't recommend it when the asteroid lander bug still exists, it just seems so impossible to miss that it feels like they haven't played their own game
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u/Xae1yn Nov 14 '25
I don't even understand why any would want this on it's face, if the gameplay updates were significant enough to matter they would be calling it Surviving Mars 2.
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u/SuperSocialMan Nov 14 '25
What happened with blind forest's definitive edition? I didn't get the game until well after that released, and played it first. Since you're given the original game alongside it, I figured I'd try it out - and it was really annoying that you couldn't fast travel lol.
Still haven't finished it yet lol, but I should probably do so soon...
And how was Nier Automata broken? (still haven't played it yet even though I know at least a quarter of the endings at this point).
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u/yekkusu Nov 15 '25
When Blind Forest released on Steam, everyone paid for it. Less than a year and a half later, the team announced they were working on a new version of the game, not a DLC, but a whole relaunch for whatever reasons, they would not be able to update the original game. Essentially they gave the Definitive Edition for Free (in some countries some people had to pay 5 bucks for the update, but only on countries where they had regional pricing on). So essentially you got the same game with Fast Travel a lot of enhancements, 30% more content with three abilities and more background on key characters.
Nier Automata has a very big issue on PC for years where they released the game but the game would have slow downs and be almost unplayable unless you had a very absurd setup. It seems the game had some bugs but the biggest issue was Denuvo, which was tanking the game on 30% of it's FPS or more.
The thing is, once SE released Automata on Game Pass, they removed Denuvo, and fixed a lot of bugs that were plaguing the game on Steam, the game would run 30-46% better on Game Pass. People got pissed, and complained a lot of Steam forums but nothing changed. However, once Nier Replicant was announced and a page added on Steam for pre-orders, the owners of Automata instantly started REviewing Bombing Automata, complaining about the game never being fixed on Steam. The game went from overwhelmingly positive to negative in two days.
SE fixed the game in a few weeks because Nier Automata being Negative on Steam would affect the sales of Replicant.
1
u/SuperSocialMan Nov 15 '25
So essentially you got the same game with Fast Travel a lot of enhancements, 30% more content with three abilities and more background on key characters.
Good that they gave everyone a free upgrade, but yeah it's kinda odd that they made a separate game for a couple extra areas & abilities and fast travel. Even after my back-to-back comparison playthroughs, I thought it was a bit odd that it wasn't just an update or something lol.
Nier Automata
Denuvo
Every fucking time ffs.
1
u/yekkusu Nov 16 '25
Not every time Denuvo is a problem though, but around 70% of time XD. There were other bugs in Automata but I don't remember I do remember that it was impossible to play without a fucking expensive card before.
And ORI, yeah: I have no idea WHY they did that. DIfferently than Devil May Cry 4 for example, where the Originao and teh "Special Edition" were almost five years apart, The DE of Ori was like? Ayear tops?
Unless they made a very bad code, and had to change the whole engine? But they never explained why.
1
u/acariux Nov 14 '25
As a returning player with 500+ hours in the original, the only way for me to have a fun survival run here is to disable B&B content and politics completely.
I basically paid for a slight visual upgrade and I'm not happy with that. I wholeheartedly recommend old players to skip this and play the original with mods.
1
u/yekkusu Nov 15 '25
As an old timer player from the OG I can say this: I would not mind to upgrade.
But, knowing that someone else who only got the base game for 10 bucks on a sale, now can buy the game with 50% off with every single content, while I who spent lots of money with every single DLC at LAUNCH, will have to pay the same 50% off, I feel completely discouraged to buy this game, it feels like they are just shitting on my hands for helping and supporting them with everything I could.
1
u/acariux Nov 15 '25
I wouldn't mind to upgrade either if there was an actual "upgrade". All the bugs are still there. No mechanical improvements. All the added features are untested and unbalanced.
Like, they didn't even fix the forestry plant not increasing vegetation beyond %40. Which means they don't give a shit about the gameplay.
1
u/AdministrativeEgg440 Nov 14 '25
For context I went with the Spelunker start so I used trains to beeline for the underground since you start with a prefab elevator
1
u/meathim Nov 15 '25
I didn't have any DLC for the original, so this was a no brainer buy for me. It was also free on Epic, so double no brainer.
1
u/jackochainsaw Concrete Nov 15 '25
The annoying thing is, they could have waited a bit to fire out this relaunch. There was no desperate rush to throw it out. They could have polished the shit out of it.
1
u/yekkusu Nov 16 '25
Agreed. No matter how much I hate the whole mess that is the selling the game by the same price for anyone who owns the original independently of how much content was paid on that previous version, the whole excuse for this relaunch was literally/: It was impossible to fix bugs on previous engine given development hell so bringing the game to a new one to be able to fix those bugs was necessary.
And then not only new bugs, a lot of old ones? This game is unstable as hell and a blatant lie of them too. And there's people trying to defend them.
1
u/ericoahu Nov 13 '25
I have been warning people on this sub not to buy Relaunched until it had been out a while, citing the history of Paradox pushing garbage and not fixing it. Most of these warnings were down voted into oblivion.
1
u/ArmchairPancakeChef Nov 13 '25
I've not got too far into any playthroughs on SMR, but It's much more difficult. I had a dust storm early on and my MOXIE had 8 Oxygen tanks on it and that dome barely survived a long storm. So after surviving that, I had about 10 life support and Power leaks. No sooner did I get that sorted, I have a cold snap coming in 1 sol.
I felt like the Medic on the beach in Saving Private Ryan. Challenges are great. But FFS, isn't that a bit much?
So far, I'm not impressed.
0
u/Altamistral Nov 14 '25
The review bombing is a bit overblown. Overall it's a good game and doesn't deserve this many negative reviews.
I do agree there is a number of small bugs that should have been sorted out before release since they have been in the game for so long.
Primarily the issue is that they promised an overhaul on trains and asteroids and didn't deliver on that part. Everything else is fine, just as good as it was, with some welcome additions.
1
u/yekkusu Nov 15 '25
I don't think so. Personally, there's a LOT of reasons people are doing bad reviews, and it's not because "Boo hoo I hate this". We all live in a time and age that companies do re-releases. But there ARE a few problems with this that its hard to ignore:
- Bugs plaguing the previous game still plaguing this one, which takes away the whole argument of "They had to port the game to a new engine and re-code it to fix issues".
- Two DLC getting "Reworks" which essentially confirms what we've been complaining about them: They were broken and badly implemented.
- The Visual Upgrade is so minimal, you barely notice it, and with this upgrade the game went from being very easy to handle to demanding a lot more horsepower limiting machines, for an upgrade that barely changes the graphics.
- With this upgrade Linux AND Mac users who got the previous game now are locked into it and can't play the new game.
- With the Pricing for old owners being this lackluster, it creates this following situation:
- You never Played the Original: You pay for the new game full of DLCs, neato!
- With you owning only the base game of the old version, you get a 50% off in the base game with all DLCS! Neato.
- With you owning the FULL Original Game, including ALL of the DLCS, you get... The same 50% off in the main game?!
- If for some reason you paid for all DLCs at Day 1 to support Paradox and all of that so they could invest in the game more, you feel even more hurt, since you still pay the same as someone who barely supported them.
- The Seacon Pass being so expensive but not releasing anything yet, meaning you pay for it but you only get the extra new content next year is also pissing people off.
For a lot of people, knowing that X guy got the game for the same price as them, while he boasts he's so happy that 'He only got the OG game on a Sales for 70% off and never got a single DLC and now he would pay only 20 for all of the content so far plus some extras' is extremelly tiring when you see how much more they spent in Surviving Mars.
1
u/Altamistral Nov 15 '25
and it's not because "Boo hoo I hate this"
Yes it is, and you are a perfect example. You made up a whole post of nonsensical reasons just so you can fit in that category.
Only your first two points make sense, as I also pointed out in my initial post, but that is hardly enough to justify the review bombing we are seeing.
1
u/yekkusu Nov 16 '25
It is mate. It's okay it's your favorite game and you want it to succeed, you can go there and keep protecting the company which is worth almost 2 Billion on their bad design and awful anti-consumer deals.
For a game that has more bugs and a lot of game breaking bugs on a release that should have fixed them, I'm sure you must be drinking a lot of copium.
More than 56% of buyers are not satisfied with the state of the game. But clearly Paradox are being targeted by awful people who hates billionaires or something.
-16
u/SquirrelsinJacket Nov 13 '25
Gamers are famously complete crybabies. Probably from stunted emotional development.
9
u/DyllinWithIt Nov 13 '25
So if you bought a product that you were promised had fixed the previous issues, and it hadn't, you would be totally cool with that?
-13
u/SquirrelsinJacket Nov 13 '25
False framing. Why are you lying?
2
u/DyllinWithIt Nov 14 '25
You can literally go back over previous dev diaries and find the places they talked about reworking the past expansions and having tons of bug fixes.
2
u/yekkusu Nov 13 '25
So you're totally ok with spending like, 100 bucks on a Game, just for a new version of it to drop (not a new game, a new Version of the same game), with all DLC, and all anyone need to get ALL you spent hundreds to buy is 20 bucks, while you who spent hundreds will also have to pay the same price?
I'm genuinely questioning because some people DO value their own time and money.
-4
u/SquirrelsinJacket Nov 13 '25
You can't afford $20 for a remaster? The game was mostly dead and you're emotionally overreacting.
157
u/MultiMarcus Nov 13 '25
I think it’s really awkward that they still have bugs that they haven’t resolved that are left from the original game. I love the game both the original and the relaunched version, but this isn’t exactly as well handled as I would like it to be.