I don't hate the new voice acting, myself. I also can't tell (or remember, rather) a difference between the original VAs and the new crew. Most of the dialogue... seems fine? Not horrible? However, it suffers from one of the most common problems I've seen in games, in that there are jarring transitions between actors at times. Especially when someone is being interrupted, it *never* goes smoothly; you don't get the sense they were actually interrupted by the second speaker. Instead, they... stop talking mid-word, there's a definite pause, and only then does the 'interruption' occur as the second person starts talking.

It's maddening to me and yet I can't ding them too much for it because it happens in damn near every game I've ever played that has voiced dialogue. Frustrating!

Voice issues aside, I... am deeply unsatisfied with how the story played out. Without going into spoilers, I'm just going to say that the Act 2 buildup (where they left us hanging for months while working on the final release) felt like it was leading to an exciting climax, like you were going to do something new and exciting to resolve the conflict.

And then... *wet fart noises*

I mean, seriously, that's it? THAT is what you, the developers, think is a satisfactory way to end this story you've laid out for us? The weakness of the story aside -- and it's certainly not gripping, let's be honest -- I was still interested in seeing what happened. And now... this has got to be in my top five list of the most dud wet firecrackers of a climax that I've seen. The impression I got was that the devs were tired of working on the game and just wanted to ship and be done with it.

Guess I should be glad it dropped at all instead of becoming abandonware?

Regardless... the bugfixes are nice -- and welcome! I'm not sure if I agree with the decision to ensure (for example) that there's at least one working air regulator on every ship even into top-tier stuff, but I can live with it.
Figuring out how to safely depressurize was part of the challenge and I enjoyed it. Salvage Geckos no longer spontaneously dismantling themselves is a plus. I wish they'd fixed the 'reverse airflow' bug, which is still there (pop a pressurized compartment, air rushes out towards you, and the ship moves in the same direction instead of opposite the thrust). And the physics is still stupidly wonky in places: a 1000kg thin spindly chunk of armor plate can cause the entire rest of the ship, 100x the mass, to start spinning wildly if you accidentally brush the two together. It's dumb (though having watched a few R.A.C.E. videos, it's apparently an accepted exploit to get the high scores).

I dunno. Overall I like the gameplay, still? I really wish there were bigger ships to break apart. But the story conclusion -- or rather, the way it was handled -- has actively pissed me off and it'll be a while before I launch another runthrough.

--sofaspud
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