Hey, it's in the green. That's a solid score, respectable for an experimental new IP.

Suffering the same fate as the more interesting Vita titles. Great for the intended audience but then higher profile reviews tearing unfairly to shreds.

Easily looking like 3DS' stand out release for the first half of this year for me.

You presume too much. Nowhere does the reviewer mention seeing apparent 'miss'es register as hits. He also does not say that the upgrade system is uninteresting, only that it is "inessential." If you try hard enough, you can completely ignore a lot of things in a lot of games. It isn't reason enough to dismiss those features or content entirely on the basis that it is "inessential."

Let's take another look at what he said. "Since the game only checks to see whether your attack was lined up at the second you pulled the trigger, sometimes you’re left watching your bullets literally pass through an alien, no damage done." What he is saying here is that his bullets passed through the alien, yet no damage was done because his attack was not lined up at the second he pulled the trigger. Let me say that again, his attack was not lined up at the second he pulled the trigger. It registered as a miss and this, obviously, is the fault of the game and not the fault of the player, who pulled the trigger while his attack was not lined up. (Just how slowly do these bullets he's talking about travel, anyway? I haven't even seen any bullets in this game. Any weapon that would fire a bullet just shows an explosion, and the enemy is hit.)

Let's pretend that we can see the bullets and that the reviewer didn't mess up his shot and blame it on the game. A bullet appears to pass right through an enemy unit without damaging it. Why would this happen -- is it some kind of glitch? Hardly. The game has an accuracy check, like many, many, maaaaaannnnnnyyyyy other Strategy RPGs. Even shooters are no stranger to such a concept, implementing bullet deviation. Imagine a reviewer complaining that his machine gun in an FPS sprayed an inaccurate burst of bullets rather than a deadly straight line of bullets, all of them landing at the center of his crosshair. Sure, in an FPS you might see the bullets miss, which gives better visual feedback to the player, but this is still an RPG. Its priorities are different from those of an FPS.

If you want to see evidence of the accuracy check in S.T.E.A.M. (and to see how immediately apparent it should be to any player that the game has such a check), watch this for five seconds. The player fires three times, and despite the enemy not moving an inch, one of those shots misses while the others hit. Furthermore, your attack can miss even during Overwatch, which aims automatically.

Accuracy is used to balance weapons and risk vs reward. There is a 'sniper' type weapon with greater accuracy than the rifle in the above video, but it is less powerful than the rifle. If the rifle was as accurate as the sniper, what would be the point of using the latter? The rifle's accuracy is dependent on the user's distance from the target. Use it from far away, you'll probably miss even if your crosshairs are dead center. Use it from only a space or two away, guaranteed hits. That's the risk/reward: in order for this weapon to be effective, you have to get close to your target. This puts you in danger of being spotted or hit with Overwatch; it also leaves you with less steam available for further actions or Overwatch yourself. The payoff is greater damage to your enemy. Or you can use it from a medium distance away, taking the chance that one-third of your shots may miss, because that will still do more damage than a hit from a more accurate weapon. This is especially important for Overwatch -- see here (forgive the crudeness of this model, I didn't have time to paint it or build it to scale):

(I guess I lied, it is slightly painted.)

Black lines are walls, red circle is enemy and arrow is his path. If the player stops on blue, Overwatch will activate from far away and will most likely miss. The player can spend more steam to advance further to green. This puts him in a more vulnerable position, but ensures that Overwatch will be a stronger counter-attack.

If there was no accuracy check, you could use Overwatch from anywhere. It would favor a more defensive playstyle, leading to longer (and easier) missions.

LTTP but Game Trailers review of this game was fantastic.

That's fair. At least you had the demo to have an idea. Something more games should do really. Games like the Order. 

I'm on the other side where I'm totally stolked for it. I played the demo and was completely wow'd by it. It totally fits my genre of games I like though, Ogre battle, FF:Tactics, Fire Emblem ect. It won't be a day one for me to be honest, just not going to be able to do it, plus I want the New 3DS before i pick it up. But it should be in the near future. 

That's entirely incorrect. There are no misses that hit. It's actually a very solid system and much like a shooter in that respect. If you hit the target you will hit the target, if you miss you miss. It's semi real time so it makes sense. There is slight annimation of enemies in the game, they bounce a bit and are aware of line of sight (which this reviewer seems to have no concept of lol). You are fully able to sneak up behind creatures if they haven't seen you, if they have seen you and you run to a different area without being seen you might be able to ambush them going towards where you were. It's not bad AI at all. 

So with the bouncing animation, it's like street fighter 2 when the characters bounce up and down slightly before a fight. Since most of the weak points on the aliens are on their asses there isn't much of a reason to be a fool like he was trying to do, especially since there is knock back on many weapons. Gotta mix it up between offense and defence. Use the big hitters to attack and the guys that can play defensively do so, protect the heavy hitters. 

Back to the point. If you miss an enemy you miss them, if you hit them you hit them. If you miss cause of their bouncing motion you miss, same is true in COD if a character runs out of line of fire, or jumps lol. Wonder how much he complains about that. 

Considering he uses the "interesting" progression of Valkyria Chronicles as a contrast, it seemed implied.

As for the other, point taken. I wasn't aware how the system worked. Thanks for the detailed explanation.

Point equally taken. I wish he had gone into more detail about the upgrades, and why they weren't interesting to him. I don't know much about them (nor about Valkyria Chronicles).

For what it's worth, 'accuracy' is made extremely visible to the player in most SRPGs, and the game doesn't really explain it in STEAM. I don't think it has to, as after 5 minutes with the demo I had a good understanding of it, but considering how generous the game is with hints and tips it's a bit of an oversight that it's apparently never explained. Although withholding information from the player, forcing them to make tough judgement calls seems to be the name of the game here.

OH no you di ent game spot!

I hate the review system an I'm gonna make a thread about it and it needs to change!


seriously though the game does not interest me but I never thought it would get that good of a score tbh

Yes we all know Gamespot has an agenda against Nintendo lol