3.5/5 ★ – FoofDeckman's review of Grounded.

[SPOILER FREE] As of writing this, Grounded is in version 0.11.0 of Early Access and over time, my rating will most likely change as I revisit this game with new content updates. As someone that not only got every single BURG.L Chip in the game, built a giant base, got the best weapons, fought the bosses and did pretty much everything that's available in this game as of the "Hot and Hazy" update. I can say that I had a blast playing this, especially with friends. As someone that's always had an interest for this niche genre of survival multiplayer coop games like Grounded, this one knocks it out of the park. Grounded doesn't have that early access problem of feeling like there's nothing to do other than to wait for future updates, which is a big problem tons of these games have. There's usually a major content update every few months, and those content updates never seem to be small. They tend to add large portions of the map into the game and even heavily modify pre existing areas to better fit the flow of the game too. This game has an almost metroidvania feel when it comes to it's progression system. You can start in an area where you can't do a lot at first, but then as you go explore new parts of the map, you find the equipment you needed in that original area opening up a bunch of opportunities in areas you've already explored which keeps the game fresh even after 50 hours of seeing the same spots. This game is almost bordering on survival horror, especially if you have a fear of bugs. That makes playing this game in coop extremely fun, especially when someone in your party gets chased by a spider and everyone starts to either scram or try and fight it. Building bases, doing quests and just exploring this world was a blast to do in coop, but I'm not sure if that same fun would transfer to solo play. Base building in particular was surprisingly in depth for an early access game at this state of development, at least compared to other games similar to it. There would be points where our base would be attacked by giant wolf spiders because of the location of our base. The fact that we're able to build giant watch towers to shoot things from below and set up spike traps to protect our base, was a very exciting. I just wish the AI and combat was better The combat in this game tends to just be: get on a higher spot than the enemy and then shoot your bow. They seemed to have implemented a mechanic that will make the enemies wander away from you when doing this, in what I think was an attempt by the developers to make players stop cheesing the game like that. But this mechanic actually just makes fighting them even more easier, as they won't even be attacking you for most of that fight then. Most enemies can't seem to figure out how to jump or to get to higher areas and it really ruins most combat areas. I know the obvious question is "well why not just fight with a weapon up close". Melee combat in this game feels really clunky. Half of the time that I swing my weapon it just feels like it's floating in front of me and not hitting the enemies I'm swinging at. Hit registration and blocking are extremely inconsistent and with a constant drop of stamina for every swing makes this game extremely difficult to accomplish with JUST melee. Upgrades and new equipment do improve melee combat by a significant amount, but not enough to where I didn't try and cheese the game with a bow. I found that most of the time my friends and I HAD to cheese the game depending on what spot we were at the time too. I know it's early access, so all I ask is to just add some sort of work around to this that doesn't ruin the game in the process. My biggest problem with this game is the lack of good ways to travel around the map. Okay sure, if you really wanted to put that extra time into it, you could make really long zip lines that reach from one end of the map to the other, but there's only really a few spots in mind where that could even work to begin with. With a map of this size, I found myself having to walk nearly 10-15 minutes to get to certain areas if they're across the map. This feels really ludicrous, especially in a game like this where traveling is most of the game, the absence of something allowing you to travel faster feels a bit empty. I really hope they add mounts, fast travel spots, teleporters or something that'll just make traveling not feel so tedious after a while. I put around 52 hours into the game during this week alone, and I'm sure I'll be continuing to put more hours into the game as more updates roll out. This game is extremely fun and I know for a fact that once this game is truly finished, my rating will most likely increase. When my main complaint of the game is talking about adding features, I feel like that's a good sign and speaks highly to the current quality of the game. Please check this game out if you have a chance and if you have Gamepass then what are you doing even still reading this, go play it.