A Critique of Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden

Mutant Year Zero:Road to Eden is a fun tactical turn-based RPG strategy (insert more genre tags here) game. It has some issues, but overall it's a good time.
Support me on patreon: / dorkaxe
Follow me on twitter for updates on the channel: / darkaxe54
0:00:00 Intro/Premise
0:01:31 Deceitful but beautiful cutscene
0:03:07 Visuals/Humor
0:05:52 Mutant Tabletop origins
0:06:33 Hub Area/Map system issues
0:14:56 Dialogue/subtitle issues
0:18:01 Menus ahoy
0:23:16 RPG leveling system
0:29:33 Exploration
0:31:56 Stealth
0:36:48 Combat
0:46:58 Minor issues
0:49:39 Story and lore
0:51:35 DLC story
0:55:20 DLC gameplay
0:59:23 Stalker Trials
1:00:36 Conclusion
#Mutant #MutantYearZero

[@hardshipsofretail8602]

Hell yeah, Dorkaxe is back at it again

[@justinfleck6329]

What a cool looking game, love the take on these mutants not knowing about the world and people that used to live there that's super cool! That's a bummer on the mechanic with the Ark and the different mechanics involved with it that clearly don't work :/ I really like the combat system and % to hit very nice way to handle it! Is it a little creepy to play this game and think about how this could/might be our world if/when another Covid situation happens?...cuz it's creepy for me to think about... >_> lmao wow...that shift into the DLC... classic xD Geegollywizz i'm looking forward to the next video ;)

[@OpenDoorEnglish]

I just get snacks when the elder speaks

[@Bishop2155]

I think this is the only game I got most of the achievements bar 1, it’s great I love it

[@razorbackroar]

Masterpiece for all my brothers who know very hard is the only mode we play.

[@Pakanahymni]

4:20 looks like a combine harvester to me. This game was wonderful to look at living in Sweden, you notice so many things it's really believable that it's a post-apocalyptic Sweden.

[@ericmoreau4568]

Hats off to anyone who can get past The House Of Bones. I pretty much gave up at that point, even on "Normal", and wish I hadn't played past the refund window. 50$ is a lot (especially after forking out a ton for a controller which hopefully won't drift anytime soon!).

[@Dorkaxe]

Dude that sucks. Always a shame when someone doesn't like a game that they've spent a lot of money on.

[@noahharley9916]

Damn, I am halfway through the game and did not even know I had to equip mutations. I just assumed I could use them at any point but had not used most of them because the game relegates you to one playstyle.

[@irritablerodent]

It's really frustrating. Only a few relativley minor quality of life tweaks and some slight adjustments to the story presentation (less droning monologues) holds this game back from being truly great. When I played it, the UI stuff you mentioned was the thing that almost stopped me getting to the end.

[@Dorkaxe]

It is a shame, since it's such a fun idea and has relatively solid gameplay. Glad to hear my problems weren't unique to me.

[@DeadlySkys]

Dang, I just ordered it without doing research. I really dont vibe with these cutscenes. Everything else looks amazing, just that looks really really out of place. But Ill try and enjoy it. Thanks for the awesome video.

[@razorbackroar]

Be a man. You will vibe my son.

[@trystanwise4943]

Reminds me of Monster Hunter with all the menus.

[@Dorkaxe]

Oh man, I've only played monster hunter world, but that game is insane with menus. At least you can walk around your hub area though! And I do like watching the cats cook me fish.

[@nichini8035]

I've beaten the game on hardest difficulty and I have to say this: my main problem with the combat is that's a puzzle that you only need to solve ONCE. Its incredibly easy, once you play the right way. By the end of dlc I had 19 medkits. The whole combat boils down to: stealth->disabling skill->kill at worst and at best you dont even need to do anything fancy and simple 3 stelth non crits are fine. Once you clear the area of those you can stealth kill and the remaining are groped up, which is also no problem at all, since you have so many crowd control skill. I remember how the game told me to run from 3 end game robots at the 2nd to last area of the main game, but with just ONE emp nade that encounter was absolutely trivial. I just wish the game would play around with its own formula.

[@Dorkaxe]

Same, it had a lot of fun ideas and cool abilities, just not much reason to not use the optimal stuff. I haven't gotten to Miasma Chronicles yet, which is their most recent game that came out last week, but I hope they've addressed some of the problems I had with MYZ.

[@hollowriller]

If you ever get around to Miasma chronicles (i think at least it's worth a playthrough) it fixed some stuff but some downsides as well (Though avoid iron man hardest, it's far from well balanced): The Ui for changing characters is still ass, now you can only switch out one of the three actives as the other is fixed slots (a shame as that limits what you can plan out), Weapons still need to be switched out anytime you change the extra as the active slot isn't tied to weapons (would make it a lot less annoying to limit switching stuff out) They changed Skill cooldown from kill based (rewarding stealth and planning) to a round based cooldown, only counting once enemies have their turn (with stuns it can be worked around but stuns are really limited so a bad change to me) meaning to get them back for a tough encounter you engage a weak squad on a mostly cleared map then just sprint away until cooldowns reset, much less rewarding than kill based. Weapons can no longer be upgraded, what you see is what you get, and is so expensive you are pretty much limited to what you find (they even nerfed the most expensive one, costing 7000 where the second best now only a little worse is 4000) though you can now change the mods on it on the go. You only have 2 silent weapons and one silent damage ability on the main character (activated passives such as +30fire/acid damage on hit, +crit chance is silent as well but requires a silent weapon to use) which limits how much you can plan to take down. Crit chance is nerfed on skills/terrain (height) to much lower numbers so it's no longer possible to ensure stealth hits from high ground criting if you have the right equipment/mods, making stealth a coin toss until very late game on one character the rest can only hope for irl luck. As there is no way to retreat/run away, if you mess up stealth you draw often the whole map and on hardest that's just game over with how much health almost anything have (to make silent kills harder to get, requires crits and abilities for most enemies -> with change to cooldown you don't get to do it often) You get the extra characters so late in the story they pretty much won't see any use at all, combined with worse passives/actives compared to the starting extra (a silent sniper centered around crits) Enemies despawn from areas randomly during some story progress meaning exp is lost (happened even when the area wasn't related to the questline anymore), there is still enough exp from quests/unskipable encounters to max level before end game but they matter more during early game + with cooldown changes having weak enemies to aggro then run away until cooldowns reset is pretty much a must during a Iron man hardest run. It's a lot less stable than mutant was, had several crashes, stuff not counting for the ingame codex (finding every character has an achievement tied to it, it didn't count a side quest boss for me so had to replay that part later wasting some time) and crashes can skip story with a save after rather than before the point it crashed on and it's not well optimised though my pc is quite old, a newer setup would do better. Though even with the negative points it's still fun enough for a playthrough, would really look forward to a sequel either to Miasma or Mutant as the games are fun if a bit flawed (Ui really needs improvements for both)

[@Dorkaxe]

I've, sadly, played Miasma Chronicles. I found it very frustrating. They fixed one or two issues from MYZ, and doubled down on many others. I raised a couple of specific problems in the steam forums with screenshots, and the dev responded to both saying it was intentional. Eh. If you haven't yet, I'd recommend looking into Showgunners. Way, way better imo.

[@hollowriller]

Understandable, they took some really weird decisions with it. Hopefully they listen to feedback for their next game. Haven't played Showgunners so will look into it, thanks for the recommendation :)

[@darktjp]

This game seems very XCOM like

[@Dorkaxe]

Very astute, I see you've listened to the first 10 seconds of my video lmao

[@jonlidell9465]

I dont really get why nobody ever makes the comparison to wasteland with the free roaming then going into grid turn based combat

[@Dorkaxe]

Probably just my lack of knowledge when it comes to certain genres. I haven't played Wasteland, well, I tried the first game recently, , but I'd imagine that's not what you're talking about. Would you recommend Wasteland 2 or 3 more?

[@jonlidell9465]

Honestly I enjoy both alot. It will really depend on whether you'd prefer a little more strategy and character skill depth, but a less polished product due to a smaller budget with less voice acting or slightly more stream lined combat and characters with all dialog voiced and more flushed out side characters and companions. I've spent alot of hours in both so I'd recommend both though I believe the 3rd game is a little easier to get into, but I'll always love the 2nd game more as it's what got me into these types of games.

[@maverickay5807]

I bought this game upon release and greatly enjoyed it, but sadly due to circumstances in real life I was unable to finish it.

[@razorbackroar]

Finish it now boo 👻

[@maverickay5807]

@@razorbackroar Im finally getting to it now lol

[@iraloS]

Another long as hell in depth review?

[@iraloS]

Yes please.

[@Dorkaxe]

Ayo, that's my style lmao thanks for the support like always.