Upper Echelon Gamers did a video on Phoenix Point, highlighting some of the issues that he claims are plaguing the game, such as cheap enemies, unbalanced difficulty settings, and some crashes here and there that came out of nowhere.

He notes that it’s difficult to gauge the scale of some of these problems because they’re not widespread, and since the game isn’t available on Steam and the Epic Games Store doesn’t provide any consumer-friendly ways for people to offer feedback, publicly visible bug reports, or any sort of user review system where these things can be discussed, there’s basically nothing but silence on the storefront.

This means that a lot of people curious about buying the game have no way of really, properly gauging if it’s worth the price of entry unless they visit corrupt media outlets or check aggregators like Metacritic that collect the opinions of corrupt media outlets. Alternatively there are YouTubers like Upper Echelon Gamers, who, in this case, did a near 11-minute video breaking down what the game got right and where it seems to have gone wrong.

Short of buying the game or pirating it, there’s no easily accessible information out there where you can get unbiased, unfiltered opinions about the game.

The Phoenix Point sub-reddit is filled mostly with positive feedback, and the only threads discussing the balance patch is asking when it’ll arrive. A few people stated that there are some glitches but, again, most people are positive about the game.

There’s also the Snapshot Games forums, but some of the bugs being reported apparently aren’t actually bugs? A few of the reports are about some minor typos, and a few more are about lock-ups and loading issues.

The problem is that it’s difficult to ascertain which of these reports are hampering the fun factors and which of these are just the usual bugs reported for a recently released game?

Metacritic’s user reviews seems to offer a slightly consolidated view of what a few gamers are experiencing. There are some that seem to corroborate a few of the things mentioned in the video, but it’s also compounded with the fact that people are rightfully angry about the Epic Games Store exclusivity.

It’s really amazing how much Steam’s community-oriented hubs make it convenient to find out whether or not a game is worth purchasing or not. Anyway, for now, according to the people who didn’t like the game and Upper Echelon Gamers, it seems unpolished and unbalanced.

(Thanks for the news tip johntrine)