The rating system ruins the whole experience
I've been enjoying this game for a few weeks, thinking it was "demanding", because even when I used common and well known combinations I was getting mid/poor ratings. Today I tried a sequel of a 10/10 game, the only one I've been able to get a perfect rating for, with a new engine favoring the combo, and for a new console, which has a 3/3 affinity for that game type, just to get a rating of 5. The effort required to reach all that conditions, basically tailored for that sequel was way too much for that rating, which left me devastated and with no will to keep playing. The development stages are based on bars that after 4 runs i I'm still unable to guess where to place, since they use an ambiguous ---/+++ rating system. After a few other similar poor or strangely high results I can say the game isn't demanding, it just doesn't make sense at all. I've tried past results with new improvements and they don't follow a logical pattern. I wasn't expecting a "guessable" mechanic that would make it boring, like similar older games, but if I make a huge effort on a new engine and wait for a console affinity and spend every research point for a very specific purpose, you can't rate it a 5, because you're breaking the effort/benefit rate and my will to keep investing time on the game. On top of that, there are certain moments in which you get a really good rating for a strangely normal/average combo with no effort at all and totally unexpected that, conveniently, allow you to make a huge progress all of a sudden, making it look quite suspicious and, when tried again after a decent period provides a 1/2 rating. The idea and the extra features progressively applied, are really good, but the rating system sometimes seems absolutely random, and that's the main pillar of the game. I really wish I could keep playing the game, but a clueless almost arbitrary rating mechanic doesn't feel rewarding.
