Final Factory Review - Factorio meets Cosmoteer
Final Factory is a unique mix of resource management and factory-like strategy genre with ship design mechanics, where players will have to design their unique space stations and ships.
In this Review we will cover in detail all its aspects and rate them.
Gameplay[edit | edit source]
Final Factory starts like any other Factory game, where player will have to harvest resources, craft building and place them in order to automate the resource harvesting process, but pretty fast it gets its own unique taste.
First of all players cant build huge spaghetti factories anymore. Each grid of connected buildings have its own set of stats, like heat and power, but main thing is stability. If too many buildings are connected to each other stability will go over the limit and station will cease to function. It can be mitigated later in the game by using station cores which increase stability cap, but in any case your factory design will have to stay modular. It gives an interesting twist to the Final Factory and players will have to adapt their factory gaming skills to this new mechanics when designing the station builds and building a logistics network.
But it doesnt end there. Later on players can put engines to their stations and they can move around space. Basically huge space fortresses. It's possible to design the stations for transporting resources, fighting enemies or mining. Player can manually control the stations or automate them to do specific tasks.
On top of that it's possible to build Dyson Spheres in the game and it also has a lot of other features being planned for future development.
Combat[edit | edit source]
Even though Final Factory is a resource management strategy that doesn't mean that it's peaceful. At the start of the game players can select the difficulty and depending on the difficulty it can be a sandbox game without the enemies, some normal balanced challenge where enemies will attack the player base from time to time or survival nightmare with huge enemy waves, where military production is top priority. And yes, hard options are pretty hard. Also there is a custom settings to manually tune all the game aspects to player's likings. 1000% enemy Difficulty, Attack Frequency, Attack Strength and Camp Spawn Chance seems fun?
Overall the combat mechanics is pretty interesting, 3 type of combat ships can be a part of a player's fleet. They will surround the player's ship and attack enemies that get close. Pretty neat to get automated fighting drones straight from the start. Player ship can also attack enemies, but the damage isn't all that great, so it's a last resort most of the time.
Of course there are also defensive buildings, turrets and armor blocks that will provide wide variety of gameplay options in Final Factory.
Enemies[edit | edit source]
Final Factory have multiple enemy types and each of those is focused on their own thing. There are Cutters that follow ships and shoot consistent laser beam that cannot be evaded, Stingers that shoot projectiles, but do more damage, Tridents that have more of an aoe attacks and can easily wipe out player's fleet.
As the player's base develops enemy waves are getting tougher and require more attention. Enemies that are further away from the player's starting location have enemy strength multiplier, that makes them tougher. So going too far too early might be a risky and fatal decision.
Controls[edit | edit source]
Final Factory have easy to get controls and their are familiar to people who play factory games like Factorio. Players can move around using WASD buttons, and mouse to do things. There are a lot of handy shortcuts and hotkeys that allow to do stuff faster, like copy pasting the stations or their parts and copying structure settings from one building to another.
The combat controls are a bit tougher though and needs some work. Player's ship can attack enemies using its gun, but only when it's selected either by clicking its shortcut or pressing C, while combat ship skills, which are extremely valuable in combat, are binded to VBN by default and they are extremely hard to reach while moving around and can be easily misclicked in the heat of the combat. So instead of ordering Knight ships to go into defensive stance player can send weak Bats forward just to be massacred by enemies. Although over time it's pretty easy to get used to and shouldn't be a major issue.
Progression[edit | edit source]
Main way of progressing in Final Factory is research. Unlocking new technologies is essential and it will lead to more complex production chains. It's also being done differently from other factory games here, although it's kind of the same. Player will need to do research on celestial bodies: Asteroids, Planets, Stars etc. And it will require the production of special type of ship for each type of research. So like other factory games, it's production chain.
The difference is that those ships will be far away from the main base and that outside area needs to be protected, so research stations and their ships will have be able to do their science things.
This makes research way more challenging and fun.
Gameplay: 8/10
Overall the gameplay is very refreshing for the factory style games and it brings a lot of new mechanics to the table. It gets gradually more complex as the player progresses the game, making progression and learning curve smoother.
Difficulty[edit | edit source]
Since the difficulty in Final Factory is adjustable we will talk more about complexity here. Overall, the idea of having modular station production is interesting, but it makes it harder for factory games veterans, since it changes game mechanics a lot. Moreover the logistics in the game will require a lot of pathing decisions, so Cargo Ships won't get stuck and slow down the delivery.
So yeah, game mechanics will require some time to get used to and maybe some guides and wiki research to figure out the best solutions to the problems player is facing.
As for the difficulty presets I wouldn't recommend going higher than Standard even for the factory games veterans, since I was massacred on Suffering/Relentless multiple times. And Factorio Death world was a walk in a park for me.
Difficulty: 6/10
That will put overall Difficulty to 6, it's pretty challenging and players will need to adapt to survive, but easier difficulties should be quite forgiving.
Graphics[edit | edit source]
Final Factory looks amazing. Everything is in 3D, fights have a lot of effects and look pretty flashy, building have nice light reflection depending on the camera angle and it doesn't load the GPU too much. Thats some good signs straight away.
The only issue I've encountered so far is that somewhy it's pretty hard to find the right item in the inventory. Maybe it takes time, but so far autosorting is just moving things around all the time and my mind cant find the item where it's supposed to be. Although most likely it will be fixed in the future patches and there is a 20-slot quickbar that should help to get most things in there.
Graphics: 8/10
Graphics is really good for a factory game with top-view. It have nice effects and doesn't load PC too much.
Sound Design[edit | edit source]
Final Factory have some nice sound effects for most actions in the game, player can hear how the factory is working while flying above it and there is nothing serious to complain here. Ambient sounds are fantastic though and they add a lot to the game atmosphere.
The main issue are attack notifications. They last for some time after enemy attack is over, and if another wave comes it's impossible to notice that using the sound cues. This system is being worked on and will be polished in the future, but in a current state caused a lot of frustration.
Sound Design: 6/10
With all that said sound Final Factory Sound design will get 6 points.
Overall Scores[edit | edit source]
Gameplay: 8/10
Difficulty: 6/10
Graphics: 8/10
Sound Design: 6/10
Overall Score: 7/10
Conclusion. Is Final Factory Good?[edit | edit source]
Yes. I already have 50 hours in the Final Factory and will play it more. It's a pretty good mix of factory-like game with ship design idea and it works well too. Considering that it was created by a single indie developer most of the time - it's amazing. I am really looking forward to seeing how it will develop through Early Access and get more features and game mechanics.
