The longer I play, the more the flaws are revealed
UPDATE April 30: Crashes seem to have been fixed. Returning to 3 star rating. Im a bit irked by the change to rush failure possibility percentage changes in 1.5. Used to start as low as 0% with fully maxed dwellers. Now it starts at 10% and jumps to 20% on the second rush. Whats the point in this? How else are we supposed to make dwellers happier?
Previous review:
Ive given this a great review on the iPhone. On the iPad, where Ive been spending much more time with it, and where we should have better control with larger screens, the game doesnt actually deliver an improved play experience. The graphics are easier to look at, but that is a limited improvement, since plenty of text is not resolution-independent (could you folks at Bethesda do something about that?).
On a larger screen, targets should be EASIER to touch individually, but I find the tap targets to be VERY low resolution. Leveling up a skill on a dweller by tapping another dweller (or empty space) to his/her left/right...?? Its far more egregious while fighting off invaders:
Trying to manage dweller health during attacks becomes nigh impossible. They cluster together and cannot be tapped as desired ("tap, wrong dweller... Tap tap tap... No no no! Tap tap, oh no, now Ive zoomed out entirely!!"). The lowest health dweller is overlapped by another dweller you might not need to give a stim to. How do you fulfill "Survive [n] Deathclaw attacks" objectives if you cant manage dweller health during said attacks??
EDIT: this is also very frustrating when trying to hunt down and tap on the "mysterious stranger" before he magically vanishes.
Edit 2: Health bars often fail to appear during incidents. They also fail to clear afterward, sometimes. Room labels also fail to clear sometimes after deselecting them, and this makes reading other room labels annoying because both labels overlap.
As for game play: If youve leveled up a lot and improved your rooms, the game punishes you. The longer you play, the harder it is to enjoy playing. Youd think that improved dweller and room stats would lead to more success. Instead, it leads to worse attacks, and far worse disasters. Fires burn forever with six dwellers fighting them. Why would a fire last longer when youve IMPROVED a room?? Shouldnt an UPGRADED room be LESS disaster-prone??
Fallout 1 & 2 got more fun the more you leveled up. Fallout Shelter just becomes more tedious.
Im not abandoning the game just yet, but Im not sure Im enjoying it anymore.
PS: I know this game is based on the cultural quirks of the nuclear 50s, but the sexism is starting to grate on me. Why cant a woman use a professor outfit?? (for one example of many!)
Update: BUGS!
• Constant crashing on load/exit of vaults and on room merging.
• Dweller name text box sometimes doesnt appear when re/naming dwellers (typing blind, cannot edit text).
• No inertia on scrolling up/down when zoomed into left or right edge of vault.
• "Room with [no] corpses" bug struck. Cost me the destruction of three full size, fully upgraded rooms just to get rid of the bugged state (dwellers complain about corpses that dont exist and have <20% happiness). These six dwellers also wouldnt increase happiness when moved elsewhere until killed and revived.
• Three times now Ive NOT gotten credit for the "survive [n] Deathclaw attacks with no casualties" objective.
• Label and health bar bugs mentioned above.
• Cannot drag a dweller away from near another dweller thats awaiting a "tap to level-up" (and a single tap to select the dweller would trigger the level-up of the nearby dweller). Why this is annoying: I need the visual cues to see where I have dwellers to relocate after leveling-up, because zooming out and dragging dwellers around is a lot of visual clutter.
dysamoria about Fallout Shelter
