This review is an AI translation of the original Korean post. Proper nouns, and some game titles and expressions, may differ.
1. ‘IXION’ Overview
I played a game that looks like a construction and management game. No, my first impression was actually that it might be a real-time strategy simulation like Homeworld, not construction and management, but that was not the case.
If I think back to similar games I have reviewed, ‘[PC Game Review] Space Haven‘, ‘[PC Game Review] FROST PUNK‘ came to mind the most.
You acquire resources, put up buildings, research technology, and construct the buildings you need, gradually expanding the scale as you go. To be precise, the character of it is a little different, but I will cover the details in the Review.
The Korean translation is good enough not to interfere with play, and I neither found nor felt any notable bugs while playing. As I go into the Review, readers who have already seen my reviews will know, but I will proceed through Features, Graphics, Sound, Difficulty, and Play Time (immersion, addictiveness).
2. ‘IXION’ Review
2.1. Features
I tend to like construction and management games, so before starting in earnest I played ‘IXION’ briefly to get a sense of what kind of game it was. I took it for a game of gathering resources and building, and I thought it would be a relaxing game where you work through tasks of your own.
Now that I have finished playing, and with the tricks in hand as I am now, I feel it is all right because I can play it reasonably well. What I want to say is that if you do not know the tricks, the difficulty is considerable.
The prologue is strongly a Tutorial, a scenario that teaches the various controls and only the framework of how to play. You can see that the resources we can use at first include food, electricity, and several others. I wondered whether it would explain things in detail later, but it did not.
Even so, I find myself thinking, how often does a game tell you even this much? From what I feel while playing, it does deliver the basic fun of a production and construction game. In the end I played it with satisfaction. I did feel it was a bit tight, though.
I played on the default, which is the normal difficulty, and although there was trial and error I was able to finish. It is fun, and if you know the method you do not get that stuck and can clear it. I mean that I did not need to look up a guide.
There is a sense that it limits the game’s progress by restricting research and development. There are specific internal conditions to meet, and when those conditions advance, the next sequence proceeds, so progress moves on and the story advances. That is the structure.
The story itself is a little disappointing, and it did not come across as anything special. It is even a bit absurd, but I would say it was good because the construction and management side could carry the fun.
2.2. Graphics and Sound
In my opinion, the graphics and sound are on the good side. The cinematic footage shows watercolor-style images, and I think they harmonize well with the sound. There is narration too, and it was impressive.
The depiction of warping is also a bit unique, so it was fun to watch, and the part where IXION’s movement is depicted was impressive too. The depiction of materials and transport ships moving inside is tied to the actions, so you also need to consider routes, and it has a detail of its own.
In the later stages, as the elements increase, there are parts that put a burden on the graphics, so the structure is that requirements rise in the late portion above the resources needed at the start, that is, the computer specs.
In the end I got through the sound and graphics without any major complaints, and I feel like giving them a good score.
2.3. Difficulty
This is a game that leaves me with a fair amount to say about difficulty. Personally, the difficulty was not easy until I picked up the tricks. The best trick, if I explain it on the game’s default difficulty, is that as long as you do not assign more work than you have workers, I think you can proceed smoothly in every respect.
My way through it was to research as much as possible, as quickly as possible, first, to raise efficiency, and then to proceed by raising efficiency on solar panels and basic electricity while also raising resource efficiency.
In the late game you only need to control food, but because it consumes quite a lot of power, proper control will be necessary. Personally, I think that if I had known the last mission needs a large number of batteries, it would have been better to stockpile iron-related resources to what you could call an excessive amount.
Of course, I mean the resource made by smelting iron.
Now that I have actually written it, the content is a little simple, but if you only keep the required amount of workers from exceeding the amount of workers you have, as I explained earlier, accidents do not happen, and if you just avoid the bad effects that come from that, the game really does play very smoothly.
2.4. Play Time
In my case, I played for 37.7 hours. That is the time I spent finishing the story through to the end while repeatedly loading saves. The scenario continues step by step for each star system you stay in, and the time it took to give up at the 3rd star system on my first attempt and then finish while retrying equals that time.
Once the part about the game being harsh, from the Difficulty section earlier, was resolved, play felt a bit formulaic. It did feel somewhat stifling, and even with that slight stifling feeling, it was not irritating.
In the end, if you play while keeping those workers at a proper level, you can play with a real sense of immersion, and I think I built most of the elements there are to construct. The late-game story did feel like it ended in a rush, though.
On the default difficulty you can hold out even if you stay in a star system for quite a while, so I gathered as many of the resources I needed as I could while I played. Aside from the last 2 star systems, there were no urgent scenario limits, so I proceeded with a good deal of room to spare.
But because of that slight stifling feeling I mentioned earlier, I want to give a somewhat low score on addictiveness. For Immersion as well, as you play on, growth sometimes stalls or the resource supply gets tangled, and when stretches came up where I had to just watch, I felt some boredom and had a slightly negative experience.
The factors that lowered immersion above come from the player’s mistakes or ability, so they are not a problem with the game, but I should be honest, so I will leave it written this way.
3. ‘IXION’ Closing
I started in a very light mood, thinking I would relax a little because I like the construction and management genre, but in the end the early stretch and the closing were not relaxing. In the closing there is nothing you can counterattack with, so you have to keep up construction and management with the feeling of a tank getting beaten on, and I felt that had a negative influence both as an experience and as a feeling.
Because I did not know the early game, I got strung along by the developers several times. In the late game, once you know the intent you can finish easily and be done, but going back over the whole scenario to prepare for the scenarios still to come, now that I knew the intent, was too boring, so when I finished the story I wrapped the game up in a truly messy way and watched the ending.
Rather than a fullness of having grown and achieved something, I finished the game with the feeling that I had only just seen the scenario through, and I closed it in a somewhat heavy mood.
As the fun of a construction and management experience, it is fair to say this is a game that offers proper fun and the interest of creating problems to worry over and then solving them. Its story ending, as a story, is interesting and does have a positive side.
Even so, you get hit by several negative elements where, across various parts of the game, the player cannot respond, and after experiencing that you seem to come away with a somewhat ambiguous feeling at the close.
It is a game I can recommend to people who like the genre for its proper sense of challenge, but for people who are not used to this kind of genre I would say I hesitate a little to recommend it. Thank you.
I hope good fortune is with you on the road ahead. Thank you.