Guns of Icarus Online is a unique idea in gaming. It's based on steampunk fiction in which an alternate reality developed air ship (blimp) technology with which captains wage war using varied gun turrets. The artistic style is spot-on and exactly what I expected from a steampunk game. It also seems rather high quality, especially for a Kickstarter company. Overall, it seems to be very well made. I went into the learning phase of gameplay with high hopes of liking it. Unfortunately, I eventually left out of frustration.
So, what are the negatives for this game? Well, nearly everything about it tends to be a bit complicated to deal with. This isn't a typical multiplayer shooter where you just jump in and start shooting down enemies. First, the captain chooses which ship the team will use and which weapons it will have. If the crew does not like the choices or the captain's flying, then they'll just have to complain about it. In addition, players have no control over which crew are on the ship if entering the match without friends. If someone just stands around the whole match (which is detrimental to a crew of only four), then everyone is forced to simply complain to that player and endure the losses. Fortunately, the social aspects of the game help to fix these problems by making it easier to find friends in clans and to join matches with them by forming parties before entering.
As for the technical side of the game, the captain's job just might be the worst. He decides how the ship will maneuver and is forced to find his way through seemingly endless fog and treacherous terrain that sticks up from the ground like swords, threatening to take out the hull of the ship in little time. Assuming that the maneuvers are successful, the captain must also keep up with the team mate ship and try to out maneuver the enemy ships. Likewise, the crew does not have life easy, either. They must both operate the guns of the ship and continuously repair the parts of the ship as they break in order to keep it flying. When in a heavy fight, it is common to see very little gun shots going to the enemy due to the entire crew spending their time repairing. In addition, the challenge of building a successful ship design is rather complicated due to the hard choice of which weapons should be used. Each weapon has its drawbacks and advantages. The devs seem to have balanced the abilities of the weapons with each other. However, each weapon was apparently designed to be quite powerful at its main specialty while failing to do much else. This puts the focus of the gameplay entirely on strategy. A good example is the Hwacha. It launches many rockets in a short amount of time at long range. The problem is that they are completely inaccurate and the gun takes a long time to reload. The devs gave the gun a good purpose, though. At medium range, it does damage to most of the targeted ship. When two Hwachas are used with burst ammo added, they can disable most of the ship, forcing the crew to all devote themselves to repairing everything. By the time the ship is ready to either defend or escape, the double Hwachas are ready to fire again. This leads to an endless cycle of repairing the ship until the Hwachas are able to finally do enough damage to destroy it. This sort of frustration-enducing gameplay is throughout all of GoIO, just like the fact that the terrain and fog severely get in the captain's way constantly. Throughout my time in GoIO, I tried many varieties of guns and ships, each time convinced that I would be able to dominate, only to be gravely disappointed at my lack of ability to compete. I did not realize that my opponents had learned the game's endless intricacies which were not explained to me in any sort of manual or tutorial. This game is a prime example of the problems that arise when games focus entirely on strategy, creating a huge learning curve to simply survive in multiplayer gameplay.
Overall, Guns of Icarus Online needs refinement and working out the problems with the game. It's not like a typical online shooter where the player just jumps in and starts having fun... and that's a serious problem. The game was obviously designed for very serious competition between people who like to think their way through it. That's genuinely quite admirable, but sometimes I just want to play a game for simple fun and nothing else. I've found that GoIO doesn't provide that for me.