When I first started playing Alienation I was not a fan of it because as I called it, it appeared to be a grind-fest and honestly, that is exactly what it is. However, with the right people in your ears with multiplayer this can be a great way to catch up with friends for some fun and the game isn't really that technical. In many ways it is like Diablo with a bunch more destructible environments.
While I am certain that i will end up feeling the same way about Alienation in the end that I did about any Diablo game I devoted any time to. After months of grinding you are going to look at your progress and say "who gives a shit?" and move on to something that isn't just the same dungeon running over and over again. In many ways Alienation is worse than Diablo because almost all of the levels have exactly the same layout every single time. The only thing that changes is the placement of optional bosses and the amount of "incoming Hordes" that you are going to encounter.
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Completing a level is rewarding and all, but like most people that have played this for more than 8 hours or so, you are probably going to end up playing several of certain levels over and over again that you have become most familiar with. The first levels you encounter in Alaska are considered by many to the be "easiest" because of the layout and this is likely why those levels are almost always kind of packed with the few people in the world that still play this game.
The greatest reward or level of excitement that you are going to feel is when you see an orange item drop because this means that said weapon is a legendary, and as you would expect they are the best items in the game.
I have gotten my hands on many legendaries in the time that I have been playing but I only recently (last night) made it to the max level of 30 so any legendaries that I find from this point forward are going to have the max base stats possible in the game. The only difference will be how many slots the legendary has, and also the perk that it has that comes along with it.
The above image is something I had been waiting for for a long time since the Xenorifle is the primary weapon for the class that I prefer. This was the first legendary of that type that I got and I was delighted when I saw that it was a 9-slot weapon as well. Honestly, they might all be at least that many slots, I have no idea. I do know that the maximum level of slots that are available in the game is 12, and I have never even seen one of those.
Look how much of a difference it makes when you slot the weapon up compared to its base stats.
I tend to focus on damage and clip size (red and yellow, respectively) because the rifle fires fast enough on the base stats and if you make it fire any faster than that you just end up needing to reload more frequently. It might create the illusion of a higher DPS but at least with my play style, that doesn't end up being the case because I miss so frequently since my primary purpose in using this weapon is for "crowd control" rather than direct damage. If I need to do a shit ton of damage on a single target I will switch to my rocket launcher or my revolver.
I actually can make this weapon even stronger as soon as I get higher level slots or energy cores but at the time the 4's and a 2 was the best I had available. I will also eventually swap out those blues (fire rate) cores with either damage or clip size cores because as I mentioned before I don't actually want the weapon to fire faster than it already does and can only use that in very limited situations.
The only thing I don't like about the legendary is the fact that its perk, which I believe is not changeable, is that anytime I take damage it drops a grenade at my own feet. You don't know to know much about the game to realize that this can actually be very detrimental to yourself since if you don't get the hell out of there once the grenade drops, you may actually suicide yourself.
I'm not going to complain though because my previous Xenorifle was 1/10 the overall power of this one, and it makes cutting down groups of enemies a breeze. I just need to be light on my feet if I take damage because that shit is actually kind of annoying.
Next up I am hoping to get some sort of legendary shotgun or launcher. I have gotten my hands on a legendary flamethrower once, but I ended up just scrapping that for 2 reasons: One, I don't care for the range or efficacy of that weapon type in general, and it was also level 25 and this means it will be outmoded by any rare or better level 30 weapon of the same type.
Play on!
Alienation is currently free for anyone with a PS-Plus account and it is at least worth a look especially if you have friends to play with.