Hi, Rose here again. Not here to write an essay again but wanna address a lot of the changes made for the new update and provide some input again.
TLDR: Across the board improvements and absolutely positive update. More characters still needed: but would recommend 100%
The game in its previous state had an obvious lack of polish that bared its fangs to new players. This new update is the equivalent of taking a small gem and turning it from a dirty rock into a diamond. The biggest gripes that were a thing with the previous game have all been addressed in one form or another and we've been granted even more content for each character than before.
Quality of Life:
There is genuinely so many small improvements that make this game so much more enjoyable it's insane. The muting the music in game and being able to exit mid-run are two things that prominently stood out to me upon replaying. The frustration I previously felt melted away upon realizing that I wouldn't have to dedicate the next 10 minutes to doing a run or losing all my progress.
Clicking to buy/upgrade things is a MASSIVE improvement. What once took valuable seconds typing things out has been turned into an optimized click (which can be amplified using the multiplier) which genuinely saves so much frustration from accidentally mistyping an enhancement/plugin. This also plays into my previous criticism of wishing you could copy/paste things better. Instead of spamming Cntrl V, you can now just click instead. One of my favorite changes.
Smaller additions such as statistics and autobuy are minor things that weren't needed, but I definitely appreciated (especially autobuy). I would like to comment on the font being shown to the player at the beginning of the game, but I had already installed the font from my first playthrough. Either way, it's a good thing that the player is made aware of this issue, even if they still should not be the one to do their own bug fixing.
One minor gripe is that you can no longer skip the cutscene for the main menu. Its a small thing, but got EXTREMELY annoying considering you're constantly going back and forth between the screens to find cipher keys. If you take one take away from this review, just make that intro skippable LOL
Plugins:
Random Word went from being a fundamentally broken unlock to a massively rewarding test of skill towards those who wanted to do more than just spam hack market and trojan horse. It's quickly become my favorite plugin as it rewards skill and no longer punishes you for being good. The addition of "reroll" also is a massive improvement, because for words or sequences that I wasn't proficient at typing at could be avoided.
EMP seems like it's been given a gut punch of a nerf, which I think is good. It made the timer useless and turned the game into a slog of spamming hack market. It's still overpowered with Overclock, but no where near as much anymore.
I know the patch notes said that Hack Market + Overclock effectiveness actually increased with these changes but I disagree. The inability to have Hack Market decrease in price with Overclock makes it to where you have no way to reliably decrease the price of Hack Market without waiting a long time, which is bad in a game with a time limit to complete the objective. I ended up waiting until the last minute to buy Hack Market because it felt like I would have to buy everything when the price was at 100, since I couldn't use Overclock to get it any lower past that. This is one of the few balance changes I disagree with.
I see in the patch notes that Mainframe and Auto Hack were changed, but I didn't bother using them for longer than a couple seconds. I tested them out to see if they worked but just simply did not care to spend more time testing them in comparison to the other unlocks. You told me that some people had used Mainframe to beat the game in response to my previous review, but I genuinely do not know how anyone did that and don't wanna experiment for another 20 minutes in failed attempts trying to find out LOL
Also I like the increase to the base cost of Overclock.
Added Content:
All that was needed for a gallery was a simple slideshow that showed off the different phases for the girls. And yet, we got that AND more. Along with a creative overlay to access the photos of each girl, we got an entirely new sequence for each girl with four great photos, and little comments from Sombra to comment on their gains that also double as a form of worldbuilding. I loved reading these little comments and they made me realize that some more depth to these characters with dialogue would be a fantastic addition to this game. A couple things I can immediately think of are dialogues that the characters can cycle through while you play the game.
The code section is an entirely new screen added to the game and it's obvious it's pretty bare bones. It takes you to a small screen with a text window you can type in, but admittedly that's all you need. It's still not a functioning save feature, but this is a clever way to get around that problem. Typing the names of each girl to unlock them and typing gallery to unlock all the girls' photos is a bit tedious admittedly but it functions. I also don't know what the binary code for typing the names of the future girls means (maybe a release date?) but cool little Easter egg to drop that in there!
The most confusing and interesting part added this update were the cipher keys. I originally planned to find all 10 keys and then upload this review so I can give my thoughts on that content, but after 25 minutes of searching I couldn't find any more. Whether this is because I'm simply blind or was misguided in my assumptions of where to look, I don't care. All I do know is that the small piece of information we were given wasn't enough for me to find the rest, and considering the other comments I've seen: no one else has found them either. Genuinely interested when someone will post a completed cipher and guide on how to find them.
Conclusion:
Overall massive improvements. Genuinely felt like a new game replaying it after the changes. I hate bringing up the price again because everyone is entitled to pricing their work to what they feel is best, but it still feels like it isn't 10 bucks yet. In comparison to the previous update, though, the price definitely has gone from around 3 bucks easily up to around that 5-7 dollar range. After the addition of the other three girls, though, I feel it will absolutely be worthy of that price. Shame that I couldn't figure out the cipher keys, but every gripe I had about the game previously has been addressed in one form or another. Good shit, Metrack. Like, genuinely great game development here. This isn't something I say often but the strides taken to improve this game show your clear commitment to wanting to make this as good as possible. I'm not just sold on this project, but I'm sold on your future ones, too. Can't wait for more and much love!