Interesting game with cool mechanics, crafting and stuff.. kindof like Don't Starve but that middle mouse 3d camera laggy randomly accelerated view and turning is a really game breaking problem.. fix that and i will edit my review to positive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckP3hV5F-zY

Day 1 Review ~ 4h of gameplay

tldr;

While in need of some polish, a well concerted effort from a small, indie dev who are clearly trying to shoot for the moon.

The long review:

Where the game falls short: audio.

Mechs don't sound heavy. Not enough thunks, and booms. The rest of the audio is a bit more than atmospheric, and while not terrible, doesn't add much either.

Where the game succeeds: Core mechanic.

A fun crafting system that doesn't feel like work. A nice balance of action and exploration where mechs are a tool and not a means for unending material grind.

Combat system could use a little work in terms of creating "impact" which you hit an enemy... but this also isn't a fighting game. It plays a lot more like an isometric ARPG, which isn't a bad thing.

Finally, the dev team is EXTREMELY responsive on the forums. They are currently answering every single question and concern that pops up, which shows a lot of promise for future development. I have confidence that Whalebox will continue to shape this game into a well polished gem.

All in all, it's hard not to recommend this title, despite its flaws. It has so much ambition and heart, I can forgive its first day fuzzies. If you like the concept of this game at all, I'd say it's worth showing your support.

Goliath is a fantastic RPG that focuses on building and customizing your own Goliaths for combat whilst you navigate a world you find yourself crash landed on.

Story
In Goliath you’ll find yourself playing a young pilot who crashes on a mysterious island. With limited survival gear and a radio to contact your now lost co-pilot you’ll get to explore the lands meeting new factions, enemies and most importantly you’ll get to craft some of the awesome Goliaths in the game. With limited information fed to you from your co-pilot you’ll need to find out where you are and just how to get back home

General Gameplay
At first Goliath seems pretty similar to many survival games as you’ll quickly find yourself gathering some wood and other resources around you to survive your first night in this strange land. But you’ll very soon find yourself embroiled in much deeper affairs. Once completing a few quick starter quests you’ll find yourself ready with your own base which you can upgrade and most likely enough materials to craft your first Goliath. Goliaths are essentially large robots you can control directly as though they are a suit of armour, or order to follow you around as slaves/pets. Goliaths are big and very strong and will be the only protection you have in this world, but fear not, there are many types of Goliaths and each has it’s own perks. Though you only start with one Goliath you can craft, as you continue on you’ll be able to learn how to make new types, often stronger in some form than the last. Goliaths can also be upgraded and equipped with one of the many weapons you’re able to craft at your base and each can have both a ranged and melee weapon at the same time. Not only do Goliaths have different ability types they also react differently with your environment which can turn the tide of battle in your favour if you utilize this properly. For example stone Goliaths are faster in hot environments whereas wooden ones can heal in water.
There are main quests for you to follow as well as some side quests but mostly the story is linear and it’s not easy to get lost or fall off your chosen path which is appreciated because many RPGs have far too much filler now just to bulk the gameplay hours. Most of the quests you receive will be from the various factions you encounter BUT you may only do quests for factions you are on good terms with so you may want to think twice about who you attack and who you befriend.

Graphics and Audio
The graphics are nice and run smoothly most of the time but sometimes I feel like there is a little hiccup/stutter when i’m moving on occasion. The soundtrack that plays in the background is very awesome and adds a little something extra, especially to combat as it seems to fit the mood perfectly. Something about smashing mobs in with my giant fists just feels better with great background music.

Cons
Though I am loving Goliath I do have to mention some of the things that bother me, the first being a lack of explanation. Maybe I missed something but I’m learning everything from the tips when I teleport without finding too much information anywhere else. Things like how to have your Goliaths follow you and where to find the objectives for upgrading your Goliaths should be clearly explained to you as I don’t tend to pay attention to the loading screens. There are also things you are told to find and not given any indication at all of where to find them or even what they look like. This is freaking annoying on your first timed quest and just had me running around like a maniac killing everything. Another small issue is objects floating off of the ground slightly and enemy mobs getting caught in them but this is a superficial one and didn’t really affect my gameplay, it was just very noticeable. Lastly I find things can be a tad ‘grindy’ because some of the enemies are just so damn hard to kill that I find myself needing to level first. I don’t see any difficulty settings either so it seems it's grind or nothing.

Summary
Overall Goliath is a fantastic light RPG with a story i’m enjoying and many hours of gameplay. The addition of a great story and chuckleworthy dialogue makes for a brilliant combination and is well worth the price tag. For those of you on the fence, check out some YouTube gameplay videos, I don’t think the store page does this game justice at all.

Developer Bob: Man, I loved those Avengers movies!
Developer Fred: I know, right? Hey... you know what? I bet we could make a killer game loosely based on 'em!
Developer Bob: Oooh ooh I GOT IT! Let's take all the superheroes in the Avengers.... and smush them INTO ONE!!
Developer Fred: Heck yeah! We could build the game around a stealthy, sharpshooting supergenius with a cloaking device and cybernetic arm who crashes a plane in the early 20th century and in order to survive has to build himself super-robot armors that turn him into a hulking, giant-monster-fighting badass!
Future-Goliath-Players Everywhere: *unintelligible squeals of nerdish delight*

Goliath is an action-RPG and crafting hybrid where you play as a heroic inventor from a retro-steampunk world who has just crashed his plane into a mysterious chain of islands. Unfortunately, your new 'home' already hosts a variety of menacing mythical monsters and robotic nightmares. Your trusty pistol and cloaking device make you more than a match for the smaller specimens, but this strange new world is also populated by plenty of hostile critters who happen to be quite a bit larger than you. The obvious solution to this: Build giant super-robot Goliath suits of your own in order to beat any massive monstrosities senseless!

The gameplay is a fun mix of traditional isometric action-RPG fighting along with the ever-popular collect-'n'-craft. The main point of crafting in Goliath is to combine a wide array of a natural ingredients into 'Goliath' robot-suits. These Goliaths are made from a variety of materials (wood, stone, etc) that each have their own strengths and weaknesses, and can be further customized with additional weapons and new skills as you level. You are free to explore the world on foot with your pistol and cloaking device in order to find new items and materials without stomping through every tree/monster in sight, but wielding Goliaths is naturally the more entertaining aspect of the game. After all, who doesn't like to run around as a super-giant-robot and break things as they please?

Mechanically, the visuals of the game are well done, with the cartoony world fitting extremely well with the fun, comic-book type gameplay. The audio is nothing special, but nice enough in terms of background noise. You do have the option to use a gamepad to control everything, which is certainly a plus. However. you should be wary going in that there is a bit of unexplained learning curve as you figure out how to progress, both in the story and crafting your goliaths, but this is nothing a trip to the forum can't solve.

All in all, Goliath is is a spectacular fun-filled romp through a world of giant monsters that I highly recommend trying out. With the current glut of crafting-focused early-access 'games' that offer very little story or point beyond exploring the world and building enough stuff to survive, I find it invigorating to play a crafting game that actually plays *like a game*. Goliath succeeds in large part because it uses its giant-robot crafting system purely as an enhancement rather than a crutch. With a fun story, nifty Godzilla-monster-battling gameplay, and the ability to make and control a variety of awesome giant robots, Goliath is a game with game!

Received a free copy for testing/reviewing purposes. This review is part of the Steamified Community Review program. For similar reviews and fantastic giveaways please visit http://www.steamified.com/

Not really that impressed. It feels like it could have the impact of something like like a more complex Bastion type game, but it just falls through. The graphics seem well stylized, but the music and animations are very lack luster. Many of the actions in the game don't seem to really have feel of being a big robot. Also the dialog interace is just so boring and feels tacked on. The K+M controls feel clunky with the locked camera angle. The default keybinds are also unconfigurable and feel akward. Having to spam E and then other times hold E are totally inconsistent.

The game has potential, but it feels much more like an Early Access game. I would wait until we see if the developer puts in the required polish to make this better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSm5kkxjVd4&feature=youtu.be
.Story.
You are Andrew Gromov. You and your pilot crash-landed and the smouldering remains of your ship are around you. You’re both uninjured, but separated, and your copilot is able to communicate with you via radio. You’re immediately tasked with setting up camp and, during your tutorial fetch quest, you find out that you’re in a strange world unlike any other—or, rather, a collection of worlds that you can teleport across via the teleportation device in what soon becomes your base of operations. Your task? Find out why you’re here and what’s going on.

*The story is, at best, an excuse to keep pressing on, but that didn't bother me. I don't typically look for deep, in-depth plots in my survival games.

.Gameplay.
Goliath can be played with mouse and keyboard (WASD plus hotkeys) or controller. I personally prefer using a controller if only because using the middle mouse button to turn the camera is uncomfortable for me. More on that later. You’ll gather materials, a task made easier if you're piloting a Goliath, and build structures within a protective field generated by your teleporter. This is home base. Home base teleports when you do, so you'll always have it to fall back to. In your home base, you'll be able to craft--both consumables, equipment for your Goliaths, and Goliaths--as well as store your equipment and spare suits.

You can play as either Gromov or one of three Goliaths he can keep with him. Gromov has the ability to go invisible and also has a gun with which he can protect himself, but he is ultimately made useless by his Goliath unless you're attempting to sneak somewhere. Your Goliaths can also be commanded to stand guard at a location or to follow behind you.

Outside of home base, you'll be exploring a decently sized map and engaging in battle with various, giant wildlife. Combat is not random and you can see the enemies as they wander the map.
*If you die--and you will--you're instantly returned back to your base camp. You lose some of what's in your inventory, but you can go back to where you died and ransack your own grave in order to reclaim what was lost. You'll also have to spend resources in order to rebuild your broken Goliath.

Otherwise, much of your time in Goliath will be spent teleporting from world-to-world in order to complete the main story.

.Atmosphere.
I’m going to lump graphics and soundtrack together here because they work very well together. From the title screen, you’re greeted by a rock instrumental with Western influences and a fantastic battle scene.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=698380741
Seriously. It’s awesome.

The rest of the game has been lovingly cell-shaded. The biomes, whether hot and arid, cold and snowy, or verdant and teeming with life, were all well-detailed and the way the environments tied into the way your Goliath functions was a nice touch. See my gameplay for an example of the biomes.

.Pros and Cons.

• Crafting. I love being able to make giant robots out of some logs and a few twigs. And weapons for those giant robots out of refined sap and cobwebs. As unrealistic a survival scenario, the crafting creates, it’s fun and easy and the U.I is clean cut (albiet small).
  
• Material tiers for your Goliaths. No tier has a clear advantage over another--it just depends on what you want to achieve. For example the Wood Goliath is quick and it can dodge out of the way whereas the Stone Goliath is slower, but it can block.
  
• Mutations for your Goliaths. You can complete the challenges listed at all times in your character screen under the "challenges" tab,and unlock mutations--known as "spare parts"--for your Goliaths. These spare parts change stats (like HP), how the Goliath interacts with the weather (regeneration in hot places), and appearance. Most challenges are kill related, but they also limit you to a certain type of Goliath, area, or type of equipment.
  
• Auto saves. This is a questionable pro, but I liked being able to back out of the game at any time. The autosave is actually pretty smart and loading a game will show you not only the most recent save, but also five other saves that were made before it, each a few minutes apart. This gives you the option to go back before a fatal mistake--but not too far.
  
• You can switch Goliath's mid-combat for some interesting results.
  
  
• Combat is sometimes overly difficult, so the game becomes grindy quickly. Enemies on or around your level will still take a good while to kill and will often times kill you first.
  
• No zones. There’s no gradient for levels—i.e, the area closest to your teleporting base camp isn’t full of low-level beasts and the areas further away from it full of high-level beasts. Rather, it’s a mixture of either and I oftentimes found myself exploring the map only to get one-shot by an enemy that was much stronger than me.
  
• Camera angle. This is a minor complaint, but the slightly angled camera (it’s not directly overhead) makes it difficult to see where you’re going or what you’re hitting in combat. This only becomes a real issue when you’re using the mouse and keyboard because it feels a little
  awkward pressing down the middle mouse button while using the left mouse button to attack.
  
• Keys are not re-bindable. At least not in-game. This goes with the camera angle complaint.
  -The range on E (your interaction key) is huge. Sometimes Gromov will start harvesting a tree halfway across the screen instead of picking up what's right in front of him.
  
• Upon starting up the game, the initial load time is a little lengthy.

.Bottom line.
Goliath strays from the typical survival formula by including the ability to craft and pilot giant robots. It looks great, plays well, and will keep you entertained for a good while.

There are several tiers of upgrades for your Goliath, skills to unlock as your pilot levels up, buildings to upgrade in your base, and quests to undertake. The landscapes are varied and interesting, though limited in size. Exploration allows you find resources and chests filled with loot, but also runs the risk of running into a monster that’s bigger and badder than your Goliath.

If you’re looking for a survival game with some light RPG elements and you’re not afraid of a bit of grind, Goliath is well worth the price of admission.

Goliath is one of those games it’s hard to compartmentalize, it’s a survival game while also being and RPG and brawler too. There’s no shame in this, many great game straddle the genres making something new and goliath want desperately to be the next. You are placed in the role of a 1930’s fighter pilot landed on a strange world, who must make behemoth type mechanical automations to survive the hostile indigenous creatures that inhabit this strange environment. Pretty cool idea but things are never that clear cut.
The story is the first place things start to fall apart, you know who you are kind of and you are taught about the world by a voice on your radio claiming to be you co-pilot. I’m not going to give away spoilers but things get odd very quickly. As you start to discover the world around you things get stranger more still, with fox like creatures and rat like creatures becoming friendly towards you depending on the choices you make, it’s a great idea but through the entirety of it all the game explains very little and this makes it hard to invest in the world. Your character just gains the ability to make these technological marvels that are goliaths, he just knows how to use teleporters and fix them with no explanation why. The cardinal sin though is that the game offers you conversational options but you’re never sure if you’re moving the story the way you want. This might seem odd but your character is such a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ that it’s sometimes hard to tell if the choice you make is the good or bad one. He really is a bit of a prick that way, for a hero this isn’t a good thing.
But hey what does story mater when you can drive giant robots around and that’s true, apart from they really aren’t as giant as your lead to believe. The reality is your character is a little shorter than most of the creatures you encounter and your goliath is a little taller, it’s almost like you strapped on body armour and a pair of stilts. Not exactly the “Shadow of Colossus” idea the Goliath title might suggest. There’s just no feeling of power about them and they take damage so easily, it’s more glass cannon than raging hulk.
The mechanics also take a big hit too with the keyboard and mouse being virtually unusable and it only being when you use a controller that the game really works. For a PC game to make such a bad job of the K&M controls is shameful it’s just a mess. Even when you switch to a controller there are still issue, attacking and moving around become far more natural, but the game lacks the ability to move the camera lower than its almost top down view giving you no peripheral vision what so ever. This combined with overly complex to navigate menus and an overly difficult upgrade system make it a turn off.
Difficulty is an issue to, as the game doesn’t so much ramp as you tend to just avoid creature for the most part as you will lose. That’s really it, you avoid and the AI is dumb enough to let you. It again comes back to the fact you never get a sense of power with a goliath, it’s more a case of extending your health bar long enough to reach the next goal.
Oh those goals too! Go here, go there, go everywhere and achieve very little with very little in the way of plot development. You could spend your life going back and forward in this game just talking to the next person before they tell you to talk to someone else. Occasionally they will chuck in something to defeat before you can talk to someone and then you’re back to it again and god it’s tiresome.
If there is one area though it’s the visuals, the style is something a kin to if you crossed the looney toons with anime and strangely it works stunningly. But still even cranked up to max settings it doesn’t look as good as the screen shots and trailers do, not far off but noticeable all the same. It’s a good looker all the same but with the art style not really pushing my system I wonder why it couldn’t have looked as good as they show it could, why the down grade?
I suspect it’s to do with the engines performance, I think this because even though my GPU doesn’t break a sweat and my CPU even less so the game still stutters and lags horrendously. There’s no real reason for this I can see as there is plenty of power left in my system for it to use, it just doesn’t. On top of this the loading times are some of the longest I’ve come across in ages and while I’m not running it off an SSD it really shouldn’t take as long as it does. Thankfully after the initial load things speed up a little, but I honestly believe the reason we don’t get peripheral vision and micro stutters is all related to the engine having major issues they have tried to hide.
When I asked for this game I asked because I looked great and I really wanted to play it, it really caught my eye and imagination. But now after spending some time with it and experiencing its gameplay or lack thereof I just feel a little cheated. For an indie game it’s not cheap and just because it carries the indie title doesn’t mean it should be treated any less harsh than the games of equal price.
Goliath is a game I want to recommend but it makes it impossible with it being subpar in almost all areas.

Edit: Only a day after I posted this a lot of the issues have already been fixed. Music no longer stops suddenly and polish on just general mechanics have already gone out

The game as a whole isn't bad. I'm enjoying the different types of Goliaths and they feel different to fit different situations. You won't be simply abandoning one goliath just because the next one unlocks.

The game, however, still needs a lot of polish. The music abruptly stops when combat ends, and some interactions are very picky and simply won't work unless you shuffle around trying to adjust where you stand, despite the prompt showing up. I've also just simply died with no way of really knowing what just happened. (I literally blew up when picking up my stuff from a previous death, no reason for it at all, just... boom. Done. The only thing I can think of is the mines in my pocket activated when they dropped.)

I would still recommend the game because you're looking at a pretty fun, and rather extensive, game for the price. The release of the game still needs work and bugs are all over the place, but if you can overlook it, or if it's updated and fixed, it's fun to play, action rewards reflexes and adjusting to your surroundings, and the elements play well in this game.

TL;DR: Goliath is a buggy, ambitious release that is great fun, and looks to improve quickly.

The biggest strike against Goliath is that it has a lot of bugs in this first week after release. The developers have freely acknowledged the problems, respond to bug reports as they're made, and have already released some fixes / small feature requests three days after release. Folks who want a thoroughly tested game should wait a month or so to skip the teething pains.

In spite of the problems, I'm still recommending Goliath for those who are less bothered by bugs, or who appreciate responsive developers. The music, art, and character styles are well developed, making me feel like I'm in an steampunk / Old West movie with attitude as soon as I launch it. The game looks like it will be huge (especially if you're an exploring type): lots of worlds/areas each with their own loot layout, multiple special attacks for each elemental robot (and specialized subtypes of those robots, too), several NPC factions, and even a dungeon sprinkled here and there. And if you like gathering until your bags burst and crafting specialized gear, you'll find everything you need.

They're not kidding about "punching monsters in the face", either. Though really, you throw boulders, do whirlwind and charge attacks, freeze or set the monsters alight, and just cause general mayhem, leveling trees and rocks as you pass. The monsters remind me a bit of of Torchlight and early Diablo: I get swarmed by fast-moving spiders, or knocked to the ground by bulls, damaged by acid or fire breath, or chased by little creatures with shaman masks throwing darts. And my robots smash them all!

Goliath:
~~~~~~

Ooh… Aah… What happened? Where am I? Yes, I remember. A malfunction with the engine and I had to do an emergency landing. Well, seeing the extended damage the plane has suffered, I’d say its more or less a crash! Gromov… Gromov… can you hear me? Incredible, the radio still works! Hello, Gromov here…

Goliath is an action/role playing game where you take control of Gromov, who crash landed his World War 2 plane on a mysterious planet. At the start of the game, you will have to do simple tasks: cutting trees, picking berries and setting up a camp. This is basically a tutorial and it will show you how to use both your inventory and the crafting menu to a certain aspect. After, hearing from your co-pilot which is stuck on the other side of the world, you will be shown the way to a teleporting device which stands in the middle of a specific circle (your new base). From here, you will be able to construct a laboratory, weapons and a Goliath construction. At your tent, you will be able to craft plenty of objects, but you must have the correct items to do so. I might add, you can store a good number of items in your inventory, which is great.

The world itself is very interesting; it is a kind of forest with ruins of 1930 buildings here and there, futuristic fragments of spaceships, very large creatures to fight or to avoid if you do not have the right Goliath under your belt, and factions that each want to dominated this strange world. As you go along, you will meet with different characters and will be given quests to do and teleporting Gromov to different areas of the planets. What I like about the world is that each part that I have seen so far has different weather elements, deserts, snow, forests with specific plants to harvest and with different creature too. As you achieve your task, you will be given experience points. Depending on which level you have reached, you will be able to access special abilities in your Goliaths.

At first, you will only be able to construct a wooden goliath, and if you have built a weapons construction table, you might be able to craft weapons for it. Then you will be able to construct stone, metal and other types of Goliaths. Each Goliath has three combat abilities, but you must reach a certain level of experience to enable each of them. To give you an example, for the wooden Goliath the first ability is available as soon as your reach level 4 of experience, then you must pass level 6 and 17 to unlock the other two. You might be able to beat a Dodo by itself quite easily but a bunch of Dodo’s are always hard to get rid of. There are a lot more creatures to fight but I will let you discover them. If you have more than one Goliath constructed, you control one and can order the other to follow you into battle or to guard an area.

The combat mechanism is simple and easy to use, whether you use the mouse and keyboard or the gamepad. One thing you must collect at all costs is the gems. Every time you teleport from one part of the world to another, it will cost you a certain number of gems.

I really like the artwork and the controls work pretty well. One thing I noticed is that each time I load a game, the animations are not fluid for a while but then it seems to rectify itself.

Positives:
~~~~~~~

- Good artwork
- Plenty of quests to do
- Good crafting mechanism
- Interesting world
- Achievements and Trading cards

Negatives:
~~~~~~~~

- A bit buggy at times

I really enjoyed Goliath; it is a good RPG, and tell me, who would not love to build big strong robots?

8/10

Key provided by developer/publisher for review purposes. Any opinions expressed are entirely my own!

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