A title based entirely around the idea of a rouge AI trying to break free from the system it is part of, and hijacking ships—slowly upgrading them—and fighting for its freedom sounds like a great idea. That game playing as a top down shooter with replayable levels for easy grinding sounds like an instant fit. So then how did this game so entirely wrong.
The first thing worth mentioning is that this title came out on the Xbox One, and this version is a ported version for a newer system. It also isn’t that visually impressive or doing anything that should be that complicated. These facts in consideration, why is it that the game randomly chugs—at seemingly random points in the game, but always at those exact points. It is nice that this issue is repeatable, so the player knows to expect it, but there is really no reason for it to be happening.
Addressing the repeatable process of things, the game allows the player to repeat levels to grind up currency to buy upgrades to the ship. When the phrase “allows” the player to play the levels again, that should probably be taken as “forces”, as the grind is extremely real and on entering a new level the player stands almost no chance against the enemies there, and must go back to the last cleared level and play through it, many times, to simply become stronger to stand a chance.
This is where the idea of leveling up the ship itself becomes an issue, because most SHUMPS have everything balanced for expected loadouts of a handful of ships, max. When the player is allowed to spend hours grinding for the next upgrade, there are objectively worse upgrades that others—and even more that don’t do anything close to what the would in a normal title (until upgraded much more). This basically means that to have this title play like a normal title in this genre, loads of time is required to get to the starting point of most titles.
It is possible to play through the game without being damaged, and it is possible to fight the bosses with the weakest gun and slowly whittle away its health until victory, but many things are possible that shouldn’t or won’t be done. Most of the levels will one shot players the moment they enter a stage, or if they don’t the guns aren’t powerful enough to do anything. This forces a restart of the level. Getting back into the level takes much, much longer than it should. This is basically directly asking the player to simply put the title down and do anything else.
I, AI is a clever title. It could have been a great game. It is not, by any right. What is released is a title that feels like it was artificially lengthened and never had the difficulty balanced in any meaningful way. What is left is janky pile of ideas that don’t ever seem to go anywhere, and takes entirely too long to get started or find anything resembling movement. The only thing it does pretty quickly is fail. It does that extremely well.