FTL: Advanced Edition

I realy want to love this game ... but I cant. I like the Idea. I like the gameplay. There are realy nice strategy elements like cloaking, drones vs. missels, opening airlocks to put fires out. I even like that this game is hard. That you will die. A singel game is quite short. Thats perhaps not bad. But there are also very limited amount of events. When I stoped playing this games it was due to the reason I did not encounter a new event since 3 or 4 games. And I just unlocked the third ship. Another point is: New events are bad. Because if you make wrong decissions you have moste likley no time even out. You are constantly thinking ... "Should I restart? Didn't I loose to much scrap?". You know when you have a setup that will work or not. Finding things out is only in the begining of the game or a new ship. Additionaly you could end up with setups you just dont like and cant avoid. I personaly hate beaming to other ships. When they beam to me its more than enough. Perhaps you are intrested in a drone setup? Then you need to be lucky to get the schematics. Even when you win you start asking your self ... Where I just lucky? They say its a roguelike game ... I like e.g. Nethack. Its quite easy to die in nethack. But you always learn something new. This does not happen in FTL. You just die. Or - more likely - you decide to restart the round. In nethack you have the time to make up for mistakes. But a single game in FTL is just to short. If you havent already a good setup its better to start over. - Not enough content. - too much randmoness - limited choice of playing style - a singel game is too short I realy cant understand the very good ratings here. For sure its a very great fun when you start. But realy soon I noticed ... "err playing 2 hours to see 2 new encounters? no I dont think so..." I played total 8 hours. Thats perhaps not bad for $5.99 ... But it leaves me very unsatisfied.

FTL is one of my all time favorite games. I've been gaming for over 3 decades. It's simple in concept but complex in execution. It can be brutally hard, but it's by no means impossible. There are people out there who can beat it on hard difficulty, and even a person on YouTube who plays it without pausing. Like any roguelike, it's got an element of randomness to it. Not only are the scenarios you encounter random, but the weapons you'll have available in shops are random. But in my opinion this makes it more fun, because every single run is different. It has an easy mode, but what consistently happens to me on easy mode is that I make it to the flagship, and the flagship kills me. That's because everything before the flagship on easy doesn't really prepare you for it. So I recommend playing it on normal. It makes the outcome less predictable. You'll probably die in the first sector to start with, fume about how unfair the game is, and maybe think you hate it. But if you stick with it, learn the game, maybe watch some videos online, you'll eventually get better. And after about 50 hours of being beat with a whip, you'll feel the satisfaction of destroying the flagship. You'll only have 27 more ships to go. Beating all 28 ships could take you a thousand hours. Which is what's amazing about this game. It's the simplest game I've ever played that has massive replay value. Warning: Addictive.

FTL features short real-time combat encounters with a pause button, interspersed with resource management, all served up with a charming sci-fi theme. Each play-through takes about two to two and a half hours, but auto-save means that you can leave and come back any time you feel like it. It is so addictive that it could almost be a negative but in theory you can play for as little as five minutes since that is roughly how long each encounter with the enemy takes. Being a well balanced game there are a multitude of possible winning strategies and you will quickly find one you like. However, the characteristics of each new ship acquired will force you out of your comfort zone. The game is hard, and yes, even unfair at times, but it is a testament to its quality that I often hit 'Restart' before I have finished cursing. Good music, good writing, good design and its bug-free as far as I can tell. Considering how many hours people sink into this little game it represents extremely good value for money.

While the game is charming and might be a nice experience, there is too much luck involved. You need to be lucky to finish the game, even at the lowest difficulty. You don't find a decent weapon in the first sistems. Game over. You get boarded by 5 mantises and have only 3 crew members. Game over. You get attacked by a ship that has a super powerful missile weapon and didn't find defense droid, and the game decides your dodge rate of 45% is just an opinion. Game over. You somehow get to the last boss without getting any decent gear. Don't even try that. Just go play slot machines at this point.

Great game. The devs have mentioned that FTL was inspired by the space roguelike, Weird Worlds, and the cooperative board game, Red November. Totally makes sense. (Btw, if you haven't played them DEFINITELY check out Weird Worlds and Red November--the latter about a crew of drunken gnomes trying to keep their gnomish submarine together--ha!). Anyway, for $10 you can't go wrong here.