FTL: Advanced Edition

I know. A truly competent captain can command their way out of any situation. Most captains don't have to deal with their crew turning into a pillar of salt when they arrive to port. FTL is a slow paced plate juggling type of game where one or more of your plates may have lit dynamite placed onto it. • The ever advancing doom field in the form of the fleet. You can never rest, never fully explore, and often have to make a choice between bad & worse. Any time spent in this field pitches a high class cruiser to fight. • Random events that by choice or otherwise, can remove your veteran crew, disable a system, damage the hull, and more. There are no odds listed. • Just straight up be starved of whatever resource you need. Running a drone ship? Good chance they'll never show up in item pools. • The final encounter is playing on just slightly a different ruleset to ruin any strategy you were working with, unless you had specifically been preparing precisely for it. It also has several traps, gotchas, and "thought you were clever" moments. • Many of the ship unlocks require doing suboptimal things or are spiteful in how byzantine they are. In spite of all that, I know exactly why the game is popular, and how people are able to command around those issues. The game oozes atmosphere, has fascinating secrets, and is real-time with infinite pause. I understand what the game appeal is. Just that I'd rather be able to load the dice into my favor.

Something about this game still calls me back once a year. Cozy slippers Star Trek esque rogue-like that evolves into stress when you actually get to the end and can see the finish line on a good run.

Just gonna say this now. I am not a fan of Star Trek, I've never seen Firefly, and most 'future' games that take place in space annoy me. However, this game is a gem in the rough. A sadistic, angry beast of a gem. I love every moment of it. Despite the fact that you will die a LOT, something about this strategy rogue game keeps pulling me in. The many unique encounters, the selection of weapons and tactics to use, and the secrets littered in the game just makes it pure fun to explore. I'd find myself up until 4 in the morning playing this, and each time I'd die, I'd just tell myself 'this is the last time' before starting all over again. If you love strategy games where you are the underdog in a system where most everyone wants to kill you dead, this is the game for you. Seriously.

I loved the idea. I love that kind of games. But FTL itself it's too flat. And the game is too hard. Really, too hard! You simply don't play because your best weapons are your faith and your lucky. The combat system is quite OK but the fact that "you can switch between systems to survive" is not true at all. You have to mantain all of yours system to survive! No shields equals death. No oxygens means death. No weapons means death. One of your crew dead means... death! I lost a well-upgraded ship, on the last sector, due to a simply solar flare. That took me away three hours of gameplay.

Between the gameplay and the music, it's a great game. Have I ever been able to beat it? Nope, not even on easy :D