FTL: Advanced Edition

This is a game with a ton of fun mechanics, but also a bunch of terrible ones (or at least very poorly balanced). It has a lot of potential, and it's a real shame not to see it more fully realised, but it's worth playing anyway, if only to see if you can beat it before you can't help but give up in frustration instead. It has two elements that ultimately conflict; namely a scarcity of resources that has you moments away from going adrift or being unable to repair hull damage, but combines this with a high degree of randomisation that means that winning the game is all about beating the odds, rather than any actual player skill. If stores stocked a few items with more consistency (like the cloning lab and recovery arm) then things wouldn't be so bad, but as it stands the randomisation serves to make the game very, very frustrating, even on normal difficulty!

This game is really good however what brings it down for me is the pace. You see in reality this game is just about moving your ship from the left side of the map to the right side. You have to do it kinda of fast as the creeping black shadow is chasing you. This game could of been so much more fun if you could take your time to go more systems to trade and upgrade your ship for the coming battles. What you have here is more like, OK, whats my best route to the level exit point. This in turn makes the play feel rushed and the enemy only gets harder and harder. In the end it feels like this is more of a game of how long you can survive. I do know its Rogue-like and that's kinda the point of these games. However because its a fun and cool system I just wish its was more fleshed out and lasted longer. 2 1/2 stars

I saw this on GOG and it looked interesting, and the reviews gave it good marks. So I gave it a try. I was not that impressed. The music / sound fx are very simple. Not a lot to it. The Game Play: Repetitive in a random manner. Your goal is to get from one side of the (bigger) map to the other. There are smaller maps which comprise portions of the larger map. You are being chased by the villians of the game. So you can't spend too much time on the smaller map. You need to keep moving and get to the end of one map to start the beginning of the next map. Along the way for each smaller map, there are some random encounters and some encounters which you can visit or avoid. Your choice. Rinse and Repeat. There are a few aspects of the game, which are ok.. Nothing special. Overall, IMHO, I was not impressed. When I saw the base price for $10, I didn't think it was worth it. When the price dropped to $2.50, I thought I would give it a shot... I would have rather waited until it was $1.50 or less. To me, there are better options for space based games.

The game itself is nice in general, however its just to much rng. Basicly its pure luck if you get enought stuff to reach sector 8 even on easy. If you end up there you need to fight a big ship 3 times and the 3rd time it launches serveral attacks at once that you cant evade much. I i did play for 15 times now, reach last sector 6 times and did not beat the last stage due that attack. Some ships seem to be pretty useless because they will run out of ammo and you cant get or afford different weapons to prevent that. Really its more frustrating then fun, even on easy. Glad i did only pay a very small amount of money for this game.

This is one of those games that think making it unfairly difficult makes it a great game. It is addictive and has great mechanics, but it has some huge flaws as well. The RNG nature in particular is very flawed, that it makes the game almost unplayable. Even on "easy" the game is ridiculous, giving extremely stingy amount of resources, barely enough to scramble by. Enemies also come with missiles 90% of the time, which makes the few resources you have go to waste repairing your ship. You really need to overpower your enemies to go through their shields so you can rarely make good defenses and offenses. Random events will kill your crew out of nowhere, and crew members are extremely important and extremely expensive to replace, much less fill up the ship. Pointless complaints since its such an old game, but this trend of stupidly hard game = "good game" needs to stop.