Posted on: March 24, 2022
fahbs
Games: 354 Reviews: 90
Starflight's stumbling adolescent phase
Planet's Edge is like an awkward evolutionary mid phase for the space exploration genre, starting with Starflight and ending with Star Control 2's perfection. If Starflight was a fish swimming comfortably within its aquatic limitations, and SC2 a mammal running around on land, Planet's Edge would be the lungfish flopping around in a mud puddle. The game tries to be more actiony and fast paced than Starflight's methodical combat, but the tech and programming just wasn't ready for it. It all plays very clunky and janky. The biggest standout from the other games is the landing party portion. Rather than a lander vehicle to suck with minerals and lifeforms, your crew beams down as an away party. The game then turns into a mini-RPG sequence as you solve that location's story objective. This is by far the weakest part of the game and takes up half of it. It's reminiscent of Mindcraft's Tegel's Mercenaries and just as janky. It's extremely hard to figure out what to do because you're not sure if you're on the wrong track, or the right track being blocked by the clunky interface. Like SC2, you gather minerals to build ship (and landing party) upgrades. There is no central currency though. You must have the right mineral types for each build and you are often bottlenecked by not having the right ones. Ship upgrades are made more frustrating by the extreme slow pace you get better blueprints, hence you will spend most of space exploration running away from enemies that hugely outclass you. Overall it's really hard to recommend this over the Starflight games or Star Control 2. Each of those does what it tries to accomplish better. It was clunky 30 years ago and would only play worse now. I would only try it AFTER SF & SC2 and you're still curious where else the genre went.
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