Space Rangers HD: A War Apart

My review is based on the STEAM version. Sorry GOG. you were late :( For those who just dropped in: Space Rangers - A War Apart is a HD version of Space Rangers 2 and it's expansion. Featuring some new music, systems, quests, gear, etc, and tweaked gamedynamics. Is it any good? The gameplay is still basically the same: The known world is under attack by the "Dominators" (self producing robots with exceptional AI), and your task is to... Well, Your main quest is to wipe the out of existence, but since you start out, with an extremely weak ship and a very inexperienced pilot, first you have to roam the endless space, checking out planets, where they can give you quests, for that, you earn money and experience, also reputation, so VERY SLOWLY you can build your character up to the task. What makes Space rangers fascinating is the dynamically changing, living and breathing universe. EVERYTHING is observed and remembered by the program. Not just your actions, but also that of the miriads of other AI pilots, doing basically the same things as you. Tech changes, prices rise and fall, it's pretty bedazzling. Also there are a lot of totally different types of games put into the main one, representing the different quests (TBS, RTS, Text based adventure, Arcade Shooter, Economy sim, trading sim, rpg. So why just four stars? Instead of a sequel, this is a remake. Keep that in mind. They DID tried to expand the world and the possibilities, however it also feels like unneccesary options are littered through the whole game . The economy also took a blow, As I literally was drowning in cash after awhile. This doesn't really happen in SR2 I reckon. Maybe because I got delivery jobs through almost the ENTIRE GAMEPLAY. Something is very wrong with the random generator, or maybe the only expanded the world, and forgot to make more substance to it. Also the game is pretty buggy and prones to crash. Still, I imagine, if you're new to Space Rangers, you might like it better.

Before you start this game, click the Mods button on the bottom left of the starting screen. There is a mod called SR2PQuestStyle that fixes the text-based quests, activate it. Otherwise some quests like Olympics will be unplayable. Tech support was unaware of this issue when I asked. The beefier system requirements are for the 3d RTS planet missions which you can opt out of. Game is good but not for everyone. Watch clips of the turn-based gameplay online to see if you'll like it.

The good side: universe not only feels well presented, it actually feels alive. Different persons do different, logical, well played things simultaneously: cargo ships transport cargo, diplomats visit other races' planets, pirates are trying to rob or extort anyone in range, police tries to respond, dominatots are conquering, military is pushing them back etc. It feels genuinely alive when interacting with you and I find it the best part of the game. Progression is enjoyable, character development is good, quests are nice and usually funny, equipping and upgrading your ship is a pleasure and the pace is good too, although a bit time dependant. Good sense of humor, decent mini games (a bit dated though) and very nice arcade'y black holes encounters add to the enjoyment of play. Lots of starting options not only allows you a lot of customization, but also helps replaying the game once in a while and get a bit different experience. On the bad side: planetary battles are weak and boring, but you can turn it off completely, which is great. The game is not really replayable, starting again will give you pretty much the same experience, just with a little bit of different flavor. The thing that really holds you back in this game is not your skill, not enemies and not even cash: it's time; when you don't have access to good weapons and systems you can't really hold your own and when the time comes and shops have good equipment, you're skyrocketing but it really isn't your merit either. The finale is also pretty weak, although you can at least approach each dominator in a different way. Overall, I give it a solid 7/10: it's really fun when it lasts, just don't expect high replayability here.

If you already have or played Space Rangers 2 game, you won't find here any new features really worthy of mention. Even the planet screens are the same, only redrawn for widescreensand high resolutions. Most of changes are cosmetic. Gameplay changes are contoversial and adding some imbalance. New soundtrack sucks. Stability is wanting. Price is inadequate. ONLY for newcomers in series, just to inspire them to play original Space Rangers 2.

Space Rangers HD is an updated version of Space Rangers 2 that includes a new faction of organized pirates, and better support for High Definition resolutions (you can easily enough get HD mods for Space Rangers 1 & 2, but this update also provides bigger font size options for easier reading at those resolutions (Government and text quests, but not all fonts are increased in size)). It is pretty much a mashup of genres, but for me at it's heart it is all about undertaking tasks (Text-based quests, Real-time Strategy battles, Ferrying special cargo, assassination missions, Trade or planetary surface exploration) to make money and upgrade your ship equipment or ship itself to become a powerful force in the galaxy to take on the powerful threat of the Dominators and pirate faction. The challenge in my opinion is much more significant than 2, due to the additional weapons the pirate faction make use of; so taking on both the Pirate and Dominator factions at the same time will make life difficult. Some people prefer Space Rangers 2 over HD, but I feel that Space Rangers HD is the better version and is in fact the only game in the series that I have actually finished (By defeating both the Dominators and pirates). I'm a big fan of the 2.5D animations of the ships and equipment and its nice to see the new ones done at the same high quality level as in Space Rangers 2. On top of that there are new variants of older weapons and the 2.5D models are updated to show these changes and often animate them. I think I'm just a big fan of the animations in this game. I also very much love the UI (and the built-in search functionality).