Starpoint Gemini 2

This game is very addictive and extremely fun. I purchased this after getting my feet wet by playing Rebel Galaxy (also an excellent game). I wanted something deeper, more serious, and bigger than Rebel Galaxy, and that is exactly what I got. Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps as you make your way up from a lowly gunship to eventually command a massive super-carrier never seems to get old. To make things easier, here is my bullet-point review: Pros: Good graphics Excellent and varied ship-models Large universe to explore Character leveling well implemented Feels like you are really commanding a capital ship Lots of little details without ever feeling overwhelming Fairly well-thought out and realistic universe and back-story Cons (I would dock a half a star for these if it was an option) Occasional glitches, some of which require a restart of the game (though nothing that ruined a save) Mediocre to terrible voice acting Terrible dialogue (It occasionally sounds as if it is written by a non-native English speaker without the benefit of a grammar-check) All in all, I have greatly enjoyed this game, and can't wait for any subsequent sequels.

2.5 Stars Pro's Decent graphics Lots of ships to choose from Lots of weapons Tactical overlay gives needed combat info reminiscent of certain MMO hud mods. ... Con's UI. It looks like it was designed for an MMO. Overall the UI elements are oversized for the information or utility to provide. The context menu is the most used UI and it's accessible via a hotkey rather than be part of visible UI. Some outdated help/tooltips that refer to defunct buttons/options. Unintuitive weapon loadout screen (weapon icons look like turrets but aren't turrets). Crashing. It's not that frequent (and ymmy) but it's very frustrating at times when you've been towing a captured ship or haven't visited a station in a while. Speaking of towing. On their forums the devs defend the slow nature of towing as a consequence of easy ship capture. To which I say - Make it more difficult to capture. Don't penalize me with a very tedious mechanic because of balance issues. Balance issues. The game is altogether too easy on normal. Sure I could play at a higher difficulty. But it's seriously a cake walk as soon as you start upgrading to larger ships. Largely because it's so easy to make money capturing ships... ahem. Combat. Easy mode (at least on normal). Set turrets to auto and try to keep up with the looting in the mid game. Missed opportunity to make ship capture both difficult and interesting - tactical boarding combat w/the ability to outfit your troops. Looting itself is a chore. There is a loot all option but it quickly fills your hold with worthless stuff. There is also a manual loot in the context menu but you have to do so for each loot "pile". Would prefer to have a loot all option that allows you to select what you want to keep of the loot in range. Mining/Trading/Economy. Overshadowed by capturing/scavenging and are really underdeveloped aspects of the game. i.e. Mining = shooting asteroids. Overall I didn't find it all that fun or challenging and didn't finish it.

I bought thisd game trying to re enact my vintage Freelancer experience. I was deeply mistaken. This game is ... simple, too simple to be honest without any appeal. I am not going to say I hate it or that you have to avoid it like the plague. It is simply NOT freelancer or a true Space Sim trader either, it is more like a 90s space game made by a small company with some interesting concepts but that is all, Get it on sale and waste a couple hours on it if you are bored, that is all.

Starpoint Gemini 2 checks all the boxes in what most look for in space games. Lots of missions with a truly open, huge world galaxy. fight, trade, haul, taxi, science, repair, hired assasin, capture, and keep other ships, Decent story mode or play open world. either way you choose; you can do what ever you want and jump in and out of the story as you go. Checks all the emportant boxes in making an increadable gaming experiance.

It's a big sandbox in which you fly your starship around a solar system, take generic contracts (kill pirate x, transport cargo y, protect objective z), , trade, kill things, gain reputation, upgrade your skills and weapons and finally get to a more powerful ship. Rinse, repeat. On the pro side it has great graphics, the next thing to grind towards is always within reach and doesn't take ages, and the handling works really well once you get used to it. So if you fancy flying around in a battleship blowing things up and enjoying the scenery, this is a great game for you. For me, its greatest flaw is one that is shared with many similar games : I never feel like commanding a cruiser or dreadnought, I always fly a larger, more clunky fighter craft with me as the pilot. With the size of ships you get to buy or board, there should be hundreds and hundreds of crew aboard, and all you can do about them is hire generic marines and fill three bridge officer slots with pictures and affixed bonuses. There's no interior and you never interact with anybody aboard your ship, it could just as well be just you and your onboard A.I. Navigating around with Mouse and WASD keys sure makes things nice and easy but adds to that feeling. Also if you're looking for any kind of meaningful story, you won't find it here. There is a main plot, but that's even less deep than the ones in Elder Scrolls games, without the many little subquest storylines which make those great. So if you want to "roleplay" games and immerse into a setting, even if it's not an RPG, then this sadly is not the game for you.