Starpoint Gemini 2

The game has an high potential. Graphically is very interesting, the universe is huge, super-packed of things to see and explore. Loads of factions, stations, anomalies, bounty to claims, etc. But... after a few hours playing, the game has given everything. I'm a few hours in the game and managed to a buy a 2m credit ship, and here starts the problem. Even if, on paper, the new ship is better than the basic one, it behaves so much worse in combat that I've gone back to the original ones. Combat itself is quite boring and shallow. Ship maneuvrability is quite sluggish and slow. Most of it ends in putting the aiming reticle on the target and hit (if with beams) or doing a little of lead if with plasma and rail gun. Adversaries are dangerous if are 3 or more, and of deadly or worse threat. Commerce is boring. Story... meh. Skill progression is not clear, to be honest. You spend points on skills, but they must be activated and are not clear what the benefits of some of those. The side missions are mostly the same: taxi or killing someone. That's it. If you get some factions enemies, they will chase you 100% of the time, pestering you and making the whole thing so boring that.... you just quit.

Starpoint Gemini 2 is very much a space sim enthusiast's space sim, and draws heavy inspiration from Freelancer. The graphics are amazing, and not at all what you'd expect from a small developer. The controls are relatively straightforward once you get used to them, and are sort of a cross between Freelancer and Eve Online. The game world has a lot of interesting variation, and exploration is worthwhile. There's a good range of ships, and the planets and stations are unique and interesting. The atmosphere is very pleasant and inviting; it's easy to lose many hours roaming around enjoying the experience. But the devil is in the details, and SPG2 is bedeviled by a large swarm of small issues. Some of the more notable: -The reputation system for intereacting with the much-vaunted sea of factions is just a one-dimensional karma-meter between "good guys" and "bad guys" which has a lot of consequences ranging from unfortunate to downright nonsensical. Consider the Empire-Directorate civil war: they're both bad-guy factions so killing one side will make the other hate you even more (?) and the only way to be on good terms is to be a majorly evil pirate--in which case both Empire and Directorate will like you equally. -Single-player campaign is a disaster. Very buggy and shallow--best stick to sandbox mode for a lot of reasons. -Level-scaling makes smaller ships irrelevant by midgame, and gameplay follows a "bigger is better" paradigm. -Ships and weapons look cool and different (and color-customizable, neat feature) but offer little variety in combat. In general, fights all play out about the same. -Little strategy, just pew-pew-pew. Fans of the genre will find this a fun outing, and I don't fault LGM for falling short of the mark--it's clearly a labor of love and there's time yet to make that last mile to greatness. But the limitations are unlikely to win over any new converts, and veterans will find some of them to be annoying if not a hindrance to immersion.

Let me start by saying that this game isn't bad and it does a good job at putting you at the command and management of a starship since while it's true that most of the time you'll be flying around playing quests and doing other stuff, but if you wanna get far you also have to manage other stuff like the ship tuning, from raw firepower and hull/shields to other things like the resistance from system hackings and enemy soldiers boardings, the best buy/sell prices and legality of tradeable goods,... However, the tutorials explaining the game are outright terrible (powerpoint style bland text only descriptions of the functions with pointers to a static image) and you should play at least the first part of the storymode to understand this game. The space environments are gorgeous and the graphics are stunning as well giving a good feel of an Aasimov style space opera. Sayd this, sadly the game does make a terrible job on keeping the player invested. The most glaring issue (and what killed it IMO) is the fact that is extremely grindy and unrewarding because everything is just Way too much expensive and doesen't matter how many quests you play, for as long as your income is as much inconsistent as your expenses, even just buying a consumable like a set of scavenger drones can severely hamper your expenses and savings for better stuff. This also doesen't help if you consider the game seems to belive that a player with higher level has better equipments when it's not the case at all because of the problem just mentioned. Also keep in mind that this is a "space" game so expect it to be repetitive (the missions you can actually play are always the same 3: go pick up thing X and bring to another place, Kill Y target/s, Scan/repair Z thing). In conclusion, Starpoint Gemini is not a bad, i can't say that is worth the stock price (which for what it really offers is not at all), and this isn't a game anyone can just pickup and play, but check it out if you find it on sale.

The title says it all. The game is certainly playable but it's not really finished yet with many placeholders and hack jobs holding the game together... suprisingly ending up with a pretty decent product that can only get better. So what is this game about anyway? Well imagine freelancer with a strong emphasis on playing capital ships. Sounds awesome but the games unfinished placeholder filled nature gets more obvious the longer you play. Factions - The faction system while chock full of factions runs on a simple reputation meter. It works by simply dividing the numerous factions into 2 relatively homogenous camps consisting of good and bad guys. No individual reputations for any group so if you made the (evil) empire like you you will also be liked by just about every criminal group (with some exeptions who are alays enemies) in the galaxy. Even those you never met! Combat - The AI is as dumb as a brick. I can forgive the fact that destroyers cruisers and battleships of all kinds follow a simple tactic consisting of "get close and unload on the sucker" However the same thing applies to.... well every ship. even carriers. Carriers that don't even launch their strike craft! Also as a side effect any wing that's not a bomber is nearly useless since you will never run into enemy strike craft fighters and interceptors are supposed to tackle. Economy - Simply put there are ships flying around but it's not the living economy you seen in X. Instead we get stations that restock instantly once you leave the area... and no actual economy to speak of really. It's a simple system where place X always sells a certain comodity low and planet Y buys it high and no matter what you do neither of them will run out or get overstocked. Why? Well the stocks reset once you turn your back and leave the area! That's why. I'm giving it 4 stars but mostly because the game is still in development and most likely fix some of the things i mentioned... or at least the more glaring ones.

I've played this game for about 40 hours, and so far it has been very enjoyable. Like others have said, it is quite similar to Freelancer, which coincidentally is my favorite game of all time. So I'm sorry if I seem a bit biased. I was leaning towards giving it 3 stars, but decided that was too harsh. The Gemini system isn't particularly big in my opinion, but there are tons of things to do, such as completing missions, hunting down wanted pirates, mining, collecting gas, boarding ships, exploring and of course the campaign. However, my biggest gripes with the game so far; AI and faction diversity. The AI seems quite poor, as it simply flies in a straight line towards you, with weapons firing. Once you're close enough, they do start to turn and maneuver. Most of the time, enemies will try to escape just before dying. They simply do not have any tactics besides "fly towards and shoot enemy". Now, in Freelancer, factions and their members had way more defining features. Factions used certain types of ships, weapons, patrol routes and even maneuvers. In Starpoint Gemini 2, factions do seem to use certain ships, but I have not seen any special behavior regarding weapons or maneuvers. Good: - Many ships and weapons - Classes and Perks are decently implemented - Great graphics - Boarding - Sound effects and music - Ship enhancements and customization - Modding - Responsive and helpful dev team Bad: - No multiplayer - Poor AI - Factions have almost no defining features at all - Instability issues (I've crashed about 4 times so far and also encountered some bugs)