I bought this game because the reviews compared it to Freelancer, X and EVE Online. But I found this game to be nothing like any of those games.

So far I'm a couple of hours in and I'm at level 9 and until now all Missions seem to consist of:
1) Read a good book while waiting for the auto-pilot to get you to your mission-objective
2) Drop out of travel mode and put power on weapons and shield
3) Press the button that engages the auto-targeting
4) Fly in circles until all enemies are destroyed
5) Set course for the next mission

None of that is engaging, interesting or challenging. There are non-combat missions, like repair this, scan that, deliver something. But those are even less interesting!

Sure, all space games have the wait while the auto-polit gets you to the action part. But usually the combat requires skill, tactis or both. But pressing a single button to start firing is neither tactical nor does it require any skills.

I tried using the Bigger Punch mod from https://www.gog.com/forum/starpoint_gemini_2/using_mods_with_starpoint_gemini_2/post2 but it doesn't make the combat any more tactical or challenging. It only makes the combat shorter because all weapons hit harder.

I also tried handling the combat myself. But it seems that isn't how the game is intended to be played either. The lack of lead-icon means you only have a chance to hit anything with beam-weapons and even then skill or tactics don't seem to play any significant role.

I really tried to like this game, please tell me I missed something or that it becomes more interesting with bigger and better ships.

I am afraid you brought the game for the wrong reasons

This game is nothing like Freelancer, where dogfight are pretty much your bread as all ship you can command are "small" fighters, or posses any of the X series complexity of controlling a small empire, if you want

In this game you command larger ships, and later enormous ship, no dogfight here, and being able to combat manually work only if you use the following target camera, otherwise you can't shot target out of your vision manually nor you can manually aim to more then one target at once

Yes, i know, being unable to have a mix between manual/auto for multi-targeting is a significant missing feature for better immersion here

I simpler term this game is somewhat arcadish, with very limited complexity in managing a bigger ship basic handling and subsystems + special abilities, and eventually boarding for profit, here are some other gameplay pointers:

- Main Missions are meant to be taken sparingly, with some significant freeroam in the middle to upgrade your ship(s) subsystem and your skills/perks

- Fast travel exist in this game, either with some fixed gate in the map that cost money to use (there is a mod that remove the cost buying a license), the green vortexes around the map even if quite frustrating to use and more then a few people mod them out, or the t-drive but it cost credits to buy and rare drop when boarding enemy ships

- This game is not challenging for a veteran space player unless difficulty is ramped up to extreme, there you'll need to actually aim manually to completely focus fire on hero and elite ship and the AI literally is cheatingly buffed out so much that normal combat is not effective, aiming at subsystem of bigger ship can help at that difficulty but is difficult to do manually unfortunately

Tractor beam help too at that difficulty too as it can keep an enemy ship in the firing arc of your most effective weapons

Normal difficulty if only for casual players in this game

Cannot refute some other point you mentioned, like AI could be smarter and attack in formation, better aim/camera controls, aiming with plasma and railgun is tricky due to the prospective and lacking of aiming support for such weapons that similar games have doesn't help (a targeting reticule with the most probable enemy position when the bullet reach it based on the movement vector/handling of the target)

Having access to bigger ship make the game certainly more interesting, but if by the time you can buy a destroyer you haven't found the game mechanics interesting in how you manage your ship + abilities + items, then this is not the game for you

As a more generic rule, if you don't like a game like bridge commander:
[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Bridge_Commander]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Bridge_Commander[/url]

You will probably not like this game either

Thanks, at least now I know not to waste my time with the game in addition to the money I already spent.

Serves me right for only looking at the first page of Reviews I guess.

I'm sorry you were dissapointed with the game. We, as a dev team did not advertise the game as Freelancer, but many people on Steam and GoG compared those two games.

Since we have people with over 3000 hours of gameplay in our community, it seems majority likes it, but we understand that nobody can make the game that everyone will love. Even Freelancer, which was high budget AAA project had people that didn't like it. We mostly grew up with it though.

Anyway, if you can get a refund from GoG, please do. We are ok with that because we are not happy when our players are not happy. We are all gamers and we share the same love for space games as our players, but if it's not your "cup of tea", we understand.

All the best to you Ignus, I hope you'll be happy with your next purchase.

Well, GoG actually gave me a refund, so I'm a happy non-customer now ;)

Let me say this in closing: You seem to be very dedicated to your games and your community and if you ever develop a game with different mechanics I'll probably look into it.

Thank you Ignus. :)