You know, I hate it when an otherwise great looking game has representatives that go out of their way for you to support all their pronouns, all their identities, and all their preferences. The main Discord is a festering bag of CP supporters and LGBTabcdefg nonsense. Focus on helping players, keep your nightly activities out of the discord and just help the players.
There must be some type of style to this game I am not familiar with, but I am super glad it has a demo so I knew enough not to buy the game. There IS NO LEARNING CURVE. You are given a stripped down battle ship and the entire universe against you. Every outcome is so blasted random there is no skill involved. But it's like putting a level 1 bard in a level 20 dungeon, telling him to flip a coin against every opponent that has a 80% of winning every 50/50. You are forced into impossible scenarios with no clue as to what is required to complete, no going back once you've made the choice. Your crack commando team is virtually useless and fails most missions and most ground missions you lose almost every squad member with NO INPUT from you. You just click a button and lose lose die die die lose. And after all you do win , you cant collect ANYTHING from your losses unless you press on, practically killing your whole squad and losing anyway. The graphics story is fine, but there is no player control in virtually any outcome, save the ship combat. I guess if you're into FTL fine, get the game, but anyone else, EVERYONE else, just steer clear of this game.
So I finished the game and let me start with the Cons. I do not like the lander's mobility on plants. Having played those bouncing racing games on my phone, I about broke my keyboard several times, in frustration, in how easily it is for my lander to flip and turn 180 at painfully critical times. Even with all the enhancements, it can feel like driving a spring loaded ball of flubber. The locking on to landing zones is very unnecessary as I have not found one planet with two landing zones. I'm fine with the re-entry window guidance, but that need to lock on to a landing site is a worthless requirement. I like having options to build the most powerful fleet ever, however this would come at the total expense of my main ship having much bite. I didn't like having to choose between my flag ship being very powerful or having a fleet of ships with a lot of bonuses. Yes, the main ship and fleet bonuses stack, with your main ship, but the stat's on the top right are painfully misleading and didn't give me any over all feel for how my battles would turn out. There is a similarity to Star Control 2's story line. Big looming evil, fractured races, you unite them to fight the bad at the end. But like watching Star Trek Deep Space nine and Babylon 5, you'll love them both for different reasons. Now for the Pros I never enjoyed alien dialog, this much, since Star Control 2. They really hit a home run in the conversations and the unique way races present themselves. Compared to the awful New Masters of Orion alien dialog that tosses in every human quip, SC:O does a fantastic job. The universe difficulty scales to how far out you go from Earth. This does help when trying to figure out how powerful you need to make your ship, as well as managing your resources. The game ends, but you can continue. So when you win the game is still playable. You'll almost never run out of ships. There are always ships on some planets. Overall, I think it was worth buying and playing.
I’ve played and enjoyed old Dos games. Starflight, Starship: A command adventure, Star Control, Masters of Orion 1 & 2 and this game shows me that when you take all the best elements of those games and use modern graphics and programming, you can make an outstanding game. This game does so many things right. Your tech level is proportioned well to the level of exploring and enemies you encounter. They make it so you never feel it's impossible to explore dangerous areas but also never feel like you quite out of danger, regardless of how high up the tech tree you’re in. My biggest frustration with some games had been when you reach a certain tech level, the game either favors a missile boat, a gun boat or a laser boat. This game makes it so as you increase the tech on any weapon type, they make them pretty much fun to use regardless of where you are on the map. The exploring part is superb. The music and simplistic view really make outer space seem VAST, with new discovers JUST within reach. It was the first time in a long time that the music had a kind of Battlestar Galactica vibe when I ran into the first cybernetic race. The music transitions are smooth and not off putting, placing awe and suspense in appropriate circumstances and intense battle music that builds up the tempo. This game takes nearly every science fiction trope and excels in revealing it in the game. It never disappoints. There are so many random events and circumstances that it will never make you feel like you’re being chains into a direction. It’s really a job well done. My only wish was for more cosmetic parts to be added to ship design to help allow making them look more like the famous sci-fi ships we hold near and dear to our hearts. But that’s really it. I'm getting close to the end and I'm looking forward to seeing what else will come from this team. Thank you, very much.
Can't wait to try it.
After rewriting this review for the 4th time, because of cursing at this game every line, let, me make something clear. No Q&A game developer played this game. No really. I remember playing Privateer 2 and being stuck in a system for 7 hours, killing enemies that kept spawning every time, and prevented me from leaving the system. This game takes that frustration and screws you 10x over. When you first start a game, you don't toss the fking universe at them. This game does that. Not in hard mode either, this is welcome to game then fks you for buying it. I've restarted 18 times and I cannot outrun, avoid, find an easier path, nothing. I end up flying into systems that jam me from jumping but Nothing in the tutorial even informs me that I need to either fly far away or destroy it. half the time it's a fking enemy corvette! YOU CAN hardly kill an enemy fighter in your starter ship and they pit me against a corvette at the very beginning? Then, when I ender another system where jumping is jammed, provided I'm not half dead, I got to fight off 3-4 fighters who all have expert aim, to do something with a jamming source, but I never make it. No explanations on any hazards until you already step into them and when you die, you end up in some Great Hanger in the sky, that doesnt exist and only pisses you off because you have to restart that map, only you lose everything but credits. The intro says you got to get somewhere, but if you take too much damage or run into one of several jump jamming areas, you cant progress past the 1st fking intro missions. Screw you Rockfish. Seriously.
Under a killing moon was the all-time favorite I played until I lost the cds. Then I found them again and replayed the game ! Tex Murphy has been and always will be my first thought of a Private Detective in a messed-up sci fi world. My only regret is not supporting this game when it was in development all those years ago.
Is the game size really just 343 mb in size or is that just the patch? It's a shame I can't play offline, but still the best one out of the three. The game progresses smoothly, the story is pretty good, and the game keeps a balance between the enemy and your tech level. This game was just fun, and I would dare say should have been an example to the makers of HW3. Sadly, they didn't learn from this success.
You are 100% of the time under the assault of an enemy that has no resource limit, no slowing down, and seems to exponentially increase its production of ships the more you destroy their ability to make them. Just pretend fighting the final battle of the original Homeworld, with no preparation time and a handful of fighters and virtually no resources. Each mission doesn't allow you to stay and search for more resources to build, there is no explanation to what and how the ships you make, actually attack so you're stuck making them just to see what they do. Each mission gives you no time to think or maneuver. The second when one objective is complete, a whole enemy fleet arrives in FORCE. Wash rinse repeat. On the 3rd mission, you are told to defend a space station and repair it, but as soon as you stop the small fleet attacking it, it auto heals then jumps you to the next part of that mission. You have no time to rebuild your forces. I made 7 squads of bombers that attacked on carrier and almost destroyed it on the 1st pass then just spiraled around one side of the carrier as half of them were blown away before finally deciding to turn around and attack again. When you destroy one of the 3 carriers making waves of bombers and fighters AND marine cruisers, the 2 remaining make ships FASTER. I know this because there was a map blinding red flow of enemies coming from the remaining carriers that my 5 laser cruiser and 2 flak groups couldn't even defend against, when they did just fine against 3 carriers. If all this game is going to be is a struggle and not an ounce of fun, then what's the point? The plot/story is freaking stupid. Is the entire galaxy out to lunch as the Vegyar rebuild their empire and systematically take over ALL your planets? Did the Higarians learn absolutely nothing from the last two games? This game is just not enjoyable to play.
