I can't even call this a game. It's more like what an amateur game developer would smush up to get the creative juices going while developing a real game. And it's not even fun considering that.
(I own this game on Steam) People say this game has improved and is now worth playing. I wouldn't be so sure. I pre-ordered this when it was announced, and it has been a constant source of regret ever since. For example, it took them years to improve the framerate to tolerable levels. Many of the bugs they never fixed, even though everyone seems to give them a pass after 4.0. Most recently I installed this right before X4 launched, hyped up by the thought of playing some X game again. In the first mission I took, the enemy I was supposed to kill got stuck inside an asteroid base, then the game crashed. After a restart and a short while of playing, a police decided to shoot me for "carrying illegal substances" - without a warning of any kind. I am lead to believe there was supposed to be a warning, but I guess the game was bugged. After that, the game crashed in loading screen. The times of gameplay between getting shot without warning and crashing were mostly a confusing experience of fighting the HORRIBLE ui. If you like the X-series, skip this one. Even if you manage to get into it for a couple of hours of "relatively fun" experience, it's not going to let you fly any other ship than the Albion Skunk. And while the ship itself is a decently fun design, it's a pale comparison to any real X game. However, if you just want some more in-depth space simulator that is supposedly slightly easier to approach than other X games, then this might be for you.
Earthlock is a game I'd very much want to love. It has so much potential, but suffers from a weird case of mismatched priorities. The graphics are excellent, stylistic and immersively charming, but the world behind them feels somehow very empty. The music is on par with some of the best tracks from some of the best Final Fantasy games - it's memorable and so full of feeling - but on other hand, the game lacks any voice acting. The same trend continues with the combat system, which is innovative and interesting on paper, but punishes the player in practice. For example, instead of just gaining plain stats and skills, each character has an empty board, which only contains a few different kinds of slots for cards. And it is up to the player to fill the board with the kinds of cards he wants. The cards can give either usable skills, passive abilities or plain stats. Theoretically this is nice, but in practice I just ended minmaxing all my characters. In addition to this skill board each character has two different fighting stances, which fulfill a different purpose. The different stances can be for ranged combat, melee combat, healing, buffing or magical damage, just to give a few examples. But instead of encouraging stance-swapping, the game punishes the player for it with a wasted turn. And the short durations of buffs and heals just make it worse. In the beginning, when potions were scarce, I just kept my healer in healing stance and never used the other stance. Now, later in the game, I don't even need a healer, because I have endless potions. The story of the game is lackluster at best, and the characters are very plain. They lack any real personality. The most interesting ones to me were Gnart, the hogbunny, and PAT the robot, but incidentally those two are also probably the worst designed for combat. It's weird that they had such a rich backstory and world to show us, but we only get to scratch it through the eyes of these dumboes.
