A single player Space Career game developed primarily by one man who also composed the ambient music. He offers a fair few modding tools as part of the package and the player may add custom station adverts as she wishes along with many other tweaks if she wishes. The standout feature here is "life support"; forget it at your peril as each planetary system has ecological restraints -so your ships must have suitable life support -otherwise your exploration radius is going to be very limited in 'toxic' sectors. The player will be able to build her own Player Owned Structure to enable outposts in which to increase this life support 'reach'. With a decent economy (inspired by Ascaron's Port Royale series) the developer has come very close to the EvE-Offline's vibe. And for that, I salute him.
It's Paradox's latest fatigued "Grand Strategy" with much more DLC promised to make your final $300 purchase seem like it was. eventually, money well spent. Slitherine's Fields of Glory Empires is expensive as well. But it innovates where this follows a cliched and tiresome path. It offers variety (especially with the randomised building strategy and refreshing trade system) where this thing is exhausted well beyond its own bed-time, now so bog-standard a routine we have come to expect. Every single darned time. To be somewhat fair, at least they got Rhodos' Rose banner correct. *slowclap*
Paradox charges how much for this elderly title? It's beyond satire nowdays how much they overcharge the consumer. Corporate greed in their case, cares neither for pandemics nor economic upheavals as long as it makes them profit. Disgusting but not unexpected that their catalogue of tired map painters cost so much, so long after their release.
Morrowind captured a genuinely alien world to explore from the get-go off the Prisoner's transport; no standard earthlike fauna and flora so familiar from the wildly popular Skyrim: a Siltstrider's musical howl offered an eerie starter to what followed in its 100+ hour story. Nowadays it's easy to consider Bethesda in light of the possibly/probably dreadful and shallow Fallout76 which so easily fooled a generation of thin plastic helmet wearing and cheap canvas bag wearing adult gamers. But in the noughties, with Morrowind and its two expacs, they left all competition floundering behind them with the story of the Nerevarine whom, reminiscent of the Matrix's Neo, had a prophesied job to do confronting a changed world of shifting allgiances, crime syndicates and temperamental Deities. The combat was absurd. The text-based narrative oddly jarring -- but that musical score, the incredible endessly inventive world design (e.g. Ald Ruhn) and the sheer volume of loot to find made this the seminal RPG experience of its day. 10 internet hindsight stars.
Port Royale III and its DLCs Harbourmaster et al, was yet another iteration where the streamlining was far too noticeable and off-putting for veterans of the original Port Royale. Aascaron has been gone for a long time now, and in retrospect made, in my opinion, the best trader's game ever -- Patrician III, despite its comparitively drab locale and low-fi visuals, the micromanagement struck a fine -near perfect- balance between trading and citybuilding. Port Royale the first was not unlike P3, a more sober experience than its direct successor -less Sid Meier's Pirates minigames and more of what made you love P3 so much for (did I say P3 was a deep game? There's a 200+ page PDF of tips out there even now from the old German Patrizier forums which belied its true depth). Yes, the minigames here... can I say cheapened? what was a very micro-intense experience in PR1 towards an arcade experience. There were still benefits in terms of customisation unlike the modern titles -- you can choose your own bitmapped flag to display on your sloops, ships-of-the-line and galleons -- no bright blue sails here (own ships bright blue, competitors' bright red looked terribly amateur in PR3 as it does in Rise of Venice, an almost identical grind). Otherwise similar to PR1, then. If the minigames are too anoying, PR1 still runs on Windows 7 from GoG. Possibly the best PR of them all, many years after its release.
It's Port Royale 2 but far less of the annoying minigames to contend with. My GoG copy runs excellently on Windows 7 and 10 in 2020. Relaxing and laid-back, its perfect for the poorly world we live in at present, but with a real micromanagement depth not unlike Patrician III, also from the late lamented Ascaron studio. If you can get it to run on your machine, its still a fantastic title from yesteryear that'll entertain for hundreds of hours. You can choose to play in different start years -earlier means the Spanish towns dominate the map, but later the English and Dutch run rampant as France is pushed towards the U.S. coast. Piracy is always an option in these games, so yarr etc. Recommended in 2020.
Followed up by a laughably dumbed down sequel (+ DLC) this game was eventually shorn of its hairy bugs and made good back in the day. In my opinion the best paradox game released if you grab Podcat's .exe and install over Finest Hour (actually worthwhile as a feature-rich expac). The best feature was, as most players appreciated, was the excellent Chain of Command. Outstandingly good. Beware of the usual volume of cosmetic DLC though: at most zoom levels you won't need any extra nazi tanks or extra extra nazi stukas. There's a good flagmod pack out there which has better representations of Nation's flags of the day and some extra (Azerbaijan Armenia, Israel, Jordan etc etc). I dislike paradox intensely for their poor business practices but this title at least is well worth your time and money.
This game is a simulator of everyday London in the far-flung future of 2019, after the surprie election of Commisar Comrade Corbyn left 'woke but broke' London barely functioning. So, very different to today. All joking aside, this title proves that creativity and nous but tiny amounts of money can stand longside much more well-financed and resourced projects. Atmosphere is top-drawer and actually worth your money espeially on sale, since its an older title nowadays.
Has come on leaps and bounds since early access. It's almost a new game but at its core it's as it ever was in AI War Classic with about 4 expansions now we are able to purchase the first DLC for this, the sequel. I thought AIWC a masterpiece, frankly. The interface was just right despite the volume of info to digest -- pressing F1 cycled through a catalogue of all shiptypes in-game; a wonderful QoL touch. A slew of wide-ranging options kept tweakers like me well-occupied. The AI was reactive progressively smartarse AI that could thump you at a default "7" difficulty setting and murder you at "9". Happy days. So it's roughly the same again here, but... The oversized UI and fonts look dreadful on an 1080p display. Its as if you were timewarping back to those heady days of gaming at 640x480 resolution -- if you want to play in a window, again it looks awful with the perception of a 72 point font writ large at first second and fortieth glance on your screen. As for the audio ... as others have noted the AI taunts are wretchedly incomprehensible-- the voiceover actor has a very particular, acute, regional dialect that makes you reach for the audio off setting -- and quickly. No offence intended but it sounds very amateur. Also Arcen found fit to stereotype national idioms in their "unit feedback". This too sounds comically dreadful. The music is hard to love as well, but tastes of course will vary. So, in summation, you may decide the prequel did it all so much better and tastefully better at that.
