I think this game is a solid 3/5, This falls into the bracket of arcade adventure which is what I was after personally but the gameplay loop itself dose become very repetitive very fast. The music selection is quite literally that of a tradtional GTA style radio select whic lets you pick many genres to suit your mood, that's probably the best vibe of the game. The actual flying around each map point is pretty meh at best, theres very little to explore on your own, you honestly spend most of your time flying in warp mode instantly warping from point to point and watching the same ship fly by animation. It's not the most immersive experience and its very fast which really adds to the repetitivness. On this point fundamentally the game lacks pace plain and simple. the combat is ok, it's reasonably fun and fast paced. I enjoyed the missle usage and the explosions but I honestly spent a lot of time not even really knowing what I was doing but somehow winning. the side activities are there, you can mine, buy low sell high, take transport jobs, take bounty hunter jobs you can even play pool in the bars for money which is fun. It all sounds great on paper but the problem is really the flying and how repetitive it is and how little time you actually spend doing that, again from point to point you're mostly warping, you get to a system with rocks to mine, fly a short distance to them lazer them really fast and scoop up the mats, then you're in your local map again looking for a new belt to go and then again watching the same warp animation. Thats pretty mucht he gameplay loop for everything. on a personal note, I don't find the main character intersting at all and the immersion breaks down further from not being able to chose to play as a dude. I reccomend to buy on sale because the game was offically abandoned, theres a fun game in there but it loses it's appeal pretty quick.
Played this for hours years ago on the actual disc. My cousin had a janky video of me with my face inches from my computer screen screaming "FIRE YESSS" and we both wish we still had it lol. If I remember right I was playing a Wizard/Druid slinging fireballs in the midgame on my way to a planned dragon form for endgame OC which I did hit and proceeded to trivilize the rest of the campaign. This isn't much of a review because this game just speaks for itself, of course now with its age you'll either love it or you won't and you won't dislike it for it's character but rather for it's very dated UI and game flow. There is however an absolute lifetime of user made content for this game which far surpasses the OC and has kept it alive for decades. This is the very definition of a 5 Start game in my opinion and I've ranked it as such.
