Overall, its a pretty good turn based stealth game blending a sci-fi/cyberpunk atmosthere with a spy theme. There's no brute forcing your way through this game- it forces you to think, and you will fail. The bad news is that youu don't have the option of restore points- the devs want you to do another playthrough. The good news is that you have a limited number of do-overs withing the mission, which allows you to recover from some mistakes if you catch them early enough. The overall game, and all missions, are severely time-limited. As a player that likes to explore the world (and characters) you've created I don't love this. I also felt that the game was too short; about the time I started to find my footing the game was over, and the ending itself left a bad taste in my mouth. That said, I do think the game was very well done and I would reccomend it to any fans of tactical or stealth games.
Not quite Sim City in space, and not quite Homeworld either. Certainly worth a play through if you've got the time- it was not a quick game, though to be fair I did linger far longer in each location than the game wanted me to. I could nitpick about the science and engineering- you have to research how to melt ice, when you turn your engines on your ships lights turn off, and your one litle ship can strip an entire solar system of its resources in about a year. Not terribly realistic, but from a gameplay standpoint the decisions make sense- after all of you set up shop in Sol you'll miss the carefully crafted plot. There are, however, a few things that took away from the game: - Science ships: Its not always clear whether options are mutually exclusive or what the level or risk is. Also, most of the time 'leave and come back later' ought to be an option... but it ususally isn't. Once you start an encounter, your ship is comitted. Taken together this means inadvertently miss a lot of the optional plot, you ships will be stuck for days in an encounter you don't care about, and you'll lose your research teams in frustrating ways. - Research and construction: There are some hidden dependencies which can cause you waste a lot of time building things you can't actually use. It seems like you 'personal AI' could at least warn you about that sort of thing. - Performance: Those little stickyard transporters brought my (admittedly underpowered) laptop to its knees, and theres no way to turn them off. Which is odd, because the game gives you lots of settings dials to turn. All that aside, I enjoyed it, and I would reccomend it to anyone who likes Homeworld and/or wants something resembling a Battlestar Galactica city builder.
