I played this game back in the 80's but was too young to really understand how to interact with a game this complex. I tried everything, but wasn't able to succeed. This game was incredibly ambitious and having just finished it, am amazed at what Omnitrend was able to accomplish with this release. The game is deep and extremely well-balanced, with a game economy that requires careful planning to survive and, eventually, thrive. This is a grind, but a rewarding one. The game plays out over multiple years of in-game time, during which you have to grind out a living as a free-trader to support your undercover assignment. You have a lot of flexibility to pursue profit through trading, mining or piracy and each one is challenging, but achievable. The story rolls out slowly with missions and updates being delivered by your in-game communication system. These story beats were well paced and fun additions to the seemingly mundane routines of working for a living. Although I'm giving 5 stars, there are some obvious knocks on the game. The interface is somewhat clunky, with everything delivered via dropdown menus and context-sensitive hotkeys. Memorizing hotkeys is very helpful, but there can still be a lot of small steps to accomplish anything. Portions of the game play out in an Infocom-style text parser. These sections can be either needlessly repetitive (such as when you are accessing starports to do routine commercial transactions) or somewhat unintuitive and frustrating (when pursuing side quests and special missions). Why do you tell me that there is an indentation the size of my hand and when I type "Insert hand into indentation", you don't know what a hand is? (The answer was "touch indentation".) As mentioned in another review, the manual is absolutely essential to playing this game. Thankfully, it is extremely thorough and well-written. Overall, I loved revisiting this game from my youth and am thankful to have been able to play it again.
