This game actually has a lot going for it. The cutscenes are entertaining (and really the only reason to play the game nowadays if I'm being completely honest), the writing is good and there's some great world-building (think grungy, dystopic, Star Wars-y; it's a real shame this setting has not been revisited). Pure single-player games of this genre haven't been released in decades(?), so it's refreshing in that regard, and although it's an open-world game with optional missions, they're all kinda dull - excluding the ones that don't have cutscenes. I also liked the enemy taunts ("I am the grim rea-pah!"). It is not free of problems however. The controls are a major issue; modern joysticks are not compatible without some hacking which I was uninclined to do. Hence, space combat (which is completely unavoidable BTW) is done awkwardly through the mouse. Battles take way too long; I imagine this might be helped somewhat by buying more powerful weapons, but I didn't get past the second tier laser, which was still really weak. Maybe I just suck, but I enjoyed the combat in Elite and Wing Commander 4 more. There are some really questionable design choices. Landing on planets is more frustrating than it needs to be, you can ONLY SAVE ON PLANETS (!!), and planning trade routes and choosing missions is a hassle since you can't view the sector map when you're buying stuff for trading or browsing missions. I didn't have a PC back in '96, so maybe these types of annoyances were common for the era and genre, but I found them to make the game borderline unplayable. Buy and play it for some great 90s vibes, but it might be a better use of your time to just watch the "movie" on Youtube.
