It was fun to plan your strategy, assign your ships and captains, and deploy the fleet, however once you get past the planning and deployment phase, the crux of the game is you are looking at, and interacting with, a control panel with a bunch of buttons that control your ship and it's systems. The main screen can only show you four panels at one time, so if all your tactical panels are up on your screen and you need to communicate to your captains, you need to sacrafice one of your tactical panels to bring up the Comm panel. It's just very combersom. As for eye candy, once you get into combat, there is none. There is a tactical 'view screen' of the ship you are engaging, but it's severly lacking in sexyness (I can remember playing this game in my youth and hitting the self-destruct button on my ship, just to see a neat little video of my ship exploding). You issue commands to your captains and they go do their best to acomplish their tasks, most times they do. If you chose to directly engage an enemy ship, expect your engines to be targeted first and completely destroyed. FYI, when your engines are completely taken out, you are dead in space and the game becomes completely un-fun. You can use emergency thrusters to get to a jump point, but due to the distances involved, it takes hour/days to get there. Meanwhile the battle is unfolding elsewhere and hopefully your captains are able to acomplish the mission, but without your flagship, it will be difficult. Other than these main gripes, I did have fun for a while in the game, but it just does not hold up to modern space combat games and even nostalgia will not permit me to purchase it. The game's lore is right up there with the best of them. It's a solid universe to game in and in my personnal opinion, it is due for a modern sequal/reboot! PLEASE!!!
I was really enjoying the first act until the game threw a bunch of guns and ammo into the mix. In my opinion, guns should be tools to assist you during situations in the game and not just another 1st person shooter. I was relying on my own cunning and sneaking to get through most of the first have of the game. As soon as I was given access to guns, the game became just another horror shooter. I stopped playing after about an hour into the second half of the game. The game is hard too.
A game that was probably really good when it came out. Even on the easiest difficulty, it is a serious challenge. I love the premise and the gameplay, but the AI is too much. A game that is in desperate need of an update or re-imagining. All in all, the first hour of the game is a lot of fun. Then the difficulty becomes too much and not fun for me to play.
I played this game through and really just had a great time doing so. Its older, but you could hardly tell. The graphics are really good, the frame rate was excellent, the environments are gorgeous and well envisioned, the sound design is absolutely spot on to fully immerse you. You will not regret purchasing this game. I have only one con...Its replay-ability is limited. I played though as the Mage and when I restarted as a different class, it wasn't as much fun because I knew the maps and what was coming. The first time through is definitely the best. Its been a couple years since I played last so maybe I'll try a different class again. So strap on your headphones and turn out the lights and play Nox.
