Was waiting for it, saw it released, instabought it. And I am not regretting this. First of all. Music. I can't define the genre but it is called as southern rock. It gives you a space western jibe. Turns out you don't have to go full orchestral to make space battles epic. Also for its mellow tunes you can dock upon a station and let it run in the background and do your real life work. It is that brilliant. As for the gameplay it doesn't lack from its audio side. You own a brick, let's be honest here your first ship steers like one, with broadsides and other sorts of weaponry and do work. Its battle system is basic but surprisingly complex. You really don't wonder why there isn't any third plane of movement (yes you move in a 2d plane in a 3d space) because you have tons of things to do. You have to aim for the cap ships, dodge the missile volleys via deflector beams, take care of the range while broadsiding'em. And it is so fun and balanced! Its system requirements are very low by the way. I can definitely say that this game reminded me of "Sid Meier's Pirates" in a good way. It is in space, it doesn't involve dancing with governor's daughters (god I hated that minigame) and you have a procedurally generated huge space which you can do your "murder & profit" act. All in all. Buy it. You won't regret it.
The game is nearly perfect if you are into shoot-em ups. Story is a YMMV affair, I liked it, enjoyed immensely but I don't believe it will has the same effect on everybody. The skills are a breeze to use, and every ship class is very different from each other. For example you have to adjust yourself to using the environment when you are playing with the grappler class (a-la Jackie Chan) but with the caster you mainly try to dodge damage and dish out fantastic amounts of it to the bogeys. I haven't understood how Hangar works and whether there are more & better weapons (shop is still... empty curiously. Maybe I haven't unlocked it yet.). But trying to discover stuff is fun. You quickly adapt to the keyboard&mouse scheme. I don't have a gamepad so I cannot comment about it. But damned muscle memory hits. I often and occasionally hit a and d for strafing and s for slowing down. Also I found that having a gaming mouse helps, because the devs didn't limit the reticule to a certain distance from the ship, you often find it too far away from your ship and wonder why doesn't it turn that fast... Those are minor quibbles though. I am so far enjoying it as long as I am careful with those issues. Story mode unlocks hangar&missions so if you are into replayability and you have it in the scenarios->wave mode. (and this is only one of the modes).
I have played it when it was first released and enjoyed it immensely. I was looking for this game for years until I have managed to get hold of a copy from a long forgotten and near dead computer store. Then, today I saw it released in gog... Let me tell you something first, panzerkleins. They do not botch the game totally, you can turn them off with a mod and personally I don't think they are that much of a problem. Overkill, yes. Too strong, yes. But they are made to be that strong and a tool which would change the tide of war in the game universe. The ragdoll physics, truly destroyable scenes (no you don't fire rockets to a building which contains a hostage you must rescue or the floors collapse and the dude dies... instant mission fail and yes it did happen to me), bright a.i. and most importantly actual ww2 weaponry, skills and leveling up. The game will extremely reward you for putting hours in it. Random encounters are here and they reward you well, some of the overkill weaponry can only be found like this. Sentinels make you to do the random missions because, this time you have to buy the equipments. I love this game and play in every computer I've owned and not regretting it. And now, seeing it on gog made me lose the fear of damaging the cds. Thank you for providing this underlooked gem to the masses.
