This is a short (3-5 hour) game of puzzles revolving around what order to use various words to remove obstacles mixed with brief action sequences. Both are fairly simple, the puzzles are obvious and direct, but there's often a small twist that elicits a "Why didn't that work/Why did I die?" followed oh, "Oh, missed that, I get it now." Mostly satisfying. The controls are a little wonky. Everything's centered around the left-hand, so trying to move, aim, and shoot can be difficult. Fortunately the action sequences are forgiving enough it doesn't really matter. The only time it was every a problem was one sequence trying to shoot an overhead enemy in a specific weak point, and hitting up+fire seemed to randomly fire as it should, not fire at all, or fire after a delay. I was a little put off my the tone initially. At first it's not clear if the games going for a gory absurdist surrealism, a fantasy parody, or a somewhat grim fantasy story. There's a certain amount of tonal clash and the first scenes don't come off that well, but after the initial town it decides it wants to take itself seriously, and more or less succeeds. The story is somewhat barebones and cliche, but the focus characters get just enough development so you can like or dislike them as appropriate and care about the stakes. Overall I don't regret the ten bucks I dropped on it.
I just finished the main plotline with about 38 hours put into the game total. One of my favorite in the genre. You can see elements that got pulled in from older games. Apart from combat, which you have to accept will be fun but not particularly 'space-simmy'. You've got the Freelancer bits where you progress through the different systems. As you go the system tech levels get higher, the enemies get more dangerous, and the loot/shopping gets better. Everything else screams Privateer. The Mercenary & Merchants Guild are Privateer right down to the Guild Office menu you use to join and then just sits there for the rest of the game. The mission types, the cockpit banter, the cargo-drop demands, etc. Overall, it's an enjoyable power grind. The play-cycle goes: Take some missions, blow-stuff up, upgrade the ship, repeat. But the options for upgrading make it seem worthwhile. From shields that let you go from running away from big enemy to parking yourself next to them and firing away, to flak cannons that sweep enemy fighters off the map, to bigger ships with more guns making a much bigger and badder impression. You can do a few loadouts. I found a few that worked well enough to beat everything close to my tech level. I played a fast cargo hauler that avoided combat to start building up money, spent mid-game in a slow cruiser with plenty of firepower that went toe-to-toe with everything, and then did the end-game in the biggest dreadnought sitting at range firing artillery and missiles with flak brushing off fighters that got in close. The only weak points are the story and the soundtrack. The story is bare-bones. None of the characters have any motivation or depth. The world has almost no lore. What story there is you've seen before in Privateer/Darkstar One/Freelancer, only with less depth. It's mostly a guide to tell you when it's time to move onto the next system. The sound is good but repetitive. I think there's 3 songs with vocals and 2 instrumentals.
The writing and characters are broad and simple, but work well enough within those limits. If you let yourself, you can care about them and get interested in their story. The dungeon portion of the game is just fine. Works exactly like advertised. Not outstanding, perhaps, but engaging and smooth. The store section (the majority of the game) is immersive, as you buy the counters and items and customize it enough so it feels like 'your' thing. The problem is that the mechanics are hidden and the feedback is often useless. One of the main mechanics is haggling, where you have to guess how much to change the price on a transaction. However, the only hints given are incredibly broad and sometimes flat-out inaccurate. You more or less have to find a guide to figure out pricing. Dealing with customers levels them up to buy more, and is more or less guesswork on how to balance, otherwise. The atmosphere system is similarly odd, in that you wouldn't know that you're aiming for a fairly netural atmosphere without checking. Different NPCs prefer different decor, and you can block NPCs from showing up by making the decor too unacceptable. But the RNG apparently doesn't mind if you keep things middling. It's not absolutely necessary to have a guide for advancing story events, but depending on your play-style, it may be quite awhile before you hit all the triggers. I actually like this game. It's quirky, and pretty, and fun. But don't consider it cheating to get a guide, the game doesn't give you enough information to play fairly with otherwise.
I like this game. I've won on normal and lost a few times on expert. If you're like me, on a challenging difficulty there is one initial decision and two repeating decisions you'll be making in this game. First you'll be deciding the upgrade track for your bots. Because it's a pain in the butt to try to do a complete parts-out respec mid-game. Then, it's: Do I go for a mission that that I need to wipe all enemies or a mission that I just need to survive? If I went survival, when do I engage and when do I evade? Apart from those decisions the actual tactics are both obvious and determined by your bot specs. Once you figure out the weapons and specials your bots have, it's usually a matter of whether you have the stats to make it through the level or not. Getting there can be pretty tense, though, as you sneak through a door and find a room packed with bots. Or you try to whittle down a oncoming stream of bots and it's a toss up if they'll get in range before you wear them down. Final 'defense mission' is a little weird, since it's a normal base-clearing mission instead of actually defending against advancing robots, but that's a minor nitpick. Bottom line: I started playing in the evening, looked up, and saw daylight.
This is not a roguelike. Its just not. You aren't controlling a single character, you aren't exploring a dungeon (or space station or whatever), and your character customization options aren't there. This is, however, awesome. It hits the right balance of combat, loot, and challenge. At first it seems like there's an obvious, optimum strategy, but as you get more weapons and tools and your enemies diversify, so do viable strategies. It's also the kind of game prone to epic moments. In the game I played just before reading this, I was lucky enough to score a couple of mantis crewmates and built an unstoppable away team I went charging around with. Until I met the AI drone ship,. boarded, and promptly died from lack of oxygen. Whoops. My only minor complaint is that useful information is sometimes hidden. I haven't upgraded my sensors yet, but if they don't tell you what the weapons on the enemy ship are, they should. The starmap also needs to have distances or star lanes always on, because I lost that game getting stuck in a cluster with no route to the exit like it seemed there should be.
