The story line is very interesting, and the game has a wonderful dark theme to it. You are indeed an inquisitor using everything from charity and persuasion, to intimidation and torture, to root out heretics. The feel of it is relatively untainted by modernity, as the heretics really are a threat to the townspeople, as they ally themselves with demons and witches and the like. The difficult and sometimes tedious gameplay is worth it for that. But that brings me to the tedious gameplay. I don't mind the difficulty. That at first you have to kill simple bats for a while to build of XP - that's fine. I like that you can't take on big monsters at first, and often have to flee until you are stronger. But the dungeons are needlessly tedious! There's so much cheap loot, that you have to make trip after trip to unload it. You might want to leave it behind, but you find you actually need the money (unless you save scum at gambling). With the deeper dungeons, you get further down, then have to make that long trip back up, where monsters keep spawning even though you killed them all, and buy more and more potions to survive just a little further. As you go back down, monsters have respawned yet again, and you keep going through more and more healing potions to get just a little further, and then make that long trip back up, again! To the writers, I love what you're trying to do here, but take a tip from Diablo. 3 words - town portal scrolls. It would make the game so much more playable. I'm all for a challenging game. I'm not for a game that's difficult simply because you have to have the patience to go back, and fourth, and back, and fourth, getting more and more potions, selling more and more cheap loot to buy the potions, etc. It's a shame. It really spoils and otherwise awesome game! Love the torture, by the way! Love it!
Mediocre. I like the concept of a game diving into the history of Vikings meeting the Native Americans long before Columbus. The game is fun at first when you're learning the mechanics, but it gets dull. There is little to no combat, but it isn't detailed or challenging enough to be a good sim type game. Imagine the old Warcraft games (not WoW, just the original one) with building the usual buildings and farms, etc. but only occasional combat. You can go through 5 levels without a single battle! The rest of the time you're just patiently watching your little viking village develop and waiting, and waiting, for the next upgrade to be available, or to have enough resources gathered for the next building, etc. It just didn't work out that well in practice. I don't regret paying for it. I got some enjoyment out of it, but didn't bother finishing it.
It made a few improvements on 2, but the shortcomings far outweigh the improvements. It's fine that you are in a completely different system of space (instead of our actual galaxy like in 2). I like that in this one, you can colonize planets and have continuous resources, fuel, etc. coming in, unlike in 2 where you always have to go back to Earth base, or trade with the Mello...whatever they're called. But the combat in 3 is horrible! For one thing, you know how in all the Star Controls, when you fly to far to one edge of the screen, like to the right, you pop up on the left? That's a compensation for not wanting too much distance to develop between the ships...OK, fine. But in 3, it happens so quickly, that your opponent will just keep flying from left to right, left to right, left to right. He just keeps going until you either get really lucky, or so annoyed you do something stupid and get killed! I like a challenge, but the challenge shouldn't be the ridiculous quirk in the game! Then there's those darned planets! They seem to appear and different places every time the screen flips from your opponent constantly flying to the edge to flip the screen! Other than combat, some of the dialogue looks like it was written by a 12 year old. The Doogs! No species can be that stupid and survive. And then the K'Tang! They are the leaders of the Crux?! Seriously?! But the dialogue with the Spathi is pretty good, and I personally found the Mycon fascinating, though many don't agree on that one. Overall, I'm about half way through it, and I can't even finish it. Just not a good game. Those combats are just too annoying!
2 is definitely the best of the series, and one of the greatest games of all time! It's so cool how you start off in our own solar system. Get ready to explore many star systems, based on actual star systems in our galaxies, in a brilliant story line with a few plot twists, plenty of humor, and great challenge. The combat can be difficult. You can either practice it for a while in combat mode (separate from the story line game) until you're good at it, or you can take the easy way and use "cyborg" in the game options. Star Control 3 made a few improvements, but also had a lot of short falls! 2 is definitely the best overall.
First, I'm very impressed that one single person put this together. It's a very detailed sim of a community in the wilderness. You have to get wood, stone, iron, coal to make buildings and tools. You have to hunt, gather, fish, and grow food. And as things advance, you do some trading. No combat though. It's like Sim city - wilderness survival. It has two downsides. 1. Like Sim City, there is no end. At a certain point, your town is so developed, it's running well, and there's nothing left to do. But you don't "win", or anything. 2. A little buggy. If you don't keep a ridiculous amount of food in your stores, your people will starve. I've watched hungry villagers walk up to storage barns with some food in them, ignore the food and starve to death. If you keep several thousands of units of food more than you need in storage, the houses will stay stocked and it won't be an issue. Also, if you're mining something, like coal, they'll mine and you'll see piles of the stuff outside the mine, but it might be years before they actually take it to storage. Meanwhile, you may desperately need it to make tools. It's too bad. That's a real boner on an otherwise well designed game.
