I got this game free on GOG during one of their spend $$$ get games promo. I'm really glad I got this game for frree. When this game was announced way back when, I was really exceited for it becuase I love flying and blasting space ships. When I found out that this game was really an FPS in space, I hesitated. I'm a big X3:TC fan. Let's just stick to this game tho ... I really, really think the developers should've gone the Descent route instead of this FTL/Roguelike mashup. I can't stand being rushed out of a sector by infinite baddies (i.e., FTL). There is a part of this game where you find some ancient structure and you can briefly explore it. Being a fan of Descent, I was instinctively trying to fire the flare gun to light up the interior. Others have said that this game is really, really difficult. I played on normal for about 20 times before switching over to easy. I managed to upgrade my character and two ships with reasonable(?) upgrades. The first time I played easy, I managed to get to the final destination. Like FTL, when the final boss happens, you just get overwhelmed by superior ships and firepower. This game is no different. There were 6 rounds of enemies to defeat and I managed to get through 4 of them before getting destroyed. Even on easy, this was extremely difficult. I gave up and uninstalled the game after that. Life is to short.
This review will probably get buried like all of the others, but here goes. I'm a veteran of Infinity Engine games. I really want to enjoy this game ... I'm in Act 3 and I still don't understand when your health gets damaged. There are two kinds of health: endurance (i.e., per-encounter) and health (i.e., when it hits zero you're dead forever). It seems like 99% of the time, your endurance gets damaged in combat and your health gets ticked off little by little. If your endurance drops to 0, you essentially pass out during combat. When combat ends, you get a random attribute penalty until you rest for 8 hours. Throughout Act 1 and 2, I pretty much decimated enemies during every encounter. Now suddenly, I'm getting hammered like crazy and I'm actually dying. The problem is in Act 3, it seems to rely more on mind control or domination attacks and damned if I can figure out how to defend against it. Also, be prepared to travel ... a lot ... Yah, there's quick travel. Yah, there's fast mode for walking. But, in all honesty, it isn't fast enough. The slow map transitions really dampen the experience too. If you're a D&D expert, the game mechanics don't feel normal. Character development is a little confusing, but once you play a few hours you pretty much forget about it all together. It doesn't really seem to matter too much what your stats are. Yah technically you get +% of whatever for each point in your primary stats, but the game is pretty forgiving if you don't get it right. There seems to be a ton of skills to choose from, but honestly there are few "class" skills. So in essence all of the characters feel the same. Characters seem to have skills that grant additional per-encounter abilities. And you pretty much forget to use them because most encounters are dealt with straight up melee or maybe a few spells. I hear that Pillars of Eternity 2 will address a lot of these issues, so I'm looking forward to it.
Many people say that this game has a freelancer vibe to it. I would tend to slightly disagree, but that doesn't really describe how great this game is. The first thing you notice is the soundtrack. Absolutely wonderful music that gives you the feel you're a space cowboy or maybe a space biker. The combat is not like other space shooters. You only have 4 degrees of freedom and the bulk of the time you're firing broadside weapons and timing your deflectors. You do have turrets that will fire on targets at will or as per your configuration. None of that detracts from the combat. It is fast, furious, and dangerous. Even with a fully capable ship, you can still get blasted to space dust. The equipment is pretty standard for this genre of game, but this is the weakest part of the game. For the most part you just have maybe 4 or 5 different types of weapons, armor, engines, etc that level from 1 to 6 as you enter harder systems. However, you can attack special event ships that may drop powerful ship components you cannot buy. Random missions can be a grind, but you are playing something like Freelancer, so you need to make money somehow. The trading aspect of this game is kind of broken and not really worth doing. You make more collecting the dropped cargo from destroyed ships than buying and selling from different sectors. All in all I played it though twice with different ships and loadouts and I had fun. I recommend picking this up especially if it is on sale.
The first settlement I started, I knew it was going to get real when one of my settlers died in childbirth. The winter was harsh, people froze to death or starved. I was not prepared. It didn't take too long to figure out how to balance expansion with development. Build too many houses too fast and you're out of lumber for firewood. More houses mean more families, more children and more mouths to feed. Children take time to grow up and don't begin to contribute to the settlement for many seasons. This game is not an economic simulator (even though you can trade goods), but rather a balancing act between nature and civilization. Wipe out the forests too fast and you lose your summer food supply. After you figure out how to start and sustain a village, the desire to really expand creeps in. This is where the game really takes off. A poorly planned year (or even season) could mean the difference between a thriving village or a desolate ruin. This game is beautiful to just watch. There is no combat. Your people can die prematurely in accidents or a medical issue. But, these random events are pretty rare and you feel a real loss when it happens, especially in the early game. I highly recommend playing this game.
I first bought this game when I had an Amiga 1200. While this game doesn't have all of the charm of your Monkey Island adventure, it comes pretty close. I never finished the adventure when I originally owned it, but now I may finally do so.
This game didn't hold my interest. The 5-star reviews implied this was a must buy, but after a few days I don't really have a compelling reason to continue playing.
I have played a lot of 4x games in my life. Probably the best was a Win 3.1 game called Stars! Things have come a long way since then, mainly due to real time vs turn based game play. However, there is just absolutely too much going on that I have no idea how to keep up with the AI, let alone a human player. For large swaths of the game, you're paused because letting the game play out while you're busy planning is a bad idea. The last game I played had about 110 minutes of game play spread out over 6 hours. So, you have to pause to find a planet that can supply resources to another planet. Pause for diplomacy. Pause to build planetary structures. Pause to catch alerts. Pause to find a fleet to investigate an anomaly. But most importantly, you're paused to design ships. It is new (to me at least) to design a ship on a hex by hex basis. It sounds really cool at first, but then you realize that with little documentation to go by, you have no idea what you're doing. For instance, support ships (which can't move on their own without a flag ship) need acceleration for some reason. Every single combat I've been involved with just had both sides standing in space, unmoving, and firing off their ordinance. I've never seen support ships on either side of the battle break off from the fleet and engage. The economy is probably one of the most confusing aspects of the game. The designers were probably afraid to be too derivative, so they took things to a whole new level of complexity. Every three minutes, your remaining cash budget rolls over to buy one other reasource of your choosing. Then, you start with a new cash budget that you need to spend over the next three minutes. So, yah, they've redefined 4x - eXasperate, eXacerbate, eXplain, eXcuse
Adding another review this late in the game (so to speak) is probably not going to influence too many people. Unfortunately, I was influenced by the fall sale and the high ratings for this game. Man, what a turd. Nothing is more frustrating and illogical than random encounters. The first three times I played this game, one or more of my crew were slaughtered at the first jump beacon when some random boarding attack event took place. I never made it past the first jump on my second time when all of my crew were wiped out. So I start playing on easy, and I manage to make agonizing progress. After probably putting in 10-12 hours into the game, I finally get to the boss battle and I was completely wiped out in seconds. So, I thought I would try again and save scum. I managed to get to the final boss with what I thought was a pretty awesome ship (complete with the FTL shield boost to level 5 that I got from another random event.) I was wiped out again pretty easily. So I tried another tactic where I attacked the weapons and causing fires to kill the crew. That seemed to work great and when I landed the final shot ... the boss teleported away ... After giving chase, the boss was fully healed minus one gun. However, it somehow magically got drones and I got toasted by the 5 attacking my ship. To add insult to injury, an invasion drone punched holes into my hull to suck the O2 out. I only had 5 crew members, who didn't stand a chance. Naturally, after losing that battle, I deleted the game and now I'm writing this rage quit review. The most fun I had with this game was deleting it and emptying my trash folder. That's probably the best way to defeat the final boss.
