Starcom: Unknown Space is an action adventure RPG of space exploration, ship building and fast-paced tactical combat. Enter a vast open-world universe filled with alien factions vying for power, strange worlds to explore, mysteries to investigate, and a sinister enemy that threatens the galaxy with...
Starcom: Unknown Space is an action adventure RPG of space exploration, ship building and fast-paced tactical combat. Enter a vast open-world universe filled with alien factions vying for power, strange worlds to explore, mysteries to investigate, and a sinister enemy that threatens the galaxy with an ancient power.
Explore
Explore a fully-open world universe with over a hundred star systems filled with undiscovered planets, mysterious artifacts, lost derelicts, and strange phenomena. Over 230 anomalies to investigate, each uniquely illustrated and with their own story.
Build Your Starship
Transform your small scout ship into a powerful starship of your own design with an innovative shipbuilding system. Make a deep space explorer, a fast strike craft, or an armor-leaden battlecruiser. Experiment with different designs and share your blueprints with others.
Discover & Research
Every new scientific discovery grants Research Points allowing you to unlock new modules and enhancements with a deep technology research tree. Choose techs that favor your preferred gameplay style: Upgrade your plasma cannons or unlock long range missiles? Better armor or shields? Unlock crew specializations first or a larger hull?
Make Allies & Enemies
The galaxy is full of unique alien factions each with their own motives. Decide who you will trust, trade with, hire, or vaporize.
More Features:
60 main story and side-quest missions to discover
Train your command crew to improve their skills and ship management bonuses
Smart autopilot to known locations, discover fast-travel gateways to distant systems, or venture into the unknown void
Alien factions will change their disposition and behavior depending on your actions
Collect, analyze, and trade over 100 different artifacts
Detailed, searchable ship log of every encounter and interaction
Save anywhere outside combat
Fans of Starcom: Nexus should know that the overall game mechanics have remained similar (with a lot of improvements), this is not a direct sequel-- it is a brand new story. New players will not need to be familiar with the plot of Starcom: Nexus to jump right in.
I've recently discovered the wonders of Star Control 2 and kind of hoped someone made something similar, but newer and perhaps better. Starcom is that newer and better game I think! It has the same charming attraction (I've started it and couln't stop for 6 hours straight), and is better in many ways. The visuals are gorgeous (it's been a while since I've seen such beautiful "empty space"), the combat mechanics are just perfect (it's fast, explosive and feels rewarding, though it't very simple at the same time), and the story (well, the world in general) has enough mystery to keep you going and want more:) I love it!:)
It's an amazing experience. The gameplay loop of combat and exploration never becomes stale, the way you design your own ship offers a lot of freedom while being mechanically interesting, and the map just seems to grow when you thought you've seen everything.
The story offers some really thought-provoking sci-fi concepts but it's not dry. The characters have some real life to them and the alien races are uniquely designed.
10/10 or 5/5, definitely worth the full price, a steal on any kind of sale.
This game is an exploration game mainly, with combat as a feature but not the main focus. If you go into it with the mindset that you're trying to discover stuff and may have to fight, it is a lot of fun.
It has a core loop of going out, exploring stuff, doing quests with the other characters (usually aliens), gathering materials (or enemy drops), then going back to upgrade your ship. The ship designer is also really good, needing you to balance out armour and cooling, as higher tier components will overheat on you if you pack them closely together.
This loop is solid, and is engaging. It is slower paced, so you can expect multiple minutes of downtime between quests (usually less than 5 unless you made your ship really slow).
If you are not great at combat, you can change the difficulty at any time in the options menu. I could see it being tough to kite enemies if you aren't used to this kind of arcade space sim combat.
I didn't run into any technical issues on a whole playthrough of the story. Note however the ship does not feel good to me to play with controller, so I dropped to keyboard and mouse. I would recommend you check the box that keeps the game running in the background while you are viewing your quest log, since a lot of my playthrough was pointing my ship in a direction of a quest and reading what I should try to do while the ship was travelling.
Nice game for slower explorers all in all.
