I really tried to like this game. It took a while to get used to certain design decisions and see them as part of the challenge, and on Normal the gameplay was so simple, I see why some said it requires no tactics whatsoever.
It starts off with a decent intro. You control a frigate (medium-small ship) in the prologue. Has a good tutorial that guides you through things. The voice-overI really tried to like this game. It took a while to get used to certain design decisions and see them as part of the challenge, and on Normal the gameplay was so simple, I see why some said it requires no tactics whatsoever.
It starts off with a decent intro. You control a frigate (medium-small ship) in the prologue. Has a good tutorial that guides you through things. The voice-over and character headshots are pretty nice. It lacks any 3D rendered characters, which is a tiny bit of a letdown.
It is truly 3D - which is something many space games simplify one way or another.
After a short prologue you get to create your character. The number of classes (3) and perks each of them gets is very manageable yet meaningful. Leaves a hope that all 3 classes are reasonably balanced.
Then you get your first simple gunship. Getting better ships requires a grind of "freelance" missions, although one can get pretty far on very basic ships - storyline missions are very simple. The storyline introduces you to major game mechanics from basic ship controls, to upgrading ships, to deploying troops, to eventually building space stations and fleets.
Now, the combat - it is very micro-heavy. Even on larger ships you'll be dogfighting with pew-pew lazerzzz shooting out of every turret of which there is up to like a two dozen, and spamming missiles like every 4-5 sec - from each side! Then rotate ship, and spam missiles from other side.
There are 7 different combat ship classes, several models in each class, but they are a linear progression from small to large, without any meaningful differences in tactics. I.e. a Corvette is about 1.5 - 2 times more powerful than a Gunship, while 2-2.5 times more expensive. A Frigate is to a Corvette as a Corvette to Gunship. Ditto for Destroyer vs. Frigate (well OK Destroyers gain a drone bay and as such - rudimentary carrier capabilities), or Cruiser vs Destroyer. They all use the exact same turrets, just bigger ships have more of them! Holds true in fleetbuilding - you can build one Frigate or 2 Corvettes or 4 Gunships - they all are generic combat ships.
The UI makes it a bit tricky to estimate incoming DPS or notice when your ship starts to take hull damage. Most of the times I get killed because I didn't notice that shields were done.
The "freelance" missions are rather repetitive. On "Extreme" difficulty - the basic ones take on average about 3 minutes to complete. After a while you can choose the advanced versions which pay about 3x more, and do pose a challenge to your micro skills and ship upgrades - meaning you will get killed if you screw up or use a severely under-equipped ship. But these missions are the most efficient way to make money in this game, so you'll be inclined to grind them.
Does it matter whether you spend 100k or 25 million credits on equipment you put on your ship? Only for the side missions and random pirate encounters. The main story quests are so darn simple that I can't even... Maybe they will get more complex eventually. But so far the main story is just that - a story! It's OK so far (I'm about 12 hours in). There are various characters (represented by a headshot pic and dialogue trees). It's linearly scripted, and sort of disconnected from what you do in all the randomly generated side/freelance missions, as if it happens in a "parallel world".
There is no way to "lose" in the campaign / story.
Basically, you can screw the RPG / ship progression / empire building part and play the storyline, in a scrappy Corvette w/o any upgrades - OR ignore the story missions, research/build supercapital ships, and build your empire.
The space itself seems like a crowded junkyard where you can't fly for 10 seconds - without bumping into - sometimes literally - some anomaly, cargo container, random spawn enemies, allies, neutrals, gas cloud, asteroids, nebulae, shipwrecks, hazard zone, perk container or something else.
To give it some credit - the amount of random things you can bump into is impressive, so is the tech, research trees. The devs didn't even bother to put any 2D icon on research items or equipment so it's just a line of text saying i.e. "Artemis III - a 50% damage bonus to Light Turrets". Quite easy to churn out ~200 of such items and keep the mouse spinning the wheel for a while to buy them all. Given the lack of variety in combat, all of these upgrades boil down to a straightforward "+X% on damage, range, shield capacity, speed, maneuverability", etc. Ok there's a "Blink" device to research who's description says "It's creator swears it works". I will surely test that! :-D
If you "free roam" you can find enemies who whoop your ass quickly - and give a reason to upgrade your ship, actually learn some dogfight tactics and/or gather a support fleet.
I'll stick around because the storyline has some intrigue, ships are pretty. And because Tara Higgs :-… Expand
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