Starlink: Battle for Atlas

 Switch
User Score
7.8

Generally favorable reviews- based on 228 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 165 out of 228
  2. Mixed: 35 out of 228
  3. Negative: 28 out of 228
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  1. SSCheetah
    Oct 23, 2018
    6
    This is fundamentally an enjoyable game but I simply don't believe it is worth the high scores it is getting, especially for the exorbitant $120 AU (around $85 US, and the huge difference in price between countries is another issue entirely!) I paid for the Standard digital edition.

    Firstly, the mechanics are intrinsically fun. It is fun to fly your ship around, change weapons on the    This is fundamentally an enjoyable game but I simply don't believe it is worth the high scores it is getting, especially for the exorbitant $120 AU (around $85 US, and the huge difference in price between countries is another issue entirely!) I paid for the Standard digital edition.

    Firstly, the mechanics are intrinsically fun. It is fun to fly your ship around, change weapons on the fly (very easy with digital version) and blast your enemies. The worlds in the game are pretty and in general I think the art style is well done. It really does look beautiful when you fly around the planet and create your own sunrises and sunsets! Music and sound are done very well too IMO, and being able to freely fly between worlds is a great idea.

    However, there are so many things wrong with this game I just don't see how anyone can give it a 10. Some things that I find offputting and would warn others about too are as follows:
    - This is NOT a Star Fox game, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Great Fox and ROB are not present, and the Star Fox characters are obviously tacked on. They are included in the opening cutscene and given their own sidequest in the game, but what disappointed me was that during a pivotal cutscene halfway through the game, Fox (who I had been playing as the entire time) was conspicuously absent. It just felt weird and disconnected the way it had been done. An admirable attempt by Ubisoft, though, and if you weren't coming in expecting a Star Fox game then you won't be disappointed. Think of Fox as a bonus character.
    - The pay-for-parts system is obviously a complete ripoff. I thought I would be fine with the Digital Standard edition since you get one of each weapon type. This allows me to exploit all enemy vulnerabilities and open all types of treasure chest. However even with this there are things locked behind a paywall. Mainly, there are 35 upgrades you can unlock throughout the course of the game. However, 12 of these require you to level up certain characters (4 upgrades each for Eli, Kharl and Shaid) all of whom are conveniently missing from the Digital Standard edition. I paid $120 AU and there are still features locked behind a paywall. Sad.
    - The graphics are clunky and don't look current-gen on the Switch at least. Transitions from space-to-planet look pretty bad, and you can tell the disc-shaped planet you were flying into is turning into a flat terrain within the game's engine as you descend. It just looks bad to me.
    - The control scheme can occasionally be irritating, mainly because with inverted flight controls turned on, they for some reason become non-inverted during certain sequences, requiring you to put up with reverse movement for those sequences. Even worse, motion aiming (which would have been a fantastic feature) is only available when zoomed in by clicking the right stick, and with inverted flight controls, the motion controls are also inverted, meaning pushing the controller down makes your ship aim up and vice-versa! Seriously?! How did that one make it through testing?
    - Gameplay elements are extremely copy-and-paste style. You raid pirate bases throughout the game, but they are all identical! Some characters only have 1 line of dialogue recorded for a given event, so get used to hearing Razor say "I'm picking up some wreckage near your position. Might be worth checking out" hundreds of times whenever you find loot in space (she keeps saying it repeatedly while you stay near it too). The gameplay itself, while inherently fun, is very repetitive, with only a limited number of enemy and mission types to pursue throughout the game. The different planets offer a lot of variety but you are still doing the same things with just a different look.
    - The main story is very short. I don't understand how Ubi thought they would make money by releasing a Wave 2 of ships/weapons/etc., since everyone will have finished the game by then! I haven't finished it yet and will update this if my perspective changes but it seems to me that there's really nothing to keep people coming back, let alone spend further money on an already expensive game. That said, I have my fingers crossed for some hefty content updates from Ubisoft, but I guess we'll see.

    Bottom line: I don't regret buying this game; even with all its glaring flaws it is still fundamentally a well-presented and fun experience. I would advise interested players to give it a go if you are willing to spend the money, but it certainly is far from good value-for-money compared to games like Odyssey or BotW in terms of both quality and the amount of time you'll have playing it. I would strongly advise against getting a physical edition, too, unless you want to spend hundreds on the toys or individual DLC purchases, as the provided weapons are very limited outside of the two digital editions.

    Thanks for reading and hope this helped. :)    … Expand
  2. dr0nzer
    Oct 25, 2018
    6
    bought it mainly for starfox, it started off as a great game and continues to be great if you play in short bursts, however prolonged play and you realise there isn't much depth to the game, its very grindy and very repetitive in nature, the game needs more variation in activities as once you've done the first planet, you've practically done it all. space combat can be confusing andbought it mainly for starfox, it started off as a great game and continues to be great if you play in short bursts, however prolonged play and you realise there isn't much depth to the game, its very grindy and very repetitive in nature, the game needs more variation in activities as once you've done the first planet, you've practically done it all. space combat can be confusing and overwhelming with so many enemies you dont even know what to target... overall its a decent game.. but not the best,… Expand
  3. vreynauld
    Nov 8, 2018
    6
    I'm a middle age gamer and for me the Switch version appealed due to the Star Fox collaboration. My tween son doesn't really care for or know of Star Fox but he was also interested in the game. He chose to buy the digital version with his own allowance on Xbox One while I bought the Digital Deluxe edition on Switch. Having now played both, the difference between the two is very telling.I'm a middle age gamer and for me the Switch version appealed due to the Star Fox collaboration. My tween son doesn't really care for or know of Star Fox but he was also interested in the game. He chose to buy the digital version with his own allowance on Xbox One while I bought the Digital Deluxe edition on Switch. Having now played both, the difference between the two is very telling.

    It comes down to a simple question: Which do you value more, the Star Fox crossover content or visual fidelity and smooth gameplay? The sad reality is the Switch version is, by far, the most inferior version graphically. While it stays at 720p in mobile mode, it uses dynamic resolution while docked and often struggles to maintain 960p, especially while planetside. Both docked and in handheld mode, the draw distance, texture quality, shadowing, post processing effects, and object and enemy density are all also turned significantly down compared to the Xbox One version. But particularly more damning is the fact that, even with all of these necessary graphical downgrades, the Switch struggles to maintain a steady framerate, frequently dipping into the low 20fps range during hectic combat sequences.

    The Xbox One version, by contrast, runs buttery smooth, never drops below 1080p, and the added graphical fidelity elements makes the planets feel far more alive and interesting than the often barren stretches of land presented on the Switch version.

    It's also my experience that it's not a very portable friendly game. It eats battery almost as badly as LoZ: Breath of the Wild did. With a solid, full, charge, you might get a good 2 hours of play on the base battery alone.

    The core gameplay, regardless of platform, is pretty solid but painfully average. There's a few minor quibbles like it would be nice to be able to remap controls for shields and boost. It's generally what you'd expect from a light sci-fi, cartoonish (a la Disney XD) style Ubisoft open-world game. However, the biggest caveat: If you're here to play the game and not collect toys, BUY THE DIGITAL VERSION. Otherwise you're being fleeced to a ridiculous amount for a bunch of physical items. Other than being able to play as Fox throughout the entire campaign, the actual added missions for the Star Fox crossover content is barely 2 hours long, and a lot of that is spent flying from point-to-point.

    I can't get over just how much better the Xbox One version looks on the same display that I use for my Switch while docked. It's night and day. Overall, it's a 7 of a game, but the graphical differences, seeing them first hand, knock the Switch version down to a 6.

    Let the downvotes come from the hurt Nintendo fanboy legion, I don't care:
    This is NOT a StarFox game no matter what they want you to believe. The StarFox content makes up less than 2 total overall hours. And if you choose to buy the StarFox collaboration, you must know up front that you are buying the most graphically inferior version of the game.    … Expand
  4. facepwnage
    Nov 20, 2018
    5
    Mechanically speaking Starlink: Battle For Atlas is a solid game but for me it falls into the typical Ubisoft issue of repetition. You essentailly do the same thing over and over and over again. You will beat one planet then do the same thing on the next planet, and the next planet with slightly different coats of paint. The fact that there is no way to change weapons outside of theMechanically speaking Starlink: Battle For Atlas is a solid game but for me it falls into the typical Ubisoft issue of repetition. You essentailly do the same thing over and over and over again. You will beat one planet then do the same thing on the next planet, and the next planet with slightly different coats of paint. The fact that there is no way to change weapons outside of the initial one's your given depending on which version of the game you purchased or buy purchasing either the toys or the DLC with real world money is also a huge bummer. The Story is short and to the point but lacks any sort of depth to flesh out the characters and this universe beyond a quick description of who and what they are. Music and sound design are solid but again don't really stand out in any significant way. I hope they take some of the game play ideas from Starlink and integrated them into the next Star Fox game in a more creative and less repetitive fashion. And while I'm one that note if I'm being perfectly honest... If Star Fox wasn't in this game i would have never bothered purchasing Starlink: Battle For Atlas. Starlink really does need all the help it can get.… Expand
  5. lebk2440
    Sep 9, 2021
    6
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. It’s an Okay game but I did enjoy myself even though at one point I wanted to stop playing and move on to the next game, but then something just kept me going. I guess it was a sense of accomplishment when I was able to clear an entire planet from the Legion.

    The game is a 3D shooter, you’re in the Arwing the entire game which is awesome. You go from objective to objective, planet to planet and do the same thing over and over with slight variations. You have to travel long distances (until you can fast travel) with just nothing interesting to explore or encounter except some reoccurring and redundant battles. They re-use some many of their assets it’s incredible, so it’s not very varied.
    There’s like so many weapons I could’ve used but I didn’t want to pay extra from my own pocket to get them so I had the standard 3, plus the Arwing Laser canon, which is also pretty cool and surprisingly powerful. I found myself changing my weapon gear often enough but without paying there’s a serious lack of variety.

    Soundtrack is like non existant, I only noticed it once. Such a shame because the Starfox franchise has great tunes.

    Gameplay is fun, dogfights in space or ground combat on a planet. It was challenging at times actually. I really liked that I could switch between two flight modes: hovering on the ground and just free flying. There was a decent variety with the enemies.

    Framerate was very smooth, controls were weird at first because I was used to Starfox 64 but I got used to it very quickly. It really helped that I was using the Splitpad pro as I could map the boost button to a back button instead of having to let go of the right joystick and boost independently, it would really suck to play without that.

    The Starfox side quest with Wolf was short and not really noteworthy. Wolf was badass which was cool. Then once you kick his ass there’s more to the Starfox quest but I needed to pay for it, so that stopped there.

    An Okay game, I don’t necessarily recommend this, but fans of Starfox and space battles might see it through. I had fun with it, it was at its best for the last 5 hours.    … Expand
  6. ZeoN
    Feb 6, 2023
    7
    Digno sucesor espiritual de Starfox con una jugabilidad correcta y una historia plana pero aceptable.
  7. mrswitch2687
    Apr 14, 2020
    6
    A fun game with a rewarding gameplay loop that sadly relies on repetition a little too often to fulfil its potential.
    Pros:
    Combat is fun and rewarding Vibrant worlds Starfox quest adds decent amount of content Free DLC update is arguably more enjoyable than the base game Co-Op is superb fun Cons: The main story is weak and could have been expanded more Repetition of boss fights    A fun game with a rewarding gameplay loop that sadly relies on repetition a little too often to fulfil its potential.
    Pros:
    Combat is fun and rewarding
    Vibrant worlds
    Starfox quest adds decent amount of content
    Free DLC update is arguably more enjoyable than the base game
    Co-Op is superb fun
    Cons:
    The main story is weak and could have been expanded more
    Repetition of boss fights (extractors/primes) grates on you after a while
    Inconsistent difficulty
    The difficulty curve essentially forcing you to buy extra ships is irritating and is not ideal (but as the game is constantly on sale, it is more excusable).
    Overall, a good game that could have been better with a little more to do.    … Expand
  8. ssesses
    Jan 24, 2019
    6
    This would be a great game if it wasn't so repetitive. It really does have some great moments and phenomenal ideas. However, it seems far too often that ubisoft forgets what the word 'fun' means. Every single fight is the same, and so many of these copy/paste fights are mandatory. It overshadows the fun that I actually had while playing. The co-op is much better though, as the repetitiveThis would be a great game if it wasn't so repetitive. It really does have some great moments and phenomenal ideas. However, it seems far too often that ubisoft forgets what the word 'fun' means. Every single fight is the same, and so many of these copy/paste fights are mandatory. It overshadows the fun that I actually had while playing. The co-op is much better though, as the repetitive fights become quicker. Other glitches are frustrating as well. The same 30-second song looped for over 3 hours of gameplay. While some if this game is great, most of it is boring and repetitive.… Expand
  9. LylatAce
    Sep 9, 2019
    6
    StarLink is a fun cross over, but it’s very limited in gameplay. It’s part because it’s target audience is for kids. Also, since it’s openworld, it’s impossible to create 100’s of hours of unique content, so it does have repetition like all open world games. As a person who knows Star Fox gameplay inside and out, no this is no Star Fox. But again, this is a cross over. It does thingsStarLink is a fun cross over, but it’s very limited in gameplay. It’s part because it’s target audience is for kids. Also, since it’s openworld, it’s impossible to create 100’s of hours of unique content, so it does have repetition like all open world games. As a person who knows Star Fox gameplay inside and out, no this is no Star Fox. But again, this is a cross over. It does things differently. The combat is streamlined and easy to get into. You can master it in literally seconds. The controls are descent. The game does become more fun as you go along, but it doesn’t become radically different either. The real fun is customizing your ship and master them for skill points. As I suspected, the Star Fox missions are bland and not exciting. The cutscenes were parlor tricks in its marketing to get more sales. And that’s fine. Oh well, aside from that the game is descent. This is a good entry point for people never having played a space shooter before.im adding an additional comment after experiencing the DLC, the game is still average. StarLink is one game why I don’t like open world games. They’re all repetitive, and they lack skill. Star Fox as a series has infinitely more skill than this. Not close. If you’re going to do space combat, don’t be slow and boring like Zelda. I understand this is StarLink, not Star Fox. But Space Combat benefits from being crazy, go crazy.… Expand
  10. Grijandor
    Nov 11, 2019
    7
    Merece comprarlo por la navecita de Fox y porque está a un precio irrisorio, luego el juego tiene gráficos bonitos, mola mucho la transición entre espacio y planetas, tiene esa cosa de simulador espacial que tanto echo en falta ya que no hay muchos juegos de ese estilo y es entretenido para echar un buen rato pero acaba siendo repetitivo
  11. Talesbrenoan
    Feb 3, 2023
    5
    Mais um jogo com a fórmula padrão e velha da ubisoft. Eu zerei o jogo, mas é um jogo medíocre
  12. ValkyriaDG
    Nov 7, 2020
    7
    El juego esta muy bueno e interesante.Puedes estar varias horas jugando sin problemas. Aunque es un poco Repetitivo en algunas Ocasiones.Pero si te gusta los juegos de naves y exploración es una excelente opción.
  13. buszmenn
    Feb 20, 2022
    6
    Average for me. Very repetitive. The boss fights seem to be a bit long, with no challenge at the same time (possibly it's my weak ship's fault). Nice visuals.
  14. PotatoePink
    Jan 31, 2023
    7
    If No Mans Sky was a toys to life action adventure game that is pretty fun.

Awards & Rankings

23
#23 Most Discussed Switch Game of 2018
6
#6 Most Shared Switch Game of 2018

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
74

Mixed or average reviews - based on 63 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 39 out of 63
  2. Mixed: 22 out of 63
  3. Negative: 2 out of 63
  1. Nintendo Force Magazine
    Feb 26, 2019
    85
    Starlink as a new franchise isn't perfect, but it's still a whole lot of fun. [Issue #37 – January/February 2019, p. 71]
  2. Edge Magazine
    Nov 9, 2018
    60
    It's a shame that, for all those nifty custom USB sockets, there's no real connection to be found here. [Christmas 2018, p.112]
  3. Cubed3
    Nov 5, 2018
    80
    Starlink: Battle for Atlas is a surprise hit for Nintendo Switch. Furthermore, embedding Star Fox in was a masterstroke. From a surprisingly good score and audio cues from characters, to stunning vistas and scenery, there are many positives to be had. There will be many who appreciate the large number of tasks to do, but others will be deterred by the repetitiveness of them, although these are largely optional. The main issue is essentially asking what point of sale is the best value for money as no option is cheap.
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