rtcvb32: Alright after some 8 hours of gameplay and getting annoyed at it i have my final impressions since i'm putting the game down.
Better post your level.
rtcvb32: Cons: It's slow. This wouldn't be so bad if you could give waypoints and then have it go and maybe give it automatic actions to go with (
Scan nearby anomalies, fight nearest enemy always rather than locking on, fight/ignore missiles, go here, pick up loot, etc). Often i find myself pressing the left mouse button or the W key for a minute or longer at a time with nothing going on.
Game spins around the player. It is your problem that you are too slow for this game.
rtcvb32: Repetitive, in a grindy way. Go fetch x part, deliver cargo to species S in sector X, kill these monsters in sector Y, track down bounty, etc. Thankfully most of the quests can be completed via a UI, unless you're delivering a package.
Do different tasks, duh. Hunt for monsters, lead wars, explore planets.
rtcvb32: Limited space in a major way. Being thrifty perhaps may be one way to play, but there's a lot of misc parts. Planetary defenses, fertilizer, non-lethal weapons, fire extinguishers, etc. All of these take up a huge slot and if you pick up extra slots you'll probably get 4 or 6 slot extras. If you're going to be carrying around extra crew or misc items, preferably you can stack them, either identical items, chips, or misc in groups of 4 (
4 in 1 slot).
You can get large 16 bays at level 32. Takes a hour at worst.
rtcvb32: Weak Economy. Perhaps this isn't an issue later/higher, but i had a ton of crap and no one had any credits to sell them the crap... Making the game slower still because you have to visit everyone to see if they have credits.
Drop the crap. It's like in Diablo, selling broken items is stupid.
rtcvb32: Punishing Upgrades, this is annoying. When you put points into command, your ship gets bigger (
and better, right?), you can use more equipment... But it also becomes slower, heavier, and lowers your defense (
by quite a bit). It's not fun being punished for wanting to get a better ship :( With my ship getting slower unknowingly, the game got more and more stale because it takes
even longer to get anywhere, and upgrading your engines takes levels, which the game happily hampers you on unless you're min/maxing.
Engines give speed and defence, more than you lose from increasing ship size. IIRC 2 engines is enough to max speed of the biggest ship. And have you read what defence gives? Chance for evade. It is sooo scary to be hit... Upgrade shields, armor and resist.
rtcvb32: Politics, there's a lot of it. Break pact with X, don't help Y, distract Z, etc. Building up friendships might not be so hard if it had a counting negative that slowly grows on it's own over time, as the game puts '
what have you done for us recently?'. This means you'll probably want to select one race and help them exclusively and try to get an alliance. You can force an alliance by demanding (probably not) or clicking '
how can i get this through' and they'll want all your money and everything you have... Thankfully the tone/color (
green/red) hints if it's enough to consider offering before starting.
And how exactly deep diplomacy is in cons? Too deep for you?
rtcvb32: The ship, you start with 9 slots (
3 heavy, 3 medium, 3 light), and maybe up to 4 race slots (
computer, acceleration, race specific units, etc). Maybe that wouldn't be an issue if power requirements weren't present, since besides armor everything drains the power, and draining it too much lowers your effectiveness by 20% (
per every 5 over?). So barely going over hampers you a lot, kinda annoying like the balancing used in Sacred 2 where it takes 5 seconds longer to charge the ability before you can use it again... So the first slot locked is your engines, the second is your weapon, and if you try to add anything the third will be locked with a reactor. That really leaves you with 6 maybe slots, mostly for crew and shields or weird weapons.
You pigeonhole yourself into this. My ship has 30 slots with max speed.
rtcvb32: Fighting/Flight: You have to hold down the button (
keyboard or mouse) to move. You also have to do the same to attack, but if you defeat an enemy you'll stop attacking even if you're still being bombarded. This means you'll constantly be pressing 1/2 (
depending on how many weapons/abilities you have) to keep it cycling. Makes it feel like a really weakly made MMO. Also
ship turning IS SO DAMN SLOW! You can get robofighters, I had 12 and didn't bother to shoot anything smaller than red bosses.
For speed - upgrade engine.
rtcvb32: Final Thoughts: If you love grinding, love outer-space, are patient (
you a teenager and thus easily forgiving), or you don't have any other games to play, or you have multi-player friends, then will probably be fun for you. Otherwise i don't recommend getting it.
Honestly it's not a bad game, it's just too slow for me. If your ship's movement/turning was 50% to 100% faster and you had more inventory space or special slots for misc items, the game would be a lot more interesting. Maybe you can get that later in the game, but i can't stand to spend another 10 hours to try and get to that point.
Your problem is that you haven't figured that when you create a Galaxy, it stucks at this level, and you grow. In 3-5 levels you outgrow galaxy. Try to start on higher difficulty than yourself. Everything else is solvable with better items.
Personally, I think that for the same price you can get Space Rangers, which would be infinitely better game.
