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Starpoint Gemini 3Reviews(7 posts)(7 posts)
(7 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted January 18, 2020
For some reason reviews can't be added to this game, and old ones were removed. Probably because of updates, but also probably because developer didn't liked them. So, I'm gonna post new review right here, and encourage others to do the same. Since I'm not limited in characters here, it might be a bit longer than on store page.

I've made a review earlier, just when the game was released - I was really hyped and thought that this game only had optimization problems during cutscenes and ADAH drone gameplay and poor story (because of main character). I've rated the game with 3* back then, but with potential. Now I can give only 2*, with advice not to buy this game, and wait to see what will change.

Well, because old reviews were deleted and I've seen in updates that story was reworked (11/13/2019) - I've decided to check what changed.
First, there are actually NO story changes - only rebalancing in first fights. Really disappointing, cause this means that they're not listening (I wasn't the only one unhappy with story). And no, there was no extension to the story, it ends at the same spot. Maybe it's just me, but I have a feeling that game is faster paced than before (that's good). For those who missed old reviews I'll say that main character has inadequate behaviour, and you won't feel any sympathies towards him - probably you'll even despise him. Probably some players will like that for some time, but at some point it reaches absurd.
Second, with all graphic options (in Lancher and game) set to "High" (that's the best possible quality), game looks WORSE than Warlords. As for 3D character models in cutscenes - they're right from 2003-2004. Matches "Ultra low" quality in other games (option for potato PCs). Models in cockpit (during calls) - are even worse. Really, it something between Freelancer (2003) and The Sims 2 (2004) - you can check on YouTube videos. And with all that awful models, do we really need to see high-tech city on Extera far-far away (where we can't land and it's not important at all), caterpillars, and mist effects? Lot of mist around, but of course we can see a big city from afar (not a question of performance, but where is logic in this?)... Planet textures are bad, you can almost spot pixel when you approach close enough to land.
As for preformance, I have to admit - with all recent changes and maxed settings (out of possible options) - games runs really fast and smooth. ADAH drone gameplay now is as fast and smooth, as normal flight - nicely done. No stress on hardware now (at all). +1 for Performance.
Camera placement is fine - and you switch to cockpit view when piloting, but it's interface is bad (poor textures, washed out fonts). Would prefer to have options to increase camera distance and look from rear/starboards. In ADAH drone gameplay camera placement is really bad - camera is on the right to ADAH (and at some distance), and you should consider that while moving. Not comfortable.
Flight controls are mostly fine. Would have prefered to be able to dock using mouse, without keyboard - say, to have menu at MMB where I could select actions. Interaction distance is too low. Some controls (like focus target or cruise speed) are explained much later in game than they are required for smooth playthrough. Targeting is bad, we see match target speed key only for selected target (wouldn't mind at least simple dot for unselected enemies). Basically, you have to focus on every target you want to attack.
Sounds are fine. Not inspiring, but not annoying. Voice acting is good (if you close your eyes you can really enjoy it), and +1 for ADAH - I really like her voice and attitude, she's the only reason to continue the story.
New content was added (equips, systems, planets, etc) - but no reasons to explore it. Prices are unbalanced compared to quest rewards (40k for a single simple gun, 3k as a quest reward).

So, I'm giving this game 2* now - for preformance and ADAH voice (to devs: don't be like captain, buy her VA some treats, she really deserves them). I don't recommend buying game at this stage, better wait and see if something changes. If you want to pilot a starship, try previous titles - you'll get way more content, and of better quality.
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Posted January 20, 2020
avatar
Nickolaeris: For some reason reviews can't be added to this game, and old ones were removed. Probably because of updates, but also probably because developer didn't liked them. So, I'm gonna post new review right here, and encourage others to do the same. Since I'm not limited in characters here, it might be a bit longer than on store page.

I've made a review earlier, just when the game was released - I was really hyped and thought that this game only had optimization problems during cutscenes and ADAH drone gameplay and poor story (because of main character). I've rated the game with 3* back then, but with potential. Now I can give only 2*, with advice not to buy this game, and wait to see what will change.

Well, because old reviews were deleted and I've seen in updates that story was reworked (11/13/2019) - I've decided to check what changed.
First, there are actually NO story changes - only rebalancing in first fights. Really disappointing, cause this means that they're not listening (I wasn't the only one unhappy with story). And no, there was no extension to the story, it ends at the same spot. Maybe it's just me, but I have a feeling that game is faster paced than before (that's good). For those who missed old reviews I'll say that main character has inadequate behaviour, and you won't feel any sympathies towards him - probably you'll even despise him. Probably some players will like that for some time, but at some point it reaches absurd.
Second, with all graphic options (in Lancher and game) set to "High" (that's the best possible quality), game looks WORSE than Warlords. As for 3D character models in cutscenes - they're right from 2003-2004. Matches "Ultra low" quality in other games (option for potato PCs). Models in cockpit (during calls) - are even worse. Really, it something between Freelancer (2003) and The Sims 2 (2004) - you can check on YouTube videos. And with all that awful models, do we really need to see high-tech city on Extera far-far away (where we can't land and it's not important at all), caterpillars, and mist effects? Lot of mist around, but of course we can see a big city from afar (not a question of performance, but where is logic in this?)... Planet textures are bad, you can almost spot pixel when you approach close enough to land.
As for preformance, I have to admit - with all recent changes and maxed settings (out of possible options) - games runs really fast and smooth. ADAH drone gameplay now is as fast and smooth, as normal flight - nicely done. No stress on hardware now (at all). +1 for Performance.
Camera placement is fine - and you switch to cockpit view when piloting, but it's interface is bad (poor textures, washed out fonts). Would prefer to have options to increase camera distance and look from rear/starboards. In ADAH drone gameplay camera placement is really bad - camera is on the right to ADAH (and at some distance), and you should consider that while moving. Not comfortable.
Flight controls are mostly fine. Would have prefered to be able to dock using mouse, without keyboard - say, to have menu at MMB where I could select actions. Interaction distance is too low. Some controls (like focus target or cruise speed) are explained much later in game than they are required for smooth playthrough. Targeting is bad, we see match target speed key only for selected target (wouldn't mind at least simple dot for unselected enemies). Basically, you have to focus on every target you want to attack.
Sounds are fine. Not inspiring, but not annoying. Voice acting is good (if you close your eyes you can really enjoy it), and +1 for ADAH - I really like her voice and attitude, she's the only reason to continue the story.
New content was added (equips, systems, planets, etc) - but no reasons to explore it. Prices are unbalanced compared to quest rewards (40k for a single simple gun, 3k as a quest reward).

So, I'm giving this game 2* now - for preformance and ADAH voice (to devs: don't be like captain, buy her VA some treats, she really deserves them). I don't recommend buying game at this stage, better wait and see if something changes. If you want to pilot a starship, try previous titles - you'll get way more content, and of better quality.
Hello Nickolaeris !

Allow me to address you in behalf of developers. In all honesty, I was a little sad reading your review, but as developers we need to take good with the bad, and that is perfectly ok, despite being sometimes hard to read. From negative feedback we can learn and adjust the product, especially during Early Access.

Now, I definitely won't (and don't have that right anyway) try to assure you in something different then you think. I'd only like to offer some responses in areas I know that are about to happen in development.

First of all - your (and apparently other player's) review gone missing - we have absolutely not connection with that. We can't influence the reviews, we can't change them and we certainly cannot remove them. Also, we never even considered asking someone else (that might have that power) to remove them. Our goal is to upgrade and develop the game in a way that players will gradually have better opinion and experience from the game. Removing reviews would not serve that purpose, and even if we wanted to - I've never heard of such option being possible at all.

Secondly - regarding the game itself. I am really sorry current experience isn't sufficiently good for you. Starpoint 3 is a game still under construction (we've just released major update 4 out of 10), meaning we're not yet halfway there. We are really doing our best to release updates and reach milestones as fast as possible, but game of this size takes time no matter what you do. On Friday Update 4 was released, and there were several additional features almost completed, but not fully tested yet, so in order to avoid players waiting, we'll add this update early next week an "in-between" update before next major one.

Regarding storyline - there were some changes to already implemented part of the story in comparison to initial Early Access version (some changes to dialogues, rewamped flow and difficulty of some missions, modified cutscenes...), but biggest chunk of changes is scheduled to some in Update 5 and 6, and that part mainly goes for yet undisclosed part of the story (but not exclusively, current missions will get some more tweaks as well). All changes already done, and especially those that are coming, are based mostly on feedback we got from players so far. If you look at previous titles of ours, we always accepted players feedback (in Starpoint 2 we changed about 30% of already implemented features based of players requests, and Starpoint Warlords was game concept entirely based on suggestions). We are taking feedback seriously, and accept it whenever possible, even if that means we're makong our own development path harder, all in hopes that players can help us create better experience. So far it worked to everyone's benefit and our intention was to continue this in the future. Ofcourse, half way into development, we cannot adopt massive changes that would mean changing the entire game from the start. But if that is the situation, we also say that clearly and avoid misleading players. That is what we do, and always did in the past. If your impressions is different, I can only say that we are sorry you're disappointed.

Starpoint Gemini 3 will be different game then predecessors, but each Starpoint game had some hugely different variations in main concept (SPG1 - 2D plane game, SPG2 - full 3D tactical simulator, SPGW - hybrid simulation/strategy game), so we believed our players will be happy getting another, not yet explored perspective in our franchise. That said, once everything planned on Roadmap is developed and added to game (all mechanics, entire story, capital ship mechanics etc...), it will despite all the changes, still be a recognizable Starpoint game.

I can only hope you will continue to follow what we're doing, and that in the end you will also find enough good things to consider our finished game worthy of your time.

In the end, no matter what you decide, I hope I provided some useful insight into what is happening and what is yet to come. And definitely, thank you for your feedback and thank you for taking the time to write this indepth review!

Mario
LGM Games team
Posted January 20, 2020

Hello Nickolaeris !

Allow me to address you in behalf of developers. In all honesty, I was a little sad reading your review, but as developers we need to take good with the bad, and that is perfectly ok, despite being sometimes hard to read. From negative feedback we can learn and adjust the product, especially during Early Access.

Now, I definitely won't (and don't have that right anyway) try to assure you in something different then you think. I'd only like to offer some responses in areas I know that are about to happen in development.

First of all - your (and apparently other player's) review gone missing - we have absolutely not connection with that. We can't influence the reviews, we can't change them and we certainly cannot remove them. Also, we never even considered asking someone else (that might have that power) to remove them. Our goal is to upgrade and develop the game in a way that players will gradually have better opinion and experience from the game. Removing reviews would not serve that purpose, and even if we wanted to - I've never heard of such option being possible at all.

Secondly - regarding the game itself. I am really sorry current experience isn't sufficiently good for you. Starpoint 3 is a game still under construction (we've just released major update 4 out of 10), meaning we're not yet halfway there. We are really doing our best to release updates and reach milestones as fast as possible, but game of this size takes time no matter what you do. On Friday Update 4 was released, and there were several additional features almost completed, but not fully tested yet, so in order to avoid players waiting, we'll add this update early next week an "in-between" update before next major one.

Regarding storyline - there were some changes to already implemented part of the story in comparison to initial Early Access version (some changes to dialogues, rewamped flow and difficulty of some missions, modified cutscenes...), but biggest chunk of changes is scheduled to some in Update 5 and 6, and that part mainly goes for yet undisclosed part of the story (but not exclusively, current missions will get some more tweaks as well). All changes already done, and especially those that are coming, are based mostly on feedback we got from players so far. If you look at previous titles of ours, we always accepted players feedback (in Starpoint 2 we changed about 30% of already implemented features based of players requests, and Starpoint Warlords was game concept entirely based on suggestions). We are taking feedback seriously, and accept it whenever possible, even if that means we're makong our own development path harder, all in hopes that players can help us create better experience. So far it worked to everyone's benefit and our intention was to continue this in the future. Ofcourse, half way into development, we cannot adopt massive changes that would mean changing the entire game from the start. But if that is the situation, we also say that clearly and avoid misleading players. That is what we do, and always did in the past. If your impressions is different, I can only say that we are sorry you're disappointed.

Starpoint Gemini 3 will be different game then predecessors, but each Starpoint game had some hugely different variations in main concept (SPG1 - 2D plane game, SPG2 - full 3D tactical simulator, SPGW - hybrid simulation/strategy game), so we believed our players will be happy getting another, not yet explored perspective in our franchise. That said, once everything planned on Roadmap is developed and added to game (all mechanics, entire story, capital ship mechanics etc...), it will despite all the changes, still be a recognizable Starpoint game.

I can only hope you will continue to follow what we're doing, and that in the end you will also find enough good things to consider our finished game worthy of your time.

In the end, no matter what you decide, I hope I provided some useful insight into what is happening and what is yet to come. And definitely, thank you for your feedback and thank you for taking the time to write this indepth review!

Mario
LGM Games team
Hello, Mario!

Thanks for your reply.

It might be just me, but I always thought that early access should not only help developers test everything and catch bugs, but also it should show players what game might look like when released. To pursuade them to buy the game and get positive impression.
It's really great that you're working on performance, and game pace is faster, and starting battles are more forgiving to unexperienced player. You also added new equipment, new ship upgrades. But all this is not new to your games, and that alone is not enough.
Even in your developer videos (I looked through them before posting) you don't show more than we see in this Early Access, no pictures of high-quality characters, planets, etc. We do see better quality image of our "captain" on a loading screen, but that's not even a model, just animated art. And with all this 4 updates you've mentioned, nothing changed. It's pretty logical to think that graphics would not improve, at least up to modern quality. You just never showed us anything to think otherwise.
I won't dig in story, it was badly received here and in Steam, and you know it. After all, such "stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf herder" character as Han Solo in Star Wars worked out really good. Or maybe main hero has something from Star-Lord from Marvel's "Guardians of the Galaxy". It MIGHT work out, so I'll wait for final version (though I'm sceptical). But IMO this was definitely a bad decision to show the players such "hero" without showing how it'll turn out (if it will). Some placeholder story (neutral, not absurd) or just tutorial to show gameplay basics would be much better for you - at least, would be way less negative reviews.

I really want this game to be successful, I really do. Want to see the the whole story, hoping for the best. So I'll be waiting, and trying story updates from time to time. And complaining :D

Btw, it would be better if you had integrated bug report in game.

Regards,
Nikolay
Posted January 21, 2020
I think you may need to temper your expectations for early access somewhat.
Ultimately you are buying into a game early with the understanding you're given the chance to provide feedback and influence the development. But the initial impression I get from your first post is someone who was expecting a nearly complete and polished game.

For all we know they are sitting on months worth of graphical asset work, but they are just not at the phase in the project where they are ready to incorporate it, for instace. It would really suck to release tons of great stuff early but then have to redo all your assets -> engine import work because you needed to change how the engine worked in a major way, etc.

Let's really be honest, attaching value judgements to an early access title such as "would not buy, wait until its done" is a little disingenuous. you're trying to grade it on certain aspects of a finished product when it is wholly not the case and not how the title is being represented.

When I buy early access titles, I tend to try them out every once in a while, provide feedback if I think something should be addressed, but otherwise I don't pay attention to it. I wait for the game to be finished and officially released to retail.

Then I give it a proper "review".
Post edited January 21, 2020 by chen182
Posted January 21, 2020
Hello chen182!

It's not my first Early Access, and you're mistaken about me. As I've said - I'd be fine without story and if devs showed us arts/models how they want game to look like (that's normally shown in the trailer, or dev interview). For gameplay, 2 systems (just to show transition between them) would be fine too. Just enough to try and test everything, and catch obvious bugs. I'm not really demanding and not expecting much.
I mean that we should know where it is going, if it's "Early Access". Like a glimpse on the future release, to which we're going to. But what we see in any open sources is what we get here - and what we get is not good enough for modern game. If you take a look at their roadmap in other topic - there's actually nothing related to improving graphics. "Optimization" - yes, and they're good at it. I know that WhaleX (from Whale2 to WhaleX, they're not the only company to dislike numbers inbetween) is their own engine, which means that we don't yet know what it's capable of - maybe it just can't support high quality character models (why not just pre-render them and save cutscenes as videos?), but is good for huge universe with tons of different ships. Story expansion plans are good (and guilds with their quests also look promising - maybe we'll get "Skyrim in space" with poor main story compensated by side stories) - but they have a bad start, which is hard to work out (which means - wait and see if they manage).

Anyway, review is a personal opinion. For me, as for many others previous or future buyers, "Starpoint Gemini" title was a good enough reason to buy it (didn't like Warlords, though) - no matter what reviews or screenshots/videos say. Reviews are for people who have doubts.
Posted March 24, 2020
Yep - good back and fourth here for the most part.

The story and characters have always been somewhat corny / cheesy - but SG3 takes it a step further.

The character is a dick. Seriously unlikable - like game killing unlikable.

Was all set for a pre-order until I saw a bunch of videos with the lead. Hopefully that's changed a bit.

You can have likeable doofus, or arrogant smart characters that work, but arrogant ignorant just make me want to punch him.

Hoping that it's changed a lot in the last few months because I loved the previous work so much.
Posted April 10, 2020
avatar
Nickolaeris: For those who missed old reviews I'll say that main character has inadequate behaviour, and you won't feel any sympathies towards him - probably you'll even despise him. Probably some players will like that for some time, but at some point it reaches absurd.
avatar
Icinix: The character is a dick. Seriously unlikable - like game killing unlikable.

Was all set for a pre-order until I saw a bunch of videos with the lead. Hopefully that's changed a bit.

You can have likeable doofus, or arrogant smart characters that work, but arrogant ignorant just make me want to punch him.

Hoping that it's changed a lot in the last few months because I loved the previous work so much.
I cannot agree more on the main character, I bought the game a while back with fond memories of the previous titles, about 1 hour into the game I gave up, the storyline and main character just did not make me want to continue playing, I gave up and have not touched it since.
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