I've just finished the last set mission and I had some proper lulz about the wonderful Star Wars reference. I'm not exactly sure if it was deliberate, but hell, I found it funny when I was instructed to fly into a 'trench' and destroy the generator.
Seriously they might as well had Eona saying, "That's Impossible." Followed by Kayron, "That's not impossible, I used to bullseye s'kaa in my DS16 back home... they're not much bigger than 2 metres."
Otherwise from this, I thought the game was pretty good but repetitive at times. Plus, Eona yelling in my ear every second got rather annoying; though if she was as hot as Naara I think I'd be more forgiving.
One last thing, why does it say this on the Wikipeida article:
"...destroying capital ships to prevent their capture by rebels and helping provide sex toys to beleaguered female cyborgs Kayron discovers a galactic conspiracy..."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DarkStar_One)
Because if I missed that part of the game, it totally sucks :(

I enjoyed it well enough. Story was good, gameplay was fun and kept me going. It's been a while since I played it, but now that I bought it here I'm going to give it another go.
And the quote is probably just bullshit, if not, I missed that part too. Well, unless you can trade certain... items like that... Yeah...

I just finished DS1 and I am quite disappointed. The game had its moments; the most exciting part was finding artifacts to upgrade your ship and plasma, but the storyline didnt do it for me at all. Maybe it was the terrible voice acting, but the ending was quite anti-climatic and there was nothing challenging or exciting about the final Star Wars New Hope-esque mission. I guess Ascaron basically decided to commit all of the game's mission difficulty into two harrowingly annoying and impossible Flak missions. And after you beat the game, you can upgrade your ship to the max - but for what? There are no new ships or weapons to buy, no new systems (save the Ascarong side mission) to discover, no reason to keep playing, period.
Unlike other games of this genre, there was never any joy in exploration since every system was exactly the same. And maybe its just me, but money was never an issue since you get a lot for every pirate you kill and there are no expensive ships or weapons to buy so there was no desire to take missions (which were repetitive anyways) after a few hours of playing. Speaking of weapons, the thrill of finding new and better weapons to buy with the boatload of money you have is taken away since you can simply get the best weapons by defeating pirate gangs, and you can always keep going back to the same gang, wipe it out again, and get another top-of-the-line gun. With the turret firing system so advanced (eventually I didnt even bother to aim with the front guns because by the time I could get the enemy in front of me the turrets had all but destroyed him) missiles are virtually useless and a waste of a perfectly good hardpoint . In fairness, non-torpedo missiles were useless for me in Freelancer, but there is no comparing the two games whatsoever.
In short, I am glad I didnt pay full price for this game, and most likely I will turn right around and resell my original copy on eBay since I will never play it again.

i had played and freelancer and DS1. I have to say DS1 is easy to complete. may be because of the forum help and the maps.
i wish i could
upgrade my ship to cruser. recruit my members or rebels. take over a system. have my own army. kill all enemies and have my own power hunger.
have my won trade station. put more money in research. end less technology. design my ship.
but nice game. really worth the money. thanks guys.

I haven't finished it, but at this point I don't think I'm going to bother. (Yes, I got past the second flak mission.) It really feels like a single-player MMO to me-- there's an unbelievable amount of time wasted in travel, even with time acceleration on, looking for artifacts or even just trying to find the entrance to a system you want to get to (or to find somewhere that sells the next field drive upgrade). Trade, side missions and weapon upgrades offer the illusion of depth, but the side missions are always the same, trade is just a matter of not buying something your target system produces, and weaponry comes down to 'buy the best you can get'.
What did it in for me were the drones. They're boring. They're ugly. They come in absolutely stupid numbers. They ended up wearing down my interest in the game almost as fast as they did that crippled Thul cruiser I wasted long minutes trying to defend.

I felt quite disappointed with the ending. And generally with lategame progression. My first three thoughts were:
-What a ripoff, Star Wars, Stargate, Starcraft, in one package
-So much talking, and the girl is not our girlfriend. She is not even getting killed. Instead she is someone elses gf. Thats pretty sadistic.
-Devs must have thought a spacesim is Moorhuhn in space.
Too bad, cause the beginning was quite nice.

Ah, but what do you think the "mandroids" were for (in the last Thul system you uncovered)?

Agree with everything -- the game is slightly repetitive, but the designers were smart enough to throw little different things here and there to keep me going. I really enjoyed it, despite the repetition (I abandoned trade and other missions early -- did just story missions and pirate hideouts to get good weapons, and Side Missions to get all artifacts). And I like the Star Wars homage, and the fact that we did NOT stay with the girl at the end.

Cheers!

I've just finished it, and all in all, I found Darkstar One to be a pleasant game.
Sure, it was rather repetitive and, aside from the story, hollow as well, but I enjoyed the fact that there are multiple ways to earn money for upgrades (for example, I bothered only a couple of times to exterminate pirate gangs, and even that mostly because I accidentally stumbled upon them while mining meteorites).
The story was good overall; from the last section, I especially enjoyed the part where Kayron's friends all appeared at once from hyperspace to join the fight. Also, nice Star Wars appreciation ending mission (complete with the S'kaa guy saying "Your friends will soon all die").

I enjoyed the game in overall, I liked hunting for the artifacts, though I wish it was more challenging at times. Quite repetitive gameplay but it kinda works. I didn't really like the story that much, especially the ending mission was anti-climatic. Also whats this idea with saving a girl and then saving the galaxy and getting ditched by her in the end?? That felt really awkward and somehow disheartening. I'd rather not have her in the first place if you wanna play it that way.

Getting keys for the systems was a pain in the ass sometimes.
After you get all the artifacts and complete the story, there is nothing to do really...you are done here.

Only one ship available, but since its crucial to the plot its understandable.

To sum up, its a game you can spend a bunch of hours and have fun blasting pirates to pieces, getting artifacts, travel around the galaxy. Of course the game had its problems. I'd probably give it either 3 stars at max or 2 at minimum.

Late reply, but Eona was someone else's girlfriend the whole time. This was revealed much earlier in the game. It is evident by the end that Kayron is attracted to Naara (the better choice if you ask me) and she also appeared to be interested in him. So I think that sexy times await the protagonist after all. Happy days indeed.

This game needed a first-person walkabout mode (for exploring, not shooting) and put in the classic Battlestar Galactica universe. Would've been great.

The game is functional but is also not particularly good, trade is useless (you can get better weapons by going against the pirates) and not very fun, the world is gated off, combat is very simplistic, etc.

I strongly suspect that the gameplay was based on Privateer 2 because things like needing to haul containers to trade seem to be from that design philosophy. That was the only thing that pleasantly surprised me, and I'm pretty sure it was an accident considering the rest of the story is one of the worst, most charmless cliché storms ever.