Posted November 25, 2015
I've played the game for about 3 days at about 10 hours a day. After beating the game i think i'm done with the game, and with it i'll give my thoughts on it.
First impressions i got was the game was rather low lighted and dimmed. Of course after it became obvious it wasn't suppose to be that way it had to be my configuration, which i had changed to DirectX9. Switching to OpenGL fixed that, and DirectX11 works too. Although with some configurations the game would crash while opening.
Graphics: The game looks awesome! Not too much, and not too little. With all the settings on with high/ultra the game has a very distinct in space feel Even on lower settings i saw no big differences. Space felt like space. Especially zooming at 500sm a second you could see nebulas and asteroids and planets from a long ways away.
Also the 3D models of some of the story characters you interact with (and bartenders and mercenaries) is very good, sorta Shrek-level good; Although they just sit there doing their own thing and talking so they don't need a lot otherwise...
Music: Awesome! Has a distinct lone cowboy-ish feel to it. I never got tired of it. Thankfully the music isn't locked in some odd pak file either so you can enjoy it at any time. Also the game gives you the option (in configuration) to set your own music, which a lot more games need to do! (Nickelback would be a good choice)
Gameplay: Despite it's initial looks, the game isn't in 3D space, rather it's 2D space with some things drifting above and below you. You can't go up or down, and because of that the confusion of distance, direction and 6 directional movement is removed to 2 directions (left and right). Also i rarely got confused from the scanner/minimap as to where things were (usually over cluttered with icons was the problem).
You use ships that have 3 sets of stats, the outer regenerating shields, armor, and the hull. There's also a quick deflector shield you can erect at any time if a big missile is coming, which protects the ship and also the shields giving them a chance to recover, downside is you can't attack. The hull, well if they break into the hull you're probably in trouble. Thankfully there's 4 sets of shields/armor plating, and if one looks low if you swing around to the opposite side the other side will have a chance to recharge (although during the swing it might get halfway recharged depending on the shields you have).
On board AI is pretty good for aiming at nearby enemies so you don't have to fight everything yourself; Although i noticed there's a few that don't shoot on their own. This includes the one you're actively using (usually broadsides for ease of movement, and flak/EMP).
Movement: Since you can only turn left and right, then there's forward movement (no reverse). When there's not anything nearby you'll automatically switch to sub-light speed which is something like 5x faster. If you want to jump to warp speed holding down to activate and charge (3-4 seconds) before you're whipping at high speed. You'll automatically drop out of warp if the mass of the area is too high (asteroids, ships, etc) so no colliding and instant death thankfully. Unfortunately often enough pirates or groups will make a large line and you'll have almost no time before you drop out of warp with a small fleet to deal with.
Distress Signals: While you're flying at high speed you'll pick up occasional distress signals. About 50% of the time it seems they are fake, more specifically lures to get traders or anyone to come in while they swoop after you to steal your cargo or blow your ship up. If you happen to help a trader or other ships, they will often give you credits based on the difficulty of the area (ranging from 2,000 to 50,000), per trader.
I never figured out how to activate it and never needed it honestly.
Trading/Stations: There's trading in the game. Specifically each station will have it's own ecosystem much like each town would (although today it's less seen/obvious with fixed prices everywhere). With commodities you can trade large amounts of cargo from one station to another to make a profit. If it's green it's above average, red is below average, and grey is average-ish. The lowest a price tends to get is half of average while the highest is probably double average. To add to the spice, there's contraband. This includes live organs, narc-cola, space slaves, and toxic waste. All contraband is marked in red in the name so it's easy to identify. Not everywhere will buy/sell it, so you might end up with 4 or more live organs and you can't sell them off. Get caught and you might get hunted down by the militia, or just have it confiscated (hope you didn't heavily invest in it then). You will often run out of room in you hull so expect to jettison a few worthless things out to get more valuable stuff.
When talking with traders, you can buy and sell goods from them, usually one or the other. They will always give you a good deal (from what i can tell).
The bar is a good introduction for beginners, usually telling you basic advice, telling you some of the items that might be selling low in the nearby system (Although it tended to not be helpful). You can also hire a mercenary fighter ship. They will stick by your side until they die or are dismissed (which wasn't explained anywhere, or if they leave on their own mine never lived long enough for that to happen). Unfortunately you can only have 1 mercenary, so no making your own fleet :(
A number of story based missions start off in the stations, in the bar where you meet Juno or one of her acquaintances.
The shipyard lets you buy a new ship (well, trade in). And the Equipment bay lets you buy/upgrade any equipment you have slots for (except ordinance because... i don't know. bug? Or i needed a component i never bought). Don't worry about buying and selling here, you get 1:1 trading, never losing money from what i can tell, so you can buy and swap all you want to try different play styles. There's also a Surplus section that pops up with any equipment you picked up and aren't using, or bought and aren't using. Early on you might have a smugglers hold giving you 4 slots that can't be scanned, beyond that the space vs value starts really becoming obvious. Joining the trader's guild can give you some very very large extension bays for more stuff though.
Finally there's missions, which i'll get to a little later.
Final note: YOU AUTOMATICALLY SAVE AT STATIONS, and only there.
Factions: From what i see there's 6 factions. Citizens, Militia, and then gangs. There's also personal reputations with the trader's guild and mercenary guild (which you have to pay to join). If you do missions for these guilds your rank/level will go up with them opening up some of the higher tier equipment that can be very very nice, including unique ships that you can't get anywhere else.
Missions: Almost all of them are fighting in one way or another. Some require moving cargo to another station, but you almost always are jumped at some point, either at the destination, midway (multiple times), or your mission is to remove pirates or get cargo and then get ambushed. Etc etc. Very few missions are quiet.
With the missions at each station there's a risk level. They go Very Low (blue), Low (green), Average, High (yellow), Very High (red). This is based on your ship and it's equipment and how easy/hard it would be to deal with in a fight. To start i'd recommend only taking low missions until you know what you're doing. Even then a low risk mission might not be easy to complete; Early on the dead drops are the highest risk ones as you'll often be ambushed by plenty of fighters at some point. Usually running is the best option.
Some missions although are lower risk will pay 2x-3x more if they require jumps. A few times i've gotten a million credits for jumping 3 places away, picking up cargo and returning with it. (one of the few times it was totally quiet). Be mindful the areas might be more difficult so you should be armed accordingly, or avoid all fights until you get back to the area you can handle.
Lastly the missions often affect the opinion from 1-3 parties. If you are running stuff for the guild, the guild will get +3 to their opinion of you, if you are destroying a pirate gang meetup place, +10 to Militia and -10 to gang. Etc.
Voice Acting: All the actors sound like they tried their best, not reading from a script so that's good... To note often the AI will warn you when shields go down on portside or starboard, which i still don't understand.
First impressions i got was the game was rather low lighted and dimmed. Of course after it became obvious it wasn't suppose to be that way it had to be my configuration, which i had changed to DirectX9. Switching to OpenGL fixed that, and DirectX11 works too. Although with some configurations the game would crash while opening.
Graphics: The game looks awesome! Not too much, and not too little. With all the settings on with high/ultra the game has a very distinct in space feel Even on lower settings i saw no big differences. Space felt like space. Especially zooming at 500sm a second you could see nebulas and asteroids and planets from a long ways away.
Also the 3D models of some of the story characters you interact with (and bartenders and mercenaries) is very good, sorta Shrek-level good; Although they just sit there doing their own thing and talking so they don't need a lot otherwise...
Music: Awesome! Has a distinct lone cowboy-ish feel to it. I never got tired of it. Thankfully the music isn't locked in some odd pak file either so you can enjoy it at any time. Also the game gives you the option (in configuration) to set your own music, which a lot more games need to do! (Nickelback would be a good choice)
Gameplay: Despite it's initial looks, the game isn't in 3D space, rather it's 2D space with some things drifting above and below you. You can't go up or down, and because of that the confusion of distance, direction and 6 directional movement is removed to 2 directions (left and right). Also i rarely got confused from the scanner/minimap as to where things were (usually over cluttered with icons was the problem).
You use ships that have 3 sets of stats, the outer regenerating shields, armor, and the hull. There's also a quick deflector shield you can erect at any time if a big missile is coming, which protects the ship and also the shields giving them a chance to recover, downside is you can't attack. The hull, well if they break into the hull you're probably in trouble. Thankfully there's 4 sets of shields/armor plating, and if one looks low if you swing around to the opposite side the other side will have a chance to recharge (although during the swing it might get halfway recharged depending on the shields you have).
On board AI is pretty good for aiming at nearby enemies so you don't have to fight everything yourself; Although i noticed there's a few that don't shoot on their own. This includes the one you're actively using (usually broadsides for ease of movement, and flak/EMP).
Movement: Since you can only turn left and right, then there's forward movement (no reverse). When there's not anything nearby you'll automatically switch to sub-light speed which is something like 5x faster. If you want to jump to warp speed holding down to activate and charge (3-4 seconds) before you're whipping at high speed. You'll automatically drop out of warp if the mass of the area is too high (asteroids, ships, etc) so no colliding and instant death thankfully. Unfortunately often enough pirates or groups will make a large line and you'll have almost no time before you drop out of warp with a small fleet to deal with.
Distress Signals: While you're flying at high speed you'll pick up occasional distress signals. About 50% of the time it seems they are fake, more specifically lures to get traders or anyone to come in while they swoop after you to steal your cargo or blow your ship up. If you happen to help a trader or other ships, they will often give you credits based on the difficulty of the area (ranging from 2,000 to 50,000), per trader.
I never figured out how to activate it and never needed it honestly.
Trading/Stations: There's trading in the game. Specifically each station will have it's own ecosystem much like each town would (although today it's less seen/obvious with fixed prices everywhere). With commodities you can trade large amounts of cargo from one station to another to make a profit. If it's green it's above average, red is below average, and grey is average-ish. The lowest a price tends to get is half of average while the highest is probably double average. To add to the spice, there's contraband. This includes live organs, narc-cola, space slaves, and toxic waste. All contraband is marked in red in the name so it's easy to identify. Not everywhere will buy/sell it, so you might end up with 4 or more live organs and you can't sell them off. Get caught and you might get hunted down by the militia, or just have it confiscated (hope you didn't heavily invest in it then). You will often run out of room in you hull so expect to jettison a few worthless things out to get more valuable stuff.
When talking with traders, you can buy and sell goods from them, usually one or the other. They will always give you a good deal (from what i can tell).
The bar is a good introduction for beginners, usually telling you basic advice, telling you some of the items that might be selling low in the nearby system (Although it tended to not be helpful). You can also hire a mercenary fighter ship. They will stick by your side until they die or are dismissed (which wasn't explained anywhere, or if they leave on their own mine never lived long enough for that to happen). Unfortunately you can only have 1 mercenary, so no making your own fleet :(
A number of story based missions start off in the stations, in the bar where you meet Juno or one of her acquaintances.
The shipyard lets you buy a new ship (well, trade in). And the Equipment bay lets you buy/upgrade any equipment you have slots for (except ordinance because... i don't know. bug? Or i needed a component i never bought). Don't worry about buying and selling here, you get 1:1 trading, never losing money from what i can tell, so you can buy and swap all you want to try different play styles. There's also a Surplus section that pops up with any equipment you picked up and aren't using, or bought and aren't using. Early on you might have a smugglers hold giving you 4 slots that can't be scanned, beyond that the space vs value starts really becoming obvious. Joining the trader's guild can give you some very very large extension bays for more stuff though.
Finally there's missions, which i'll get to a little later.
Final note: YOU AUTOMATICALLY SAVE AT STATIONS, and only there.
Factions: From what i see there's 6 factions. Citizens, Militia, and then gangs. There's also personal reputations with the trader's guild and mercenary guild (which you have to pay to join). If you do missions for these guilds your rank/level will go up with them opening up some of the higher tier equipment that can be very very nice, including unique ships that you can't get anywhere else.
Missions: Almost all of them are fighting in one way or another. Some require moving cargo to another station, but you almost always are jumped at some point, either at the destination, midway (multiple times), or your mission is to remove pirates or get cargo and then get ambushed. Etc etc. Very few missions are quiet.
With the missions at each station there's a risk level. They go Very Low (blue), Low (green), Average, High (yellow), Very High (red). This is based on your ship and it's equipment and how easy/hard it would be to deal with in a fight. To start i'd recommend only taking low missions until you know what you're doing. Even then a low risk mission might not be easy to complete; Early on the dead drops are the highest risk ones as you'll often be ambushed by plenty of fighters at some point. Usually running is the best option.
Some missions although are lower risk will pay 2x-3x more if they require jumps. A few times i've gotten a million credits for jumping 3 places away, picking up cargo and returning with it. (one of the few times it was totally quiet). Be mindful the areas might be more difficult so you should be armed accordingly, or avoid all fights until you get back to the area you can handle.
Lastly the missions often affect the opinion from 1-3 parties. If you are running stuff for the guild, the guild will get +3 to their opinion of you, if you are destroying a pirate gang meetup place, +10 to Militia and -10 to gang. Etc.
Voice Acting: All the actors sound like they tried their best, not reading from a script so that's good... To note often the AI will warn you when shields go down on portside or starboard, which i still don't understand.
Post edited March 01, 2016 by rtcvb32
