Okay, I've spent a little time with this game and it definately is in the middle of a serious sand and polish mode.
The core gameplay is decent. It's not something you'd play forever but it's alright. The concept is cool as hell if Soldak can ever nail it down.
There's a number of little things in this that are annoying me. One is post moderation. Very difficult to have a discussion and get into it as a newb when a mod needs to come by to approve everything first. Anyway...
Another is the shop mechanics. Yeah, fine, it's all randomized. You'd think though that most of it would be stuff you could use unless you purposely set the game over your level. I'd say 75-80% of the stuff in shops that I'd be looking to get is actually above my current abilities by a level if not two... and that's if I sunk all my points into that. I got pretty heavy on Helm because I got tired of driving like a slug through the universe. I expect the rest of my gear to suck. I don't expect the shopkeepers (all of them) to be only selling Tiffany's.
A third is this MASSIVE fleet of ships you end up fighting. An example. My current build is a 'run like hell' build. Fighter Bay, EMP, and Mines. Remember, I'm speedy! I'm at 170 speed for crying out loud. You know what I can outrun?
Nada.
So, I end up flying into the NEXT set, inside of 30 seconds, of another fleet of 5+ ships... until you've got 30-40+ ships that you've collected going through areas you JUST cleaned out and are picking up more. I don't feel like it's ship on ship combat with tactical assets, it's "Can I dump enough damage or get to a friendly world before I die?". This is not pleasant to me. Every enemy feels the same to boot. They've got this HUGE library of models, but I'll be damned if I can tell you what the different ones do. They chase you at matched speed and shoot you with lasers. Some have more hitpoints... usually the smaller ships. Narm? Maybe they heavily differentiate at the really high levels, I don't know. If it suddenly changes heavily later though I'm going to be frustrated.
Alright, so now we're going to get into the whole loot randomness. RANDOM LOOTZ IS COOLZ because it beefs you up compared to standard gear at your current... WTF you mean the same item as a rare means I need more of x stat because it's better? Oh, come on. Screw it, I'll just shop at the markets. Between weak assed crap in the drops and the fact that my stats probably can't support a 'better find' anyway since I need another level to use the same item with a boost, let's concentrate on quests.
... Ooookay, or not. "Please go scan this world..." Okay, sure. What system? Errr, um, looks like that connects to it, I'll pop in over there and... "Obsolete." THE HECK? What, were you already there and teasing me? By the time you've built up your sector map all of those missions are basically useless. Either the sector's allied or its at war and fully colonized... which brings me to the next point. Are you actually supposed to be able to participate in that war?
I'm dragging back fleets of 30+ monster ships to AI worlds so they can help me obliterate them before I get gakked. They're eating them. Now, you want me to run a weapons supply UNDER THE ENEMY who has equivalent firepower? Which one of us is insane here?
Okay, so no war quests unless I can find a friendly in the middle of attacking some planet. Deliver xyz quests are pretty danged hard at the beginning too as your 3 heavy slots are usually - Weapon/Power/Engine. You have to give up one to deliver colonists or other random things to far-flung worlds, or resort to playing hide and seek for the Medium/Light equivalents (thrust comes to mind) and completely reconfigure to attempt it.
That leaves... Pirates and Hunting missions. Any name you say ends up as "Bring back five Black Bunny Butts" and "Kill Random Boss Spawn". Neither of these really make me feel like you're influencing the events of the 4x going on around you. So, the empire with 28 worlds lost one. Boo Hoo, here, have a cookie.
So, the real component of this that should make it stand out is the politics and the influence. You make cash to get influence right? Well, I went on a whisper campaign to attempt to break an alliance to see what it would do. In my first playthrough I sold some technology for about 150k each to the different races so I was pretty set in credits.
100k in credits later I'd managed by using the most expensive option to lower the race's opinion by about 15 points. My guess is they were improving it in between. Now, admittedly, I was trying to snap an alliance in half and have them go at each other. On the other hand for about 45k I was able to get them to just simply declare war. Woots.
Espionage... I'm assuming I'm supposed to get a tech the same way that knowledge drops when you rt-click will give you. If there's a list of techs I've got available I can't find it, I can only see the ones I have that whoever I'm trading with doesn't. However, apparently I managed to steal about 15 level 1 techs when I tried, cause I never saw nuttin.
About the only useful one is getting worlds to rebel, and I haven't really played with it enough to know how heavy handed I need to be with it yet.
So, the space-side influence is pretty meh. How about direct politics? You're an ant. You're treated that way. They want to give me 200 creds for info on worlds they've never been near, have no interest in information on their enemy, but once I'm allied you'll basically let me pick your pockets clean for belly button lint. Which gives me money to do... what exactly?
Then there's a ton of minor interface things that just make me wonder.
- Why does 'repair all' not repair the structure of my ship and need to be done via a different button?
- Why does the game not pause in the Trade Screen? It does everywhere else.
- Why when a pickup object and a planet overlap does the planet get priority?
- Why can I NOT move a cargo bin while it has items in it to my stash? Isn't that one of the benefits of having subdivided inventories?
- I realize they're still working on a 'good approach' but the entire item value and where it goes screen just doesn't work for me yet. Blizzard uses a particular color scheme for a reason, including color blindness. If you're gonna build a kill and loot game, why not stick with convention? And those triangles just really don't work, but that's something still under experimentation.
- I still have no idea why my 'speed refills' aren't able to be dropped into the Rt-Click bar. I can put weapons (which I have under 1,2,3,4...) but I can't put the items I CAN'T hotlink to the left trigger, like speed heals/refills. Narm? If I can, I certainly haven't figured out how in 3 sectors of randomly trying in frustration.
- A tiny little thing: When I miss because my attack was too low, TELL ME I MISSED. Don't make me wonder if I STILL haven't quite figured out the range of this thing...
- Personal gripe: If I put in 3 fighter bays with a max of 5 fighters each and want to move like a dead slug with no power, I expect to be able to launch 5 of EACH fighter, not a total of 5 and be able to pick my flavor.
- If you're going to have the base race seem important, make it important. I'm long past where 5 points in any direction meant anything, particularly since I gained four levels randomly flying around trying to figure out the interface. Basically, beginning race is 'what ship looks cool'. It really has no effect later.
Alright, so, that's one hell of a gripe list. However, there's a number of things it does RIGHT:
In most politics screens, you end up playing a massive guessing game with the other faction trying to figure out what they'll want in return for what you desire. One shining mechanic that Drox includes is simply the "What'll it take to get this to happen?". Talk about frustration removal.
Heavy Duty Customization. Aside from my gripes about misleading fighter counts and overzealous shopkeepers, the customization (once you learn to read that purple (why not red?) means it's going to COST you something and gold means it GIVES you something and white means it's a bonus...) is amazing. Shields and Armor need a bit more differential (why would I take one I pay to repair over one I don't when they do the same thing) and there needs to be more intuitive stat to ability traversal other than "Hit head here" until you get it, but you can customize to an amazing degree. There's a TON of depth in customization and specialization... I can see it going tons further as you get more levels.
The concept is cool as crap. It's worth saying twice. The idea of being the rogue hero or influential mercenary unit in the middle of the 4x war is cool as crap. I adored Battletech and most of that game was based around the mercenary and small unit tactics, as true wars were beyond the scope of the tabletop version... at least if you wanted to get a game done inside of a week. Pacing is part of the problem for me but I think that's a core idea of the game that it's supposed to run past you and you hang on for the ride. There's already discussions going about how to increase your feeling of effectiveness and importance in the sector, so I won't belabor that. Just... Cool.
The game handling is pretty tight. I'm pretty 'whatever, does it function' when it comes to pretty for a UI, particularly when it's not a AAA developer. You go where you're supposed to, you shoot at what you target. There's minor miffs I have (in 9.003 your target isn't obvious with all its bonuses anymore, like it was in 9.000) but you never get that 'what in hells name is my character doing NOW?' feeling. It feels reasonably responsive (particularly for my speedy ship). The combat is fast and furious but that's more a 'Are you into this' kind of thing than preference. Right now I have to pause to examine any ship in detail and it's just not worth it. I'm still going to fire a nuclear missile at it and hope it does some damage.
The exploration feel for the game is alright. I'd rather there were less chests (alright, anomalies, space junk, and storage bins) that were worth more a piece, but they're there and help keep you from feeling you're flying through nothing for long stretches... because that's what you're going to do to find space lanes and gates... Room Doors and teleporters for the rest of us.
The galaxy definately feels alive around you. There's constantly monsters attacking something somewhere. It's particularly gratifying to be sitting at the trader screen browsing and selling and watching your influence and xp go up a bit because your fighters are going to work on some invader.
I think I'll come back to it in a few patches, see how it 'feels' then. 3 Sectors was enough to get a feel for the game (2 nights) and I won't say I didn't get my money's value out of it for $15 even if I walked away tonight, just on the "How many movies could I have gone and watched" question.
There's just a lot more I could see it being.
