Well, I spent some time with this.
Honestly, in the game's current state, I cant really recommend it.
Unless you LOVE grinding. Like, absolutely freaking love the concept and want to bloody MARRY it. If grinding just makes your whole day, whole year, whole century into a wonderful special time, then yes. You want this game SO badly. It's been awhile since I've played something this blasted grindy; I've already put the game aside and probably wont come back for quite awhile, provided I remember that I own it later on.
I'm also going to copy-paste something I posted in the Steam forums, which is feedback I already gave, just in case this is useful somehow to anyone:
So, bought the game, spent a little time with it... not all that much... but as I think first-impression feedback can be very important (it sure helps if the game gives a good impression QUICKLY, particularly with people having to make decisions based on the 2 hours Steam gives you, if they're concerned about possible refunding) I thought I'd just say some stuff about it. And then all of you can agree or disagree, or.... whatever, if you bother to read this.
Firstly: The game feels a bit like Mount & Blade in space. I'm going to make a whole bunch of comparisons to that game in here, thusly... For some people, those similarities absolutely fine. I personally quite enjoy Mount & Blade. The overall starmap (or whatever it's called) is a big part of this feeling, because that's pretty much EXACTLY like M&B's world map, just minus the mountains and such that you couldnt travel through. A large variety of locations belonging to different factions all doing their own things, tons of different characters roaming the map, doing whatever, and what seems like a variety of things to do. Even the combat, or what I've seen of it anyway, is a bit like that; in M&B, once you have an actual mount, the combat in some ways can get a little mindless (lance, lance, lance, lance, oh hey, time for more lancing) but at the same time positioning and such is extremely important and a huge part of each battle; I get that same feeling here too. So it really does feel like that game, at least to me. But I can see where that might be a major turnoff for some; not everyone likes the M&B formula. But still, I think there's alot of potential here.
BUT. The game seems to just take too bloody long to show you this.
I'm still in the very early part of the game. And it's too grindy! I've barely done any combat because I pretty much cant; even attacking a bandit whose threat level was HALF of mine got me obliterated, simply because he had 10 squillion strike ships, and I had.... 2. I get the way the resource system works.... but it seems like you either just dont get enough resources for harvesting, or prices on things are just WAY too high, as it simply seems to take much too long to get enough to buy new stuff and actually advance your ship. This bad pacing IS going to ruin the game for some players, because how can they see all that much of it within the two-hours-to-decide limit that Steam gives you? It's taking me FOREVER just to get past the "get better" part of the tutorial.
And yes, perhaps there's better ways of approaching even that... there very well could be. But for the totally new player, it's still a major issue. I, for one, have no idea of wether or not there's a better way at this point. Too early.
I do recognize though that this sort of thing is a balance issue and can be resolved as time goes on, and am hoping that's the case.
Overall, there's some things I'd like to see:
1. More combat UI stuffs! I cant even tell how much range my weapons have. THAT is really, really irritating. I'd also like to see how much damage I"m doing with my attacks. I feel like I'm just not being given enough information.
2. More strike units and such, and more options for commanding them. Right now it seems the ONLY way to command strike units is to say "EVERYONE all at once, go attack/defend/whatever this object". I cant, say, have one guy go after one thing, another go after something else.... stuff like that. Something I"d love would be if I could, like, pause the game, and take a moment to give orders to each of my strike ships or whatever. The current system just doesnt cut it. And having only 2 strike units to start out with is kinda silly.
3. The option to have a larger Starmap. It does feel a bit small, even though there's a good number of locations and such. It means less exploration, and it also feels a little cramped, at least to me. As if there almost isnt quite enough room for the 2 squillion captains in the game because the map needs to be a bit bigger.
4. More things to do with my ship. I get that simply clicking on resources and such is easier/faster, but it's not interesting. And when you spend so much time doing it, well... the game has this huge focus on the ships that you get to pilot and build, but you dont spend much TIME with them, or at least that's how it seems so far. And heck, the initial tutorial makes it SEEM like that's going to be the case, when it's showing you the crates fulla stuff to grab, I was thinking "okay, it's going to drop me into this mode occaisionally to do non-combat stuff". Which would be a good idea, it breaks up the flow nicely. But it isnt happening. I only go into that flying-the-ship mode when combat happens. Heck, if I'm making alot of comparisons to M&B, that game got this part right: You didn't JUST sit either on the map, or in combat; you took your character into towns and castles and such, giving you more of a connection to the character. You could interact with stuff in ways that werent JUST stabbing. Yes, they could have done it by shoving EVERYTHING into menus instead; it would have been faster than having to go into the castle to talk to the king and such. But it would have also been alot more uninteresting.
Honestly, giving me more stuff to do with my ship would be a huge thing here. I rather like the starmap, but too much time on it is a major problem. Give me some non-combat things to do outside of the map.
5. Somehow make the ships look a little less jumbled. Normally I have very little focus on a game's graphics. They usually just arent important to me... what's important to me is the actual gameplay. But every now and then, they get in the way of something. In this game, it makes it kinda hard to tell just what I'm looking at when I look at another ship. What kinds of parts is it made of? If I use direct targeting when their shields are down, it might be nice to be able to drill at certain parts that I know are being troublesome. But... I cant tell what, or even where they are! Yes, I could go into the top-down view, and maybe that might help, but I kinda suspect it wouldnt. I'm not sure how the heck this issue could be resolved, but it'd indeed be better if the ships didn't look like... well... blobs, half the time. Though, as I just started, it's possible that I might get used to what I'm looking at over time, and this will stop being an issue. Hard to say.
6. Reduce the grind! At least early on (perhaps this changes later) the game feels VERY grindy. I'm not someone that likes grinding in.... anything, so this is definitely an issue to me.
And that's the feedback there that I gave on the forums.
As stated, I haven't had all that much time with it. But typically, if a game cant grab my attention fast enough, well.... that's about all I need to know. The game seems to have a lot of potential, but it's like playing Mount & Blade without doing any fighting.
Oh, and that's assuming that NOBODY IS ATTACKING YOU. If you've played M&B, there are a lot of moments where you go into towns or castles or whatever to do things, such as resting, where time will pass while you're in them. That works well in that game; enemy forces cannot just jump on your head while you're doing this, you just have to be careful of when exactly you pop back out. In THIS game, you do the same thing with all resource nodes.... but you can be attacked while time is moving lightning fast. In other words, you cannot react to it. If some other captain is gunning for you... and in my game, one was.... they can chase you all over the place, and no matter what you do, can get at you ANY time you go after a node. If that captain's threat level is too high, he may as well be invulnerable, because you are *not* winning that fight. You *will* die, unless you do the damn retreating thing, which causes you to dump a bunch of resources. The only other way out is to pay the jerks a monstrous amount of money (like, nearly every damn thing you have). So all of that grinding can literally go BACKWARDS if the game decides that someone has a grudge on you. You also cannot tell if said captain is nearby without CONSTANTLY stopping and mousing over every single one of the 8000 or so other ships that are nearby.
So the grinding basically turned into ultra-grinding, and.... yeah, my patience with the game snapped. There's too much imbalance and too much of things not bloody happening. Being attacked by Godzilla over and over again does not count as "things happening", I should point out.
It's possible that the game gets less grindy later.... I have no idea. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. I can only explain what I've experienced so far. For the time being, I'm really not interested anymore. The game has potential, but like I said.... holy grind, Batman. But I'm going to watch for updates, and see what happens. Or maybe if any of you guys try it out and find some particularly important tips or something, maybe that'd help, but... honestly, if there was a way around the grind, I sure as hell didn't find it.
Oh, and one other thing: If you're a fan of the original Spaz, expect this to play almost nothing like it. There's a reason I keep comparing this to a totally DIFFERENT game.... that's fine by me, but some players are not too happy with the huge difference between this and the previous game. I definitely suggest watching some videos before deciding on wether or not to pick this one up.
