Void Destroyer 2
Early access review to be updated at release.
I’ve spent around 70 hours playing this game until I reached the end of the current story missions (early access) with another 30 hours spent fallen asleep with the game open at various points throughout.
This is the best spacecraft combat game I have ever seen, period. And I’m kind of a fan of the genre. I’ve played the legendary Independence War: 2 Edge of Chaos with its amazing controls, story and combat. The equally revered and economically focused X3: Terran Conflict, its 1.5 style expansion Albion Prelude, and the good at piracy but nothing else X: Rebirth. I love the indie games like the arcady SPAZ/SPAZ2, Funny/Simple 3030 Deathwar, the very charming and intense submarine stealth style of Objects in Space, the small scale survival of the Evochron series, the stylish but shallow Rebel Galaxy and the very promising Starsector with its focus on fleet combat and even empire building. I conquered galaxies in the truly excellent Sword of the Stars and the be-the-space-pirate-bastards-that-bother-4X-players-in-their-early-game Distant Worlds: Universe, managed a space station and fleets in Halcyon 6, watched armadas annihilate eachother in Sins of a Solar Empire and carefully managed limited resources while running from an ancient enemy in Homeworld 1/2. Truly great experiences we are all very fortunate to have been able to enjoy and which shaped my expectations and standards for quality.
– Real player with 284.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Pirates Open World Games.
First and Only review to anything. So here is what the game is and about.
Void destroyers 2 is an Early Access, Indie, Strategy, Sci-fi Space Sim. Its always nice to start off with pretty much nothing and working your way up into something powerful or a fleet of something powerful. For Void destroyers 2, it does just that. To becoming something powerful you will be needing money, and reputation. Money is the big part, but reputation gives you access to buying bigger ships of different factions.
– Real player with 275.2 hrs in game
Airship: Academy
Airship: Academy is a fantasy airship skyfaring simulation game with hyper-rich lore and narrative. Inspired by many space-sim and pirate-sim such as Star Control, Freelancer, and Sid Meier’s Pirates.
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You are a veteran airship commander enlisted for a job in a Kingdom far from home
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Navigate a vast open-world and explore the sky of a shattered continent
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Engage in spectacular airship battles with insurmountable depth and complexity
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Fight pirates, rob merchants, repel law enforcers, and challenge the military
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Buy, build, and upgrade your airships and parts. Enlist, level up, and build relationships with your crews
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Traverse the skyscape and learn about the history and recent events through helping and listening to people
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Visit ports, towns, villages, and cities to collect resources and build industries
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Over 70 ports and 150 NPCs each with unique storylines
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Over 30 different airships with more than 150 parts to fit into them
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More than 100 questlines to follow and unravel lore and mysteries of the world
YOU ARE THE COMMANDER
The Great Sky War has stalled, it has been almost a year since the last battle. War has been a good business. Without it, you have been resorting to freelancing to get by. An offer arrived one morning, from some big-name trade and security company. It is an honest and stable job, so you took it right away. Now you found yourself at the Segson Archipelago, unknowingly involved in something far greater than you ever wished for.
THE SHATTERED WORLD
Eons ago, the Great Cataclysm shattered Spheara into pieces. Wild magic wind engulfed the globe, lifting the grounds hanging afloat in the sky. Spheara is the world in the sky above the deadly and dark ocean. Life in such a world is difficult and perilous but humanity and civilizations found ways to prosper.
THE MAGICAL CONTINENT
The place in the center of our focus is the continental group of landmass called Europa. These landmasses above the great ocean below is classified into three belts or rings by their vastly different distance above the sea level. Different nations and cultures developed on different archipelagos, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, they struggle to define their coexistence.
THE KINGDOM IN TURMOIL
The Kingdom of Suthseg has long been the sovereignty over the Sagson Archipelago, a cluster of three major drifting landmasses with plenty of rich minor isles. The Archipelago also holds the key prominent point of interest, that is the Great Mana Coil, the largest gateway allowing airships to descend and ascend across belts.
THE CHARACTERS
Destiny has brought about two young souls and two patriarchs together. All strive towards different things in life and want a better world for themselves and those who come after them. What will be their legacies?
UPGRADE YOUR SHIPS
You can make, buy, or take ship parts from many sources and fit them into a wide variety of airship frames. The balance between speed, agility, durability, firepower, and transport efficiency are key to various strategies and tactics once entered into battle.
BATTLE ADVERSARIES
Exercise the best use of tactics and skills of the crewmen. Push the capability of an airship to its limit and seize the day to enjoy the spoil of victory.
TRAVEL ACROSS EUROPA
The continent is vast. It has many things to offer, many stories to tell, treasures to collect, and mysteries to unravel. The measurement unit and time taken during travel are measured in real-time and real units. Even though the player can accelerate time, this can infuse them with a strong sense of immersion.
TRADE WITH MERCHANTS
Many ports and merchants offer parts, ships, and all sorts of other items that would aid the player in their quests for fame and fortune. Merchants sell and buy specific things, demand and supplies are also limited to the nature of the settlement they are from.
BUILD INDUSTRIES
Producing, processing, transporting, assembling, and manufacturing goods and weapons are beats that keep Europa going. While skyfaring, freelancing, and privateering could earn a ship captain a good fortune; supporting and arming a fleet would require other kinds of ingenuity.
Read More: Best Pirates Real Time Tactics Games.
Silent Sector
Has combinations of good ideas and some messy stuff that ruin the fun.
Annoying stuff would be:
-Big ships are useless because they have destructible modules that cause your pricey as hell weapons to be permanently lost when the modules are destroyed. Repairing the modules does not recover the weapons.
-Small ships easily get wrecked because enemies have grappling hooks (for which I have no idea why are in the game at all but to frustrate the player) that can drag you very near in the cluster of enemies and turn you into instant minced meat. You can try to use the same gear too, but you will never be as deadly as enemy as they rely on numbers.
– Real player with 17.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Pirates Sci-fi Games.
The game is super suitable to get some fun and entertainment in between. It is neither boringly simple nor frustratingly difficult. Many reviews complain about the controls, but the movement style of the spaceship can now be adjusted to one’s own preferences. In general, the support is fast and friendly. The story can be played through in a finite amount of time, which I personally consider positive. I don’t like games in which I have to invest a significant part of my life, my library is too big for that ;) After finishing the story, the game is not over, you can continue to solve quests if you like.
– Real player with 15.3 hrs in game
Space Station Loma: OPERATIONS
Quick Review: Good Introduction to VR game play and physics. Very easy to start. If you enjoy follow the leader type games this is a game for you. Should be a $5 game.
Review: Simple to learn but gets chaotic very fast. You basically are following commands given to you on the main screen. They are timed and you need to do them very quickly. I am old and slow…which means I suck at the game. Has a leader board for keeping track of high scores, which can make it interesting if you have friends competing with each other. I think it is a good game for people who are being introduced to VR / gaming. If you are looking for something more long term with complexity this is not the game for you.
– Real player with 9.3 hrs in game
Space Station Loma: OPERATIONS - Simon says “don’t blow up the darn space station!”
The concept behind this game is simple, you are the operations guy on a space station, you know the people you see in the background of the bridge on deep space 9? The guys sitting at terminals in the background of the death star. And the computer tells you what to do.
It starts off easy…really easy….you think “i can do this”, “I am THE operator” and soon learn that the computer is mean and has it in for you lol
– Real player with 1.0 hrs in game
Astrox: Hostile Space Excavation
This game is not EVE Online. The comparisons are hard not to make given the art direction and user experience of this game, but remember – EVE Online is a massive undertaking by hundreds of people and tens of thousands of hours of effort, and this game is but a mere hint of a shadow of the things that are in that game.
That being said, this is a GREAT game for what it is, and it’s reasonably priced even keeping its limited scope in mind.
It DOES have the feel of EVE Online in some respects. The gameplay is very similar to your first few hours of cargo hauling or mining in EVE Online, but there it ends. EVE gives you the complexity of a rich storyline, faction reputations, a complex and meaningful exploration option, and NPC pirates that make relatively smart decisions on their own - not to mention the multiplayer aspects of EVE that truly make that game great.
– Real player with 51.3 hrs in game
I’m glad I got this for $3. It’s not worth $10.
The economy is so unbalanced and meaningless. It feels like the dev just wanted to build a completely random economy with no thought to whether it would feel at all real. There is no sense of supply and demand in any way. All pricing seems completely arbitrary and rarely feels like any balance was done.
The game has several places where you should be making decisions, but there’s so often only one right answer that you ignore the other options. For instance, early on, it’s far better to get the interceptor, a $4500 ship, and chase pirates until you collect enough kills to get one of those early kill missions for like $25k or so. Then get the mining escort ASAP. From that point, kill jobs are almost NEVER worth it, and that ship will easily last for half of your first run. Transport jobs have never once been worth it for me. Not early on, not mid-game, not end-game. Mining jobs are sometimes a complete joke, paying about 5% more than the ore is worth, which is generally not worth the time to go to the station posting the job. Other times, they’re absurdly over-priced, and these are where you’ll (very rarely) get a job that you’ll go out of your way to complete. In cases where the price is really high, I thought perhaps the ore was super rare and far from the sector offering the job. Then I ran into a job where the ore was incredibly abundant, particularly where the job was offered. Again, no feel at all of any kind of semi-realistic economy or supply and demand.
– Real player with 45.4 hrs in game
Sins of a Solar Empire®: Rebellion
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion is a space strategy game and a real-time strategy (RTS) game which incorporates 4X strategy game elements. This game was developed by Ironclad Games and published by Stardock Entertainment and is only available on PC.
While you may notice another game with Sins of a Solar Empire in its title (Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity), that is an older version of the game. Rebellion is the definitive and superior version as it not only offers numerous additions to the game, like Titans and new Factions to play as, but also contains everything from the previous versions of the game.
– Real player with 1719.1 hrs in game
Sins of a Solar Empire represents a fun and visually spectacular 4x game. But the 4x is a bit tilted. There is diplomacy and you can win with diplomacy, there is exploration and you will need to explore and there is exploitation. But Sins of a Solar Empire at it’s core is a game of extermination, combat drives the game and will dominate the majority of what you do, but that is perfectly fine considering how fun it is.
This game is well supported considering it’s age though optimisation in multiplayer is poor and they do not allow you to local host your games instead requiring you to connect to their servers. The attention to detail in the base game is excellent from space elevators and space traffic around your planets to having individual weapon ports on ships with their own firing arcs. It’s hard to get bored of this game especially if you have friends to play with.
– Real player with 663.8 hrs in game
Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity®
In my opinion this is the best version of this game.
I say this because each “new game” is just a tiny expansion of the original product. in simple terms, they have been charging 60 bucks for the the same old game over and over and over.
I don’t support rebellion for this exact reason.
the only reason you shold buy ANY of these games is if you plan on using one of the many mods available.
as this is an older version, mods for this title will be more likely to be finished and less likely to be broken by random updates.
– Real player with 125.1 hrs in game
For Starters…
Let me preface by saying that I purchased this game back in 2012 during a steam sale. I installed it along with a few other titles, played for a few hours and uninstalled it within a few days. A couple years later I decided to give it another shot and removed it within hours of installing it. In fact, actually googled online to see if there was a way to delete the game from my steam library because I swore the damn game would never fool me into installing it again. It was extremely frustrating trying to learn all of the complex technical nuances to managing and controlling your space fleet, especially when I just downloaded a bunch of other titles and this one has a learning curve, and expects you to actually play through all four of the dense tutorials to gain the minimum level of proficiency to play the game. And of course, I clicked through them without retaining anything, immediately started a skirmish, couldn’t control my empire, was confused about what was going on, got obliterated, cursed the game and uninstalled…
– Real player with 61.4 hrs in game
The Chaser’s Voyage
You have only one hundred days. One hundred days to pay off your debt to a dreaded pirate lord. Luckily, you have friends, and one of those friends has a spaceship… and an idea: transport people from planet to planet! Seems simple, but this part of the galaxy is riddled with endless dangers. Paying back your debt will be one thing, surviving this voyage will be another.
You are the Captain:
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Take-off on your rogue-like adventure with a fully-voice acted crew of eccentric and diverse characters.
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Take command of the Chaser and pilot it through treacherous terrain, while escaping from deadly space pirates and relentless bounty hunters!
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Manage power between the Chaser’s weapons, shields, engines, and auxiliary systems.
Pay Back Your Debt:
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Earn money by transporting clients across the sector.
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Survive multiple encounters as you travel to your client’s destination.
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Each encounter is randomly generated based on how many days you’ve survived, who your client is, and which territory you’re in.
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Make enough money in 100 days to avoid the wrath of a notorious pirate lord!
Fly Through a Small Part of a Larger Galaxy:
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Uncover tons of lore by unlocking entries in your crew journal. (Release TBD)
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Explore your crew’s backstory and learn about the galaxy through their eyes.(Release TBD)
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Learn about over 250 planets, along with the species that inhabit them, such as the Pajus, the Ka’koi, the Feaians, and more! (Release TBD)
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Witness an escalating galactic war, as two major powers fight for control of the sector.
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Use this knowledge to plan out your trips to ensure successful missions.
Additional Features:
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Enjoy the game in three modes that shape your experience.
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Fly casual in Voyager Mode. In this mode, you have unlimited respawns and plenty of options to control the game’s difficulty.
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Survive in Captain Mode. As time goes on, your adventure gets more and more challenging. You only have one life, so make it count.
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Prove you’re the best in Ace Mode. Encounter any of the hardest challenges in the game, right from the beginning, while also taking increased damage.
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Enjoy an epic soundtrack.
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Customize the ship’s colors and the metal UI color.
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Practice your skills by recreating any scenario in the Flight Simulator. (Release TBD)
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Equip over 20 insignias that change the way you experience the game. Fly as a member of a variety of different factions, take on new challenges, or even change the Chaser’s capabilities!
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Keep track of your records for each insignia across each mode.
Space Pirates And Zombies 2
Quick note
The mixed rating is because the devs could not add
multiplayer into the game due to major issues.
The devs made a fairly long detailled post about this, but it was removed.
So here’s the short version for wy it was cancelled :
After updating the game engine (Unity),the devs realised that unity completely changed how multiplayer works, thus all work done on multiplayer before that was lost.
They wanted to upgrade to the newer engine to improve performance and the long term compatibility with the new systems coming in the next few years. (Performance was indeed much better after the upgrade.)
– Real player with 454.5 hrs in game
Space Pirates and Zombies 2 is representative of one of the least-chosen paths a sequel can take. Rather than refining and rehashing the original, SPAZ 2 attempts to branch off on its own with an experimental spin on the original’s gameplay. In some ways, this is a welcome change. In others, it hasn’t gone so well.
Gameplay in SPAZ 2 is split cleanly between a strategic layer, a Mount & Blade-styled world map the player flies around, and the tactical layer, where their mothership does the actual fighting. Between fights, the player can assemble, strip down, or rearrange their mothership with collected parts. AI-handled captains follow similar goals with similar means all across the world map, forming their own relationships as they go along.
– Real player with 126.6 hrs in game