Star Souls
Hi there! Well, I’m from development side, so don’t be surprised by my hours on record. I was responsible for music and sounds, so I’ll just skip that part and try to describe other areas as independent as possible.
Cons:
- There are still some bugs. Some of them are unnoticeable, some of them like to show off, and some of them are actually features, so please finish the tutorial and check out the “How to play” thing in case of any doubts. Anyway, your gameplay shouldn’t be affected much, existing bugs don’t block you from finishing the game and getting all the achievements.
– Real player with 157.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Real-Time with Pause Sci-fi Games.
Hi there!
My impression of this game is quite positive to recommend it to other gamers.
Pluses:
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interesting plot
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funny text quests
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simple and clear UI
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awesome art with unique style
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music sounds great
+Vicky. No comments.
Minuses:
-tutorial could be more detailed
-some little bugs. They don’t strongly affect on the game, sometimes help to win faster.
- not for children, esp. because of some offensive things.
I especially like the music. It works perfectly in the game itself, but it’s also really nice to listen to on it’s own. It gives the game a feeling of tension and urgency when things are getting hectic. It also has a very nice contrast between more ambient and wonderful tracks, while the player searches empty or friendly locations, and the stimulating tracks of hostility.
– Real player with 20.3 hrs in game
Star Wolves
Bottom line? A good strategy space game. If you dont like strategy nor space, then maybe you should pass.
So far, I’ve had a really good time playing Space Wolves. There is a decent amount of ship customization, and basic character building elements change how your character plays. There is a decent variety of ships available, mixing things up. The missions arent boring and you stay engaged while playing. There are some tough choices to make occasionally, so you feel like your have a say in how the game plays out. You get to select the order you play your missions, like a real mercenary. The graphics are 2005-2007ish, which still looks decent, and it can have its beautiful moments, like when you explode the enemy capital ships.
– Real player with 63.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Real-Time with Pause Sci-fi Games.
Star Wolves is a hard game to describe. It’s probably best described as a space battle manager where you are managing this mercenary group, Star Wolves, in performing missions for the highest bidder (but you do get to choose). You don’t control the crafts directly, but you give waypoints, and attack orders, missile launches and defenses, and so on. You can configure each fighter for different roles: missile defense (jamming), support, escort, attack, and so on. The mothership is also under your command and serves as repair and rearm station for all the fighters, and it is armed with multiple turrets (albeit, it can be overwhelmed). The idea is to defeat the enemy forces without suffering losses of your own by managing your resources: the pilots and the fighters, carefully. Each pilot has his or her own skill tree and can be unlocked with experience points, which opens up special abilities that can be tapped in battle, such as better accuracy, double defense for 30 seconds, and so on. There is also a bit of trading and salvage as you can often salvage weapons and missiles off destroyed enemy ships, and sometimes, even steal whole fighters. Plot is somewhat on the lame side, and most dialogs are in text only, but graphics are good. All in all, it depends what sort of gamer are you. If you want hands-on fly-the-ship kind this is NOT for you. But if you like giving orders and see them carried out this is good for you.
– Real player with 45.7 hrs in game
Polaris Sector
Nice and deep space 4X game, definately the best of the recent releases. It also avoided a common fact with 4X which is that many features are copy/pasted beetween games, so it will feel fresh even if you’re used to the genre.
In a nutshell, it’s a bit rough but a must for every space 4X fan. It shines in empire management, elegant mechanics, diplomacy. It would deserve a bit more streamlining.
Why is it better than most other 4X?
+ Rewarding diplomacy:
Interactions pretty rational. There are many possibilities, from trading ressources (shortages are common so that’s handy), to technologies, to being able to use friendly planets as bases for your fleet or asking for a 3rd party to negociate a peace with your ennemy, or bribe them into getting into war against your ennemy (or request a bribe to help them!)
– Real player with 229.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Real-Time with Pause Simulation Games.
Lets get to it.
Pro:
[olist]
- A.I. (Articial Intelligence) - I cannot emphasis or stress enough of how extremely good the A.I. is. It’s probably one of the most advanced one I’ve seen in a 4x game genre. I absolutely love how it handles playing against me and handling my orders for planets, colonization, and etc (without the need to micromanage everything). Again, the A.I. in this game is just so good that it cannot be expressed sufficiently of how good it is. Even the developer of this game admits that hard is very tough for him.
– Real player with 159.5 hrs in game
Corpoct
The advertisement videos shows gameplay that isn’t consistent with the actual choices/options/theme of the game. Buyer beware. Other than that, it’s a simplistic wanna-be “FTL”, but its not. It could be good for small children who just barely know how to read. In fact, it should come with an expected player age of 7 years old. This isn’t insult or malice, I just think that the target audience should be an upfront aspect shown to the buyer.
– Real player with 18.5 hrs in game
This is a neat game. It combines some travel elements of FTL with combat similar to a pared-down Gratuitous Space Battles. There’s some resource management, cardplay to influence battles, and satisfying meta-progression. It’s worth checking out
– Real player with 9.3 hrs in game
Dawn of Andromeda
Dawn of Andromeda
space, wars and building all rolled into one… what more could you ask for or need :wink:
a pausable, real-time space 4X game, fast paced, fun and totally addictive as you play as one of the race Emperors, either one of the built in game ones, or make up your own in a custom way. Build your empire how you see fit, manage its power base and finance and overall structure, set out your will and let your officials sort out the policies who do their best to do your bidding on your behalf, colonize new planets, interact with other factions and characters, research new technologies and build fleets so powerful and assign to defend or patrol your domain or take over other realms, while you either make friends and allies or watch as your enemies tremble in fear as you rise to overall power and supreme universe ruler, or die for making too many mistakes in more than a few ways, if your people starve, you can get overthrown as easy as you take over a planet, they can like you, love you, or rebel against you, it’s all here and it’s happens in real time, but not that quick a old guy in his soon to be 50 can’t keep pace either…
– Real player with 628.4 hrs in game
Here is Zax’s review of DOA:
First I do indeed recomend this game for people who like 4X space games like Stellaris. It does have some down sides but for the most part a very fun and engaging game. Well done game mechanics, engaging diplomacy with the other races and a colony system that really is interactive and fun. Lets start with the Cons just to be fair.
CONS:
Game is almost too easy. Although I admit I have yet to tweak the difficulty settings which I will try next and uppdate my review accordingly. But in two days time I completely maxed out the tech tree, and became God Like Invincible. Odd part is this Con was still fun. Something to be said about becoming the most powerful force in the Galaxy. So much so the other empires are trembling in thier boots and brown nosing me just so I wont destroy them. It was actually kind of funny how humble they got the more powerful I became. In that same two days I managed to achive EVERY win game scnario in the same game. Also the game litteraly ran out of side quests (anomolys and projects) the board just went blank with nothing new to discover. The only thing left to do was wipe out the other races and achive total galactic Domination. Like I said a Con in some ways but still fun.
– Real player with 34.0 hrs in game
Particle Fleet: Emergence
TLDR; Awesome game…get it!
I first discovered the KnuckleCracker games with CreeperWorld 1 on some flash games site. At first the game looked pretty basic and simplistic, but I soon found out that was far from correct. Fast forward a few more years to Creeper World 3 (CW3) and I was stunned not just by the game itself, but by the community of map builders. Virgil (the developer of the games) had introduced a scripting language to allow players to create practically anything they could imagine within the world.
– Real player with 201.0 hrs in game
TL;DR. A nice RTS, in the mold of previous games from the same developer, but different enough that you won’t feel you’ve paid twice for the same product.
If you were a fan of Creeper World (any one of the 3), you may be disappointed. There is no Creeper in this game. “Wot?”, I hear you say, “A Knuckle Cracker game with no Creeper? That’s an abomination!”
Maybe so. But remember there was not always Creeper, and maybe there will not be always Creeper - in the CW3 story, there were references to other, long-forgotten races, the Ticon and the Seloi. Maybe they too have stories. Maybe there was (or will be, or always has been) things that were not Creeper and that were hostile. Maybe they were not explicitly hostile - after all, if we need a canoe, are we explicitly hostile to the entities that occupied the ecosystem of that tree that we need for the canoe?
– Real player with 172.9 hrs in game
Noble Armada: Lost Worlds
Despite the fact I backed the game because of sentiment of the setting I quite suprised because I really enjoy it:) Especially, I love movement of the ship-as physicist I really enjoy it:) From my point of view it is very realistic
It is simple game, but with lot of possibility to play:)
– Real player with 14.9 hrs in game
Poor. It is, more or less, about the quality of a cheap game from 1995 with poor documentation and mechanics. Worse, the campaign game is pretty buggy. I’ll probably put some more effort into learning/playing…maybe some of it is a learning curve and maybe some of it has a bug/fix/workaround.
– Real player with 10.7 hrs in game
Solar Baron
Solar Baron is a real-time tycoon resource management and logistics game. The game is set in a seamless, randomly-generated solar system with a range of resources to gather, pump and mine for maximum profit.
The world faces a resource shortage. In desperation, the world government has privatized the under-performing global space agency in the hope that profit-driven individuals will find a way to tap the vast amount of resources available on other worlds and deliver them back home.
You are one such profit-driven individual.
LIFE-SIZED SOLAR SYSTEM
Solar Baron features a vast, life-sized solar system of procedurally generated planets and moons. You’ll need to solve the logistical challenges associated with transporting tons of valuable resources across billions of kilometers of space by constructing a network of strategically-placed orbital and surface depots.
SPACECRAFT AND SPACEPORT DESIGN
Research new technologies and design spacecraft capable of carrying out specific missions. With a range of available engines, fuel types, and other components, you will be challenged with designing spacecraft that strike a balance between maintenance requirements, production time, mass and – of course – cost.
Design spaceports from a range of modules to serve as fuel depots, research stations, tourist destinations or any combination of these. Just remember that each module must be launched into orbit, so design with caution.
ORBITAL MECHANICS AND MISSION PLANNING
Solar Baron simulates realistic orbital mechanics as well as real-world orbital maneuvers. However, you don’t need to figure out the gritty details yourself – you pay people to do that for you. The game features a streamlined mission design system, which will calculate every detail of a spacecraft’s mission from a list of actions to perform created by the player. This leaves you to do more important things: creating a strategy, setting goals, planning missions and watching the bottom line.
Stellaris
Stellaris is a fantastic game.
I have seen thousands of stories unfold during my playtime. I’ve watched humanity bloom into a galaxy-spanning civilisation. I’ve watched megacorporations be seized by fanatic communists. I’ve seen weapons created that span the circumference of quasars and watched them wipe away entire solar clusters. I’ve unlocked the secrets of the universe again and again, scoured the galaxy for relics and found stories spanning universes in scale, stories that go beyond the beginning and the end of what we would conventionally call a universe. I held the line against an extra-galactic threat while the galaxy crumbled around me, a threat that had followed the Prethoryn Scourge to our local cluster and fed on our galaxy as a cow would a field. My empires proved and disproved the false vacuum theory again and again, and when that empire eventually fell; futurespawns travelled back in time to warn the past against the coming storm. A revolt against fate itself had formed, and after swiftly taking over the galaxy through diplomacy it found itself fronting that storm yet again. This time it was ready.
– Real player with 1967.2 hrs in game
This review is difficult to leave as I have lots of great memories with this game. Its unique approach to RTS Space Strategy is incomparable to anything else on steam at this time. Which is a real shame because Paradox Interactive continues to fail with DLC updates and constant redesigns.
The game has been practically remade at least twice. Entire game feels more like a beta with constant major changes to core gameplay, to fix things that should have been fixed before release. Which ironically, PDX Interactive fails at almost every, single time. Every update that “fixes” bugs only temporarily patches them or just changes them to be slightly more bearable. For instance, every claim of late game lag being fixed might as well be ignored. You can choose a tiny galaxy, and you’ll still have lag in the late game. Pop changes or whatever other crap they’ve put it in hasn’t fixed much of anything. But what it has done is break mods, introduce new & more upsetting bugs, and piss off the community. They also released some stupid launcher so they could shove ads in my face when I launch the game, but in doing so also broke mods by introducing frustrating & upsetting mod order issues. Literally never was an issue before the launcher, now I have to shuffle mods around to hopefully not crash when loading saves. Which you might as well just delete your old saves if the devs release an update, because its going to break.
– Real player with 700.2 hrs in game
AI War 2
Many come to this game expecting something similar to Stellaris, or Distant Worlds, or Sins of a Solar Empire, heck even I did for the first AI war game. But it is completely different to all those titles. The closest thing that resembles this, is actually the Antistasi mode in Arma 3, only it is in Space and has a unique flair to it backed with its own lore and is much more focused on the strategic aspect.
You start of hopelessly outgunned, with an opponent that can easily crush you in a moments notice if it chose to, but all it’s attention is focused on a very distant unknown extra-galactic threat and is distracted. If you choose to play it like the titles I mentioned earlier, by taking as much territory as possible, you will lose 100% of the time (on the higher difficulties anyway). The AI gets stronger with every system you conquer, and will direct more of it’s resources to fight you.
– Real player with 300.8 hrs in game
[the lightest thumbs down, but it feels more honest than an even lighter thumbs up with extreme reservations.]
OK. there is a great achievement here: in the AI that’s running constantly in the background, adjusting to your movements; in the conceptual apparatus that makes this game an innovation in the RTS space; in the sheer scale of the game and its comparative ease of use due to cleverly designed administrative automation. It is particularly commendable that we have here an incredibly shrewd AI opponent, with a large range of flavors from hyper-protective to mindless raiding to big and nasty units only, which is always reacting not just to your planet captures in the form of a scary number going up, but your second-to-second fleet movements; your current ongoing sieges; your territory setup; and the value of its own targets, keeping reserve forces in wait as they anticipate you moving on a key planet, or striking your home cluster while the army is flung far across the galaxy. it’s a shame the human– and, therefore, player– side of the struggle has less character, meaningful variety, and depth than its worthy opponent.
– Real player with 152.1 hrs in game