Colony Ship: A Post-Earth Role Playing Game

Another amazing RPG from Iron Tower, I expected a lot from the game and still got more. World building and overall writing are excellent. Combat is a bit frustrating at first, but it becomes very satisfying once you get the hang of it. Replayability is absolutely incredible.

I don't understand how this Game is so highly rated. To the point where I don;t think I can even trust reviews anymore. Have people just learned to accept mediocrity? This game number one is incredibly soulless. It tries so hard to make you feel like you are making choices and decisions and those decisions matter. But most of the dialogue in the game is poorly written in my opinion. Then there are the mechanics in the game. There is no "map" just a list of fast travel locations. Which makes it difficult to track where you have been and where you haven't been. Then there are all the points on the game play map where you have to click to go through or climb. What is the point of it besides just slowing you down and making you feel like you are exploring. Who makes a game with damaged equipment yet only allows you to repair just one specific type of equipment and prevents you from repairing 99% of anything else. Then there is the combat. All computer games "cheat" to make it more difficult to win a battle when you have higher level characters, but this game totally ignores the percentages it claims during combat just to draw the combat out and to make it feel more challenging. It is basically a load and re-load situation trying different combinations of equipment and movement until you find the right combination. Let's not forget the horrible stealth missions where squares that a guaranteed safe (green) still cause you to be caught and you are back to re-loading 30 times to find the exact right combination and wasting hours in the process. Your planning or strategy does not matter. The game just feels like it is meant for you to play it a pre-programmed way and then read a bunch of poorly written dialogue and narration pushing you to a predetermined solution even though the game claims your choices matter (They do not). After 31 hours I don't even care to finish this piece of garbage. Add this company to a list of developers I will stay away from in the future.

Just like with most of Iron Studio games, this kind of game has ruined others for me, the ability to roleplay and clear the entire game through just dialogue while the game retains an entertaining albeit simplistic combat system is always welcome. The setting itself is also novel, a space-ship that is breaking down. Just like with Age of Decadence you can dig into what happened in the past with many stories/rumours and the like to keep any lore-head entertained. Colony ship is definitely an improvement over Age of Decadence in terms of gameplay. More types of weapons, attack types, but most importantly, an honest to god stealth system, instead of it all being told through dialogue you are instead playing a minigame. Despite the games graphical and even gameplay improvements, i do have to admit that the Age of Decadence world itself definitely attracted me more, but that is more of a personal preferenece. Do i reccomend this game? Hell yeah. Iron Tower does great work and games of this kind are rare finds unless you go back decades into the past.

OK, I want to like this game. It's really cool. *BUT* It's a "you gain skills as you use them game". So you can talk your way out of lots of combat. You can make a character who is not combat-focused! YAY! Well, prepare to completely suck at combat when it happens. You will die, again and again and again. The Braxton vs Jonas combat (I sided with Jonas) looked like this when I got to Braxton's office: Flash grenade (from enemy), oh now I'm super easy to hit, blam blam blam, Evans is dead. 5% hit chance on my PC who I did not max out on Perception no matter what, making him utterly useless in combat - total dead weight. You get the idea. If you make the wrong choices at the start, you're f-d. And you *MUST* engage in combat as much as possible to up your skills for that one time you *HAVE* to engage in combat. I know I can instead talk my way out of the reinforcements. I guess. But it makes me feel: Wow, I didn't hyper-optimized combat up front so now for the rest of the game I must *NEVER* engage in it.

This review is late in coming, but I love this game. I love generational ship concepts. The combat is brutal and unforgiving. It reminds me of older RPGs from my youth, like Fallout 2. It is *very* easy to bite off more than you can chew. There are plenty of builds to experiment with. A pacifist play through is very attainable. I'd say that the a lot more content is in Act 1 than the others, but otherwise I love this gem.

Combat is just terrible

This was a fun game with interesting setting and pretty realistic characters. I enjoyed it enough that I ended up spending most of my free time playing it until i finished my run. The most appealing aspects to me were frequent use of skills, attributes. Also the amount of choice how to progress. Choice of who to support, choice to betray who you work with, choice to refuse to follow up on a bounty etc. Character creation/progression had big impact on how the game played which is huge plus for me. Nearly every situation can be approached from different angles usually its talking, fighting or sneaking. Sometimes you can use items, information or your previous choices to progress. Your previous choices influencing what happens later in the game is present alot. This game has also massive potential for great sequel. I hope there will be a follow up on this story. And i hope it will be amazing. The combat is pretty fun and on underdog difficulty its pretty much a must to use consumables for the tougher fights. This game is not holding your hand in combat. It is kind of standard turn based combat so dont expect anything groundbreaking. Graphically the game looks decent. I liked the esthetics and the artstyle fit the setting really well. If you like games like fallout, atom rpg, wasteland then you should definitely try this one. On the negative side as is usual with smaller CRPG games the endgame felt a bit rushed.

Iron Tower Studio - одна из немногих студий, которая ещё не разучилась делать пошаговые RPG в их классическом понимании. Похожими на Fallout 1-2, Shadowrun'ы. Я много играл в их предыдущую крупную игру - The Age of Decadence, поэтому сравнения с ним не избежать, но "космический брат" вышел совсем иным. Прежде всего исчезла нелинейность исследования, у вас по сути выбор грести левым веслом, или правым, к одному и тому же берегу. Да, можно вступать в разные фракции и выйти в разные концовки, но глобально это почти ничего не меняет. Но тем не менее, игра ре-играбельна из-за различного подхода к боёвке, фракциям, и возможного пути пацифиста. Визуально - Colony Ship выглядит красивее и более детализированная чем AoD, но это всё тот же фирменный движок студии. Боёвка, - более интуитивно понятна и местами упрощена, тот случай когда стало лучше. Отдельно хочу похвалить антураж и лор. Сюжет мрачный, без героев, полный деградации, религиозного фанатизма и цинизма. Игрок - скорее свидетель, чем спаситель. Корабль поколений летит уже не одну сотню лет к земле обетованной, он трещит и разваливается, а внутри него фракции делят то немногое, что сохранилось. з.ы. Ах да, у игры есть качественный русификатор, загляните в Сообщество>Руководства

Colony Ship Review - 8.5/10 Recommended Story/Plot - 9/10 Excellent, this is where the game really shines. Interesting faction system, lots of interesting characters each with their own agendas. Good replay value to see the various endings by taking different paths or siding with different people or factions Character system - 9/10 It's a typical system with combat and non-combat skills. Many games include speech and other social skills but don't give you a non-combat path through the game. Colony Ship does. You can play the entire game without fighting a single combat if you choose to. I finished the game with and without combat and enjoyed the combat option more. My recommendation is to solo a non-combat play through and have a party of 3 or 4 for your playthrough with combat. Combat - 8/10 Fun, old school turn-based, tactical, with a cover system, different attack types by weapon and weapon type, grenades, stims (for healing and buffs), and initiative based turn order. Graphics - 6/10 Not great, but not bad and also not why you play a game like this. The UI and graphics were good enough that they didn't interfere with my enjoyment of the game. Sound - 3/10 No voiceovers and sound in general is very sparse and unremarkable in Colony Ship