Colony Ship: A Post-Earth Role Playing Game

This one's hella good, overall. I'll start with what I don't see in reviews often. The music ranges from "fitting" to "absolutely genius", I love how experimental some of these compositions are, it all sounds very western sci-fi, and such is the vibe of this game overall, reminiscent of old Fallouts in all aspects. The writing is dry but in a way that perfectly fits the setting - no smartassery, no quirky quips, but also no perceivable depth to any characters, which still works due to how small scale the story is. The general narrative is aight, there's a neat little twist at the end (predictable but fitting), the factions at play are exactly what you imagine - don't expect a life-changing plot here, this thing relies more on interesting world building and atmosphere, which is really good. The game is lovely balanced, difficulty wise; perhaps on the harder side for some, but it hits exactly the right spot for me (for reference, I play ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of cRPGs ever since and I like when the game needs me to understand all of its systems to succeed). It IS, unfortunately, one of those indie cRPGs that feel like the whole last act got cut out of the game along the way, but it does not feel cut per se, but evidently rushed. There's around 40h of content in there and it's good, feels actually mature and respects your time and intelligence.

I've played a dozen hours, and barely gotten into the story. So far, I love this game. Uncomplicated, it's easy to play, not overly punishing of mistakes, and has kept me engaged. The game reminds me of Fallout: Tactics, but with far smoother gameplay. There seems to be a lot of story ahead, so this is more a review of the beginning. I like this game, and recommend it!

The balancing is awful, The combat itself is ok but you eat through medkits constantly and enemies seemingly have infinite supplies. A lot of scenes in the game (Chapter 1) will give you no time to prep (Notably the siege) You have to kill 6 enemies and you get 6 men, Then it immediately makes you go inside and fight 6 more while you're already injured. Then without saying a word to you it makes youfight 4 more if you spared mercy. Without healing you. There's a lot of situations like that, The MSQ itself throws insanely hard enemies at you while you can barely hit anything even with cheated in stats. The difficulty is masochistic and not in the good way.

It's alright, I guess. The story and setting are really good. Writing is solid. Combat? If you like having a 46% chance to hit an enemy while in range with a weapon you're specialized in...then knock yourself out.

This game is pretty good - the story is well-written, the world is fleshed out and feels mostly alive (especially in the early-to-mid game). It does struggle with some pacing issues later on, and the final stage of the game as I played it is mainly just a series of dialog interactions with no combat or stealth or any other kind of segment in-between. The main issues with the game as it is this long after launch are a) the stealth gameplay and b) the way leveling up skills works. The stealth gameplay is just... incredibly frustrating. It's very easy if you take just one or two perks in stealth, and then almost impossible with a decently high stealth character (7-8) without those perks. If you could save in stealth segments it would make it less frustrating, especially since sometimes you get caught in ways that were impossible to predict. As for skills, it's very easy to spread yourself too thin on one character or another and then have a hard time getting the necessary experience to continue leveling up the skill (since you get experience by successfully completing checks). As it is, I found myself backtracking a lot throughout the game so I could go back and pick up stuff I missed earlier. I wouldn't mind losing whatever benefit I could get from a check if it meant still getting some experience to continue leveling up the skill. Still, I had a good time playing Colony Ship. My first playthrough got too frustrating sometime in the mid-game when I learned my character was spread to thin in terms of skills and stats, but going through it a second time it was easier to focus on what I needed to get in order to advance.

The atmosphere, mood and storytelling in Colony Ship are a 10 out of 10. Absolutely loved the story concept and writing in this game. The atmosphere is some of the best in any game I've played. Chose the harder of the 2 difficulty levels (Underdog) and glad I did - while this game can be punishing and very challenging, it also felt rewarding. For my first run I focused my character and team on combat and really enjoyed it. Some of the battles were so challenging that it took me DOZENS of tries to win a single battle and the only way I did it was by using every single action point in the most optimal way possible. This was actually one of my favorite parts of the game because it forced my battle strategy to be immaculate to win many fights. Exploring all of the areas of the ship, learning more about the story, meeting new characters and looting for extra gear, items, credits etc. was a joy. There are several areas and quests that I could not do simply because of the build I chose - definitely plan on playing this game again. For my next run, I will be going for a pacifist/stealth build - Colony Ship has a lot of benefits for being skilled with persuasion, sneak etc. Some other reviewers claim that this game is short/that it only took them 40 hours to beat. It took me 60 hours to beat probably because I explored every square inch of the ship multiple times and did not use any guides. That's an important tip by the way: explore everything and even when you think you've explored it all, explore it again... you will find things you missed. Colony ship isn't all positives - many of the quests are fetch quests or you talk to one person then go back and talk to this other person. While there are many areas to explore, some areas feel kind of empty with only the occasional locked box or dead body to loot. They could have done a better job at explaining some things, for example: turns out in order to get a full party (4 members) you have to set your Charisma to a minimum of 6 when creating your character at the beginning... this would have been really nice to understand more clearly from the start. Since I left my charisma at 4, even with a Feat to add a party member I was limited to 3 total in my party, which probably made the game significantly more challenging than it needed to be (but I actually really liked the challenge). Overall if you are a fan of CRPGs and you're tired of wizards and dragons and want a different theme, Colony Ship is a must play. The atmosphere, writing and storytelling are a 10 out of 10. The gameplay is objectively more like a 7 out of 10. This brings my overall score of Colony Ship to a 8.5 out of 10. Buy it and enjoy!

Such a great game. hooked me from the start looking for a new tactical RPG, give this one a try.

Well written and atmospheric, the gameplay isn't for everyone and combat is understandably brutal, that being said very enjoyable. Its a bit rough around the edges but felt a novel experience with committed creators.