[i]Note: This review was written almost entirely during the pre-release stage, information may change over time.[/i]
[h1]Overview[/h1]
[i]Fleet Star V[/i] is an indie game of space combat in which the galatic view of the map involves turn-based strategy where the user picks one of three factions to lead, and leads that faction to victory by defeating enemy fleets and conquering geographic locations on the map that represent either planets, moons, stations, and "space." (The last classification is assumed to mean empty space.) Playable factions include Pirates (described as renegades and opportunists), Rebels (a coordnated coalition of miners and colonists), and SCI. (Stellar Colonial Incorporated, a corporation who's power is in decline.) Combat is conducted in "real" time strategy where time can be manipulated to be paused or to go faster at the user's preference. Once the player has conquered all(?) of the points on the map, the campaign progresses. The turn-based phase of the game involves management of ships (usually heaving dead crewmembers overboard in favor of fresh meat and arranging ships in groups as big as five, but also involves building of either docks to build ships, ore mines to gather resources to allocate to use for shipbuilding and building construction, and academies who train the next batch of solders to be slaughtered for your cause. (Some of the ships can take a real pounding, but people on the other hand are far less durable than the ships they serve aboard.) Buildings can be upgraded to the third level to produce bigger and better ships, more ores, and more cannonfodder.
[h1]Graphics and Sound[/h1]
The graphics in [i]Fleet Star V[/i] are what a player will likely come to have expected from playing indie games. Simplistic graphics that are nothing special, and not even aesthetically pleasing, but the limited graphics get their job done, and especially for combat.
Between combat:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1541002235
In combat:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1541011787
The sound on the other hand, is flawless. The sound of shots being fired and subsequently hitting their targets is simple yet get the job done. The most significant sound players will hear, is the whine of laser beams. The music is the sort of ambient music that players of space games have come to expect. While the music suits the mood, the author advises the player to mute the game's music and play songs by [i]Iron Maiden[/i] and [i]Slayer[/i] who's lyrics have a war theme.
[h1]Positives[/h1]
[i]Fleet Star V[/i] provides the sorts of challenges that lovers of strategy games would love to partake in, but does so in a casual and economical way. ([i]Fleet Star V[/i] was developed by a two person team, and one of the devs was responsible for the music.) Trying to avoid invoking the memory of US Supreme Court Justice Potter "I know it when I see it" Stewart, [i]Fleet Star V[/i] is the sort of game that grabs the interest of lovers of the strategy genre of games, and has solid game mechanics that holds the interest of such gamers who are looking to play a war game with a sci-fi setting.
The area of effect for ship's weaponry is on display in the combat map, which eliminates guesswork for just exactly when, where, and how far away ships on both sides will attempt to fire.
Combat can be auto-resolved, which is an essential featue at this early stage of the game, because the player will feel overwhelmed when first trying their hand at combat. (See [i]Negatives[/i] for more information.)
[i]Fleet Star V[/i] comes with customization tools, so if the bland rectangles known as destroyers and cruisers do not suit the player, the player can attempt to out-do the developer in making the starship of their dreams. Game maps can also be made by the player to create for a whole new experience, especially since players will only get burnt out from playing the same starting map so many times.
[h1]Negatives[/h1]
[i]Fleet Star V[/i] is still a work in progress, and perhaps the worst detail of [i]Fleet Star V[/i] is that there's no tutorial of any kind. Combined with the lack of game manual, players who attempt manual combat will only be able to order ships where to go through trial and error. It wasn't until after completion of a game that this author was able to find out that ship's weapons can be upgraded and changed, but players should be easily able to guess at how to construct buildings, build ships, and order ships to travel to the navigation points on the map.
What's in a name? Alliances in [i]Fleet Star V[/i] are not possible, so Miners will not automatically team up with Rebels to to aid in ridding the universe of the (presumably) evil SCI. Bandits, Pirates, and Smugglers all sound like factions with a common cause, yet all three will engage in warfare against the other faction, and the "Unknown" faction is either an alien race looking to rid the universe of all of the other presumably human factions, or maybe the name "Unknown" is a placeholder for a faction the developer has not yet concieved a name for.
Locations on the map classified as "space" are assumed by the player to mean open areas of space, and yet construction of buildings is often possible in these areas. (The construction for as many as three buildings in these areas isn't unheard of.)
Personnel and ships cannot be renamed. Players most likely won't be renaming "Ratings" (the lowest ranking of personnel) as they're usually nothing more than pawns, but a player may want to rename the captian of a ship, and most likely would want to rename the ships of their fleet to make a military force that suits the player on the aesthetic front, but it's not possible at this point in time. (If not, ever.)
[h1]Conclusion[/h1]
Readers must be scratching their heads as to why [i]Fleet Star V[/i] deserves a positive recommendation despite the aforementioned negative aspects of the game. The reasons are twofold. With a two man development team, [i]Fleet Star V[/i] should be treated as an indie game and by no means a competitor to [i]Sins of a Solar Empire[/i] and there's no other games for the (assumed economical) price that can be treated as a competitor to [i]Fleet Star V[/i]. Despite issues encountered in the pre-release of [i]Fleet Star V[/i], the developer has been on top of these problems and helpful in educating players in how to edit save files for changes to go into effect. Hopefully the [i]Fleet Star V[/i] community will grow so that new players will give every other player more missions to try and beat and more types of ships to use.
[h1]The honest word of Il Pallino... OR ELSE![/h1]
This review made possible through the generosity, consideration and contribution of [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/11739878-ReviewExperts/]Review Experts(REXnetwork)[/url] and the developer/publisher.
Email contact@dnbmedia.co for requests & promotions
