FTL: Faster Than Light

I first bought and tried FTL a whopping 10 years ago, got frustrated at the final boss and shoved it to the side for a very long time. However now that I'm much older and far more patient I finally gave the game another chance, and fell in love with it. This game invokes a certain feeling that games rarely get right about space. It's something beautiful, but also very vast and lonely, and the soundtrack perfectly captures that feeling the moment the game is launched. Sometimes I'll let the entire theme play before starting a new game, and during gameplay I'll simply stop playing for a few moments just to let the music sink in before moving on. Behind a pretty exterior this game is absolutely brutal, make no mistake. The goal in the game's development was to make it feel like a suicide mission, where all the odds are stacked against you. There are multiple things you need to learn to balance while playing - where to use your power levels, keeping your fuel supply ready, keeping your crew alive, keeping your ship in tact all the while focusing on how to take down an enemy ship and their current status as well. While this can be overwhelming at times, the game also allows any amount of pausing to assess and plan out moves. The sci-fi elements of the game here really make this game as well, there's all these different alien races that each have their own cultures and societies that view the ongoing war in different ways. During the game's random encounters so many different things could happen that the choices between diplomacy, deception or avoidance can all be viable options, strategizing is just as important here as it is during combat. So why did I originally shelve the game? I really struggled with the final boss and felt that runs were a bit too RNG reliant on whether you could beat the boss or not, and while this is partly true, it's the point of the game where it demands a mastery over the games mechanics - luck may help you reach the final boss, but pure skill is needed in order to overcome it. I earned my first victory, and every subsequent one felt just as rewarding as the last. FTL is simple in design yet complex in strategy, every playthrough I find myself in different situations running into different problems, constantly having to adapt and hope I manage to scrape on by to the next sector, else I have to start all over again. It's unforgiving, but rarely in a way that felt discouraging. I had to become a better gamer to overcome FTL.

I want to like this game. There are definitely parts of it that can be a lot of fun. But the truth is despite having a fun gameplay loop it's balanced so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ badly that eventually every time I return I uninstall it after a few runs. My most recent run was one where I was cooking dude - I went DEEP and had a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ amazing loadout. Yet somehow I run into a basic ♥♥♥♥♥ ship in the last sector - not the flagship - and none of my shots hit. Miss after miss. There's nothing I can do to prevent this. I could try targeting their engines and pilot. Guess what that ♥♥♥♥ doesn't matter if the game decides every shot you take is going to miss. It doesn't matter you have a cloaking device and the upgrade that lets you shoot when cloaked if you cannot disable one ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ system on the enemy ship. ♥♥♥♥ this game. It's actually not worth your time.

Still a great game all these years later. Every part of the game mechanics is just where it needs to be and with the free Advanced Edition it is incredibly polished.

FTL is probably my most favorite game of all time. I still come back regularly after 10+ years. Thank you devs for this masterpiece. Check out FTL: Multiverse if you run out of content from the main game. 10/10 for both base game and Multiverse mod.

Be prepared to lose hours of your life and your mind trying to beat this game even once. Update: I finally managed to beat the BASE mode on EASY after just over 50 hours.

Incredible game, you will die 50 times on easy (at least) before beating it for the first time but that is when the stockholm syndrome kicks in :).

FTL is a roguelike RTS (with a very useful pause function that you should be using often to avoid making irreversible mistakes) that, on the surface looks simple enough but can be really challenging most of the time. Artstyle is good (shoutout to the awesome looking background art), the music never goes stale and the gameplay loop is fun. The game is highly replayable, has a tonne of unlockable ships with various layouts and loadouts to unlock and a multitude of strategies work to get through the game. There's also secrets to uncover and the story text (which most people don't bother reading) can be both useful and entertaining to read at times. I've had a tonne of fun playing this game, but also a lot of frustration from unfortunate RNG situations where I've lost countless runs to bad RNG. Yes, this is the one gripe I have with the game. It is heavily decided by RNG rolls, leading to a lot of frustration. For those of you interested in 100% completion, most of the achievements are naturally obtained just by playing the game and unlocking ships or doing various things as you play. However, the game is very challenging as a baseline so some of the achievements can be tricky to do, don't always expect to survive the run (or win it) while doing specific achievements. One of them is also entirely RNG based, so if you're unlucky like me, that's gonna be a few hours of pure annoyance, to say the least.. With that in mind, there are achievement guides out there to follow for a slightly easier completion, but it is not recommended as a completion game. If you want to just kick back and have some fun though, it's worth it, especially for the price tag (as of writing this 9,99 euro) as you can easily rack up your playtime to above 100 hours and beyond.

THE best roguelike spaceship game available. Stop reading this and get it!!!

I WANT TO LOVE THIS GAME! And I know a lot of people out there do. Call me old fashioned, but not every game needs so much RNG doomy doomy doom events. Especially on easier difficulty modes. I do not understand how so many people can enjoy so many dead end runs. I play games for fun and relaxation, not to have RANDOM CHANCE destroy the experience SO CONSISTENTLY. At the very least the developer should rename the difficulties because "Easy" is not a mode that exists in this game.

FTL is a true masterpiece of the Roguelite. An indie darling for good reason, beautiful pixel art, heart in mouth gameplay, and a soundtrack that is so sticky i'm bam bam bam, bada bam bam baaah. I've played it over and over. An will come back again.