Gates of Horizon

I've been playing GoH for the last day or so, and thought I'd compile my thoughts for anyone considering dropping a tenner on this little game. Let's start with the cons, I always want to know the bad thing about a game first so they don't surprise me. CONS: -Graphics: Not a lot to say here. The graphics are VERY simplistic. The nature of the game and the ease of projecting starfields sort of makes up for this. Personally, I don't find it a bother, but it's worth noting. -GUI: The GUI has some definite weaknesses. For instance, the chatbox is tiny, only shows a few messages at a time, and automatically fades out. This renders meaningful communication difficult at best. If I had one priority target for the developer, it would be the chatbox and community interaction UI. NOTE: there IS a full-screen chat option that works well but... it's full screen. Tough to play AND chat. -Sound effects: This one stood out to me. The music is all pretty good, but then I fired a laser at someone and thought I had just cruised into a disco. PEW PEW PEW go the beams in one of the cheapest sci-fi sound effects I've heard in some time. Oh well, turn the SFX volume down until they get updated. Minor problem. -Missions: There aren't really any that I've found. The game expects you to head off into space and start making your way with comparatively little direction. While I enjoy the "make your own story" approach to gameplay, a LITTLE bit of handholding as far as where to get blueprints, how to explore, where to look for new ships would have been nice. -Beginning: In the beginning you have one ship and one agent. The game is fairly boring as you let him auto-combat or auto-mine everything, watching him orbit. Once you unlock a second agent/ship, the game starts to open up more, but the first hour or so is definitely underwhelming. -Explanation: How does giving ships orders work? Why is the "patrol" option greyed out? Why can't I order a ship to auto harvest without micromanaging? All of these are answers new players could use. Whew... still with me? It's time to talk about the good stuff: -Concept: I LOVE the concept of this game. Rather that playing a single pilot who flies around, you are a "corporation". You hire agents, select their abilities, send them on missions, level them up, change their loadouts, etc. It plays more like an RTS than any sort of simulator, so don't expect careful maneuvering. -Depth of skill trees: There are enough skills with tangible benefits that leveling up your agents becomes quite involved. You want to plan which agent will specialize where and make sure he is getting the right sort of experience. Agents can both pilot ships and man guns or other modules on board ships piloted by other agents so... do you want three light ships, or one big ship with a gunner and a shield operator? This is where the game really shows its potential. -Community Quality: The chat may not be the best, but those pilots out there that ARE chatting are extremely helpful if you just ask. Many of the game's shortcomings as far as GUI and explanation have been answered for me almost immediately using in-system chat. -Potential: I know, saying "It COULD be so much!" sounds like wishful thinking, and maybe it is, but this game has IMMENSE potential if you look at it as a sort of "starter version". BOTTOM LINE: At $10, Gates of Horizon is worth every single penny. It's not without it's flaws, but virtually all of those are easily fixed, and the fundamental core of the game works... if not beautifully, at least compellingly. Today I'm bouncing back and forth between GoH and Elite:Dangerous to get both my command AND my pilot fix.

I'm only few hours into the game but it looks really promising. The game is a MMO Space Sim with a rts combat. Similar to Eve Online. The difference is that here, you're not only a pilot, you're a corporation. Of course you start with only one agents, but you can reach a maximum of 20, with the possibility to command a fleet of seven ships at the same time. The experience is totally sandbox, your objective is only to expand and gather power. Hunt pirates, mine ores, trade, explore, buy new ships, improve the equipments, find new agents, choose role and skills of your agent, you can do whatever you want. i'd like to play some more hours before writing a complete review, i'll update it when ready. Edit: I forgot. This game is not only on Steam, so the "Steam population" it's not the game population.

I've played almost 8 hours so far and this game is very cool. If you like spaceships, space, level ups, having multiple spaceships at the same time formed up together, and a friendly helpful community of people in game-- then this game is for you! There's some bugs here and there I've heard people talk about and one happened to me where I've been stuck but they'll get you out of it just write to the developers and wait a few hours if even that. It'l get better. 9.4/10 for me. And like someone in the game I saw said, this game isn't exactly for instant-gratification people. It's for people with strategy, focus, and people who like to chill and explore and work on their ship and make connections with people and go from there to get into some real good epic action. Sorry if this wasn't the most eloquent review but I think it's worth throwing in there. You play it yourself or research it more if you want to get better idea of what it's about. // Update 8/30/2015, 9 months later after writing this review // I've taken a few breaks from this game here and there, but always come back to it and get immersed again. It's the best spent $10 on a game I've ever spent. In-game my corp name is Knight Of Zero. We need more players but it's not a complete desert, and there are events and things to do. There's a consistent dozen or so of us at minimum every week all year so far. I mostly play on the .exe client and not through steam, so my real hours played is way higher than this. Probably in the thousands of hours. There's at least a few people that know most all the ins and outs of this game that will answer any questions you have about it in-game, me being one of them.

I really like this game. For a beginner the game could be difficult to understand and it explains some of the negative reviews but I definitely recommend to have some patience and play a couple of hours to get into the game and appreciate it. In few words, you manage a space corporation with different agents and spaceships and you are completely free to do whatever you want: exploring star systems, mining asteroids, trading resources and fighting aliens or other players... and so on. Developers are doing a great work. They are improving the game month by month (and even more often) and they are ready to personally respond to players problems or requests. I really enjoy the gameplay and the micromanaging and the complexity of the strategies that can be implemented. You can choose a lot of details and completely customize each agent and spaceship (with an incredibly large skills tree and a huge amount of spaceship components sets). At the end, it is definitely a more complex game than it seems at the first peak. Funny and very promising.

The game is worth ten dollars, especially seeing as how it doesn't have any microtransactions. When you first start playing the game you might be disappointed because the interface appears to be very basic, but as you gain experience points and gain new agents (individual characters that you can hire each time you level and can fly independently or in a fleet) you will begin to see more depth in the game. There are three factions and three ship classes - scout, cruiser, battleship. Each faction only offers two ships for each class, but some of the ships do have some cool equipment slots and you can 'mount' agents to a equipment module so it's recommended to look at the Community Hub for a player guide so you can specialize your agents' attributes for fighting, trading, crafting or mining. I think I have seen up to 20 active players at a time, but players don't really interact with each other much. One of the pitfalls of this game is that there's not much to do outside of grinding levels and experience for new agents. Players can join groups known as 'holdings' and it's basically a guild system where you can own starbases and customize them. I think you can even get ore from planets in your zone of control. But there's not really that much to do with other players so it's kind of a singleplayer experience... The crafting isn't really deep enough to make you want to do it, though it is more effective to craft your items than it is to buy them. Game might get better, but you could easily squeeze 100 hours or more out of this game so it's worth ten bucks even if it never recieves any other updates. You should buy it.

After 2000 hours in star Conflict I was burned out on that game and was looking for an alternative. GoH seemed like a possibility. But: - Micromanagement - Indirect Ship Control - Sub-par Graphics and graphical effects You don't directly fly/control your ship, as in most other space combat game, you just tell it what to do, just like in Eve (or maybe, to a lesser extend, Starpoint Gemini 2). Thing is: if you don't like Eve, you wouldn't like this either. If you like Eve, why would you consider playing GoH instead? And the player base seems to reflect that. 15 players on in 24h? This indicates that this game is dead. If you are looking for a space combat game, where you control your ship yourself in combat (like Wing Commander, Freelancer, etc.) you won't like this. If you want just pure Space Combat, Star Conflict may be more your thing, and if you want Trade etc. mixed in, possibly Elite:Dangerous. What I liked: the tutorial seems pretty good, without it you'd be completely lost.

(HOPEFULLY I CAN IMPROVE THIS IN THE FUTURE) at the rate the so called "updates" are going for in-game/gameplay improvements are going coupled with the fact there are STILL no missions/quest (for a half way decient XP and $ rates), boring npc fights, stupidly expinsive weapon/armor/shield and ship cost being way under the effort getting the money it cost to even buy the items,NO PvP (ive actually asked in game about making a pirate type/pvp corp/guild like in EVE ansd was actuall told that some people have tried that and all the "carebears" in the game actully hunted those players down and basiclly ganked them over and over forcing them to log out), honestly ive been playing this game on and off (tho mostly off) for a few months now, and the XP rates for the npc battles is AWFUL, the loot drops? HAHAHAHA ive seen better drop rates in a TEXT BASED mmo, the fact that npc ships drop ZERO $$ is just stupid, yeah theyve added a so called "Alien Encounter" but guess what, if you dont have a end game ship your boned...on everything, its like this game is only geared for end game players only or people who spend REAL $$$ for in game $$$, there is ZERO content for new players in this game, a fact ive pointed out several times in chat, only to be told they'll get around to it... WTF?!?!?! seriously?? yeah i know this games still fairly new but come on! Even WOW had STARTING CONTENT in its beta!!!! EVERY MMO has some sort of starting content!! DEVS PLEASE step it up! stop thinking only of the kickstart backers (if you had one) and think of the NEW PLAYERS! I like the idea of a free to play EvE style game but come on, we all know you can step up your game and start adding some REAL In-game content, add missions,better loot drop, maybe shields,armor,$ insted of just ore, now yes theres prob some of this in the End Game/high level encounters but theres NONE for new players. How is it possible to invest so many hours into testings, graphics, design and completely forget about gameplay? Multiplayer is absolutely dead and I can tell you why: game become boring after playing just few hours. Beauteful background, smooth animations and.. there is nothing to do. Yes, you do quests, you get levels and money, but it feels pointless. As for guilds/corps? yeah theres a few but theres ZERO any reason to really be in one unles they give you stuff, theres ZERO Corp/guild PVP content all the corps ive seen all just mine and kill npcs. Basiclly unless you buy in game $ for real $, know the Devs and are best friends (which is how it seems every high level player is) or are friends with the highe level players, your basically boned. if you want to solo this ISNT the game for you, as i said ive been playing this awhile and soloing is HELL, it will take you MONTHS if not YEARS to get anything good if you solo. my rating 4 (just for the good controlls and the graphics) out of 10 pros- -Good Graphics that any laptop or PC can run -Easy to use interface -Friendly Community Cons- -No in game content (quest/missions) -low loot drops -you have kill npcs or mine, transport the ore to a station that will actually buy or refine it and find a place to sell that OR craft just to get $ -stupidly expinsive ships/gear that far outweight the effort it takes to get $ -All current encounters are for High level/End Game players -Its a MASSIVE grind/effort for VERY LITTLE reword AI is too primitive, Ship's design.. kek.. I have no idea what guys were thinking, best trading/mining ship hes such an ugly weapon placement, I wish designer to have a car with 5 wheels.. one at place of driver. Weapon selection is not that broad. Loot is pretty generic, from start of game you can get right into best tech sector.. where is slow exponentional progression??? Not recommeded i had high hopes but at this rate, im glad i got this game as a present, because i would never pay for this in it current form. :steamsad:

Fun game. Playing it with a few friends. It would be frustrating without friends to play with or someone to help you rebuild equipment when you die as you learn how much firepower and defensive recovery you need to kill certain enemies and lose ships in the process through trial and error. Some people seem pretty friendly and helpful in the chat. I enjoy automining. It lets me be productive, gain experience, and hoard ore while I'm doing something else or am offline and away from keyboard completely. Can't wait until they implement autohunting. I just wish there were more players to interact with. Ah so about the game. Basically it's an RPG real time strategy game. You are the Corporation. You start at level 1 leadership. Leadership level is your 'main level'. You then get 1 agent from the start and you go and do tasks that accumulate experience. There are 4 skill trees of experience. Crafting- Trading- Resource- and Warfare. Doing crafting tasks gets you craft exp which I think it's about 10% of it goes towards Leadership exp, and then you use your crafting exp to level up the crafting skills you want. Same goes for trading tasks, mining and refining tasks, and combat tasks. All of them raise towards Leadership exp but at a small fraction. Get enough exp for a leadership level up and then you can hire another agent. This means now you can fly 2 ships! You'll hit this point like 5-20mins within starting the game if you follow the tutorial guidelines. You can 'fleet' them together so that they attack the same target and stick together. What's really unique and cool about this game is exactly that, the fleets and multiple ship ownership. Fleets are also 'parties' as you know from other MMO RPGs. Your ships share experience in a fleet. The ships with the most Skill Points from Agents [and I think the more advanced ones hold weighter exp-extract power too than say an equal amount of SP of standard skills] pull in the most experience and then splits that amongst the agents on that ship even further. You can form a guild, in this game it's called a Holding. I'm in one called The Death Penalty with a few of my friends. We're training up quite nicely. The leader can command 2 battleships. So far I can only command a Cruiser and 2 scouts. And while there are some very nice people, there are some smug bullies too that pretend to be your friend or friendly. Try not to let them drive you off the game. I hear a few groups like that have driven off a hundred plus new and intermediate players. There are a lot of constructive things you can do for leveling up and bettering your economy and skills while not entering into Red space where you can be hunted down. 7.8/10, would be higher rating if there were like a minimum of 10x more systems and players. There's only like 60 systems and like 30 active players per week? I'm still new but my couple friends who have played about 2 months now say it's been like this since they've started. I don't know what gives, more players get in here lol. :-)

It feels like the son of EVE and X3, unlike EVE you can build an entire fleet to command, with several specialized agents to control and take over entire sectors. It's slow to get going, but pretty immersive.