Gratuitous Space Battles 2

I honestly wanted to like this one. Played it for a while a long time ago and then gave it a chance recently. The ship customizer is cool and I want something like it, but in a game where the custom battles work, the AI isn't dumb and it wasn't abandoned. Great concept and like I said, I wanted to like this, I am a sucker for custom ships and big space battles. But the bugs are numerous, AI is dumb and balancing is weird, among other issues which other people explain much better. Overall, I'm disappointed.

I really enjoyed this game. The crashes to my desktop were just unreasonable. After the 12th one when changing screens I refunded.

So, GSB 1 was my very first steam purchase. I loved that game. And this game had a a lot of potential and hype for me. It was initially fun, but then several updates broke it. The dang thing won't even boot anymore, and I've only gotten better computers. It doesn't appear to be a hardware issue, it consistently states it is missing files to boot/run, even on a clean install. In the interim, the developer moved onto another project. I get it. It was just a let down to have built my excitement for a product I really didn't get to play.

Crashes every second battle.

I got this game years ago because I loved GSB1, literally grew up on it lol, finally tried playing this again yesterday, had a lot of fun making a small fleet of ships, it only crashed about two times in the process! If you're like me and view any game with any form of customization as an art form to explore, and REALLY liked GSB1, then sure, I recommend this game, but remember this, asteroids cause your game to crash, starting a mission after about 40 minutes of play will cause the game to crash, alt-tabbing too much will cause the game to crash, playing for too long will cause the game to crash, exiting the game will cause the game to freeze entirely and you will require task manager to close it, and posting anything to the workshop apparently causes the entire game to freeze up, also requiring task manager to close it, and will apparently brick the game so you can no longer boot it up. Seriously, I tried uploading one cruiser to the workshop and my game froze, so I forced it close with task manager, and I tried EVERYTHING to fix it, I verified the files, restarted my PC and uninstalled and reinstalled the game twice, then I finally scowered the game files and found zero hints. Seriously, the game is bricked for me, I can't even open it anymore, steam will say opening, nothing will happen, and then steam will switch back to the "play button" without the game launching.

While I was not impressed with Gratuitous Space Battles 1, I am extremely impressed with the second game. Because it is truly impressive how you can move this much backwards in 6 years and learn nothing from the first game. [list] [*] Technical problems. It is the exact same unworking online content and extremely often game crashes - my game dies at least once every 20 minutes, sometimes it dies every 5 - it is coded extremely poorly and runs accordingly. [*] Low number of modules and most of them are useless. Just like the first game, you just stack armor and become invulnerable. And you also throw out 90% of weapons, as they are unable to pierce any shield/armor of its own class and can’t hit anything smaller. Has anyone even checked the numbers, because it clearly shows that no one did. [*] While some of the UI got better, it is still way too far from being at least OK, so you will still have to suffer if you want to compare anything or get any feedback post-battle. [/list] To be honest I would normally put more details into the review, but when the game has all the flaws of the previous game in the series and is so broken that it barely runs and constantly crashes - I don’t think I need to add anything but “avoid at all costs”.

Warning: the complete game isn't playable due to a PHP problem (per their support). So the cd-key won't work. But the single player parts are pretty fun and are worth the sale price ($5 at present). Support staff are good people...