Star Control III

I would mark my recommendation as "Maybe?" if there was an option to do so. I have some mixed feelings about this game. I bought this game as I had just finished replaying Star Control 2 and wanted to try the sequel and I was pretty hesitant when I found out that it wasn't done by the same original team. Needless to say, the 3$ price tag removed most of my big worries as I wouldn't be out much if it went south. This game could probably be best described as "Ambitious". They were trying to do a lot of unique things at the time in a system that wasn't necessarily optimized to do those things. That being said I think they leaned a bit heavily on the players ability to figure things out themselves. The good: -Original Voice Acting -Fun use of Practical effects for the aliens -A brand new interface to explore and a truly massive feeling galaxy. -Integrated help pages for each of the windows and options. The bad: -No real starting point aside from "Find the other races". -A combat system that, while fun with the pseudo-3D space, felt a bit unwieldy at best. -Completely deviates from the original story line, re-writing the closing details of the previous game in the first 15 seconds. The Ugly: -While the Spinning 2D star map creates a fun concept of 3D space with the galaxy, it honestly leads to more confusion than anything. That you could have stars that fell within your "there and back" range but were actually completely out of range because it was somewhere waaaay in the background could honestly get confusing. More so than this was the fact that for players like me who tend to get a feel for memorizing where my important systems are, when the map begins spinning again then it's pretty much goodbye to whatever landmark systems I used before. -It was incredibly sad to see so many of the alien races that we've come to know and love altered as much as they were. Specifically the Spathi were a prime example of this. The high-voiced and constantly terrified green crab aliens are now replaced with something resembling a naked mole-rat with one eye, relatively normal voice, and dialogue that sounds like it's trying to explain what being scared sounds like instead of just being scared. In all honesty I was waiting for it to start screaming "JAVA!" at any point. If you want or expect any of the races to feel like their old selves, don't count on it. -After a few narrative cut-scenes at the start the game simply opens into the universe viewer with literally NO explanation of what you are doing. The menu thumbnails are mostly non-descriptive, the galaxy is spinning, and there is no indication of how to play the game. While the previous game did something similar, it at least had some lead in to show you a few basic goals. You began in our galaxy and would more likely than not visit earth. The star base captain there would give you a goal, "get some resources from a planet" so you would learn how the lander worked. You would then be attacked and learn combat. It was a bit clunky but it gave you the essentials. This game just give you an interface and expects you to hopefully figure it out.

This is not the game that I had on computer in 1998. The controls are not the same, the galaxy spin is wildly out of control. For whatever reason, Stardock has acquired license and re-release of only a dos-box rom emulation for a game that had quality control variation. I don't know if this had to do with compatibility issues with later generations OS and CPU/GPU hardware evolution, but this version... just doesn't work well. I distinctly remember having ease of control of the galaxy spin. This has none, you have to mouse click it, no longer a keyboard hotkey. There just isn't any way to slow it down. Navigation is far more unwieldly than before. This game was quite enjoyable in 96-2000 when it was presient. This port rom is an abomination.

Classic. Worth ever penny. I took my time and explored all the dialogue I could due to the interesting writing and to flesh out every unique characteristic for each race. I enjoy the muppet style animations, even though the hand drawn from Star Control 2 were very well done as well. I don't care if the muppet style looks cheesy, I love the cheese. Take your time with the game and enjoy all the creativity put into it.

Just as game-breakingly politically correct as I remember after all these years. Aliens can attack you, without you having a way to escape (unlike in Star Control 2), and your council votes you out of your job accusing you of attacking them. Also you'll be waiting around a lot in the early game for enough fuel to go anywhere. I was given this game with Star Control: Origins, which I picked up because I remembered Star Control 1 & 2 well, and I once played Star Control 3 through to victory. I tried this game on Steam out of nostalgia. If you do play this, use a walkthrough. Seriously.

It's not as good as Star Control 2, but it has its moments. A must for Star Control fans.

This game was in a lot of ways ahead of it's time...and not in a good way. It tried to do a lot of things, and some were really good, and many others, not so much. The 3D map for instance, and the entire UX was ambitious, but also demonstrably worse than SC2. You have to wonder why when they were playtesting they didn't just say "you know, what we had was better...like a lot better. Let's go back to it." The story is crap, and it really doesn't play well on a modern computer, but the melee is OK if you can figure out the controls.

Like Star Control: Origins is a reinvention of Star Control II, Star Control 3 was (and is) a bad, mid-90s attempt to re-invent the original Star Control. I'm a big fan of the Star Control series and played them as a kid starting with SC1 in the early 90's. Gone is the Hyperspace with galactic borders of SCII and in comes the 3D starmap and colony building of Star Control 1, re-imagined with Accolade's attempt at the "hyper realism" that was in vogue in the mid-late 90s. Colors, music, and art is all muted and gray, set in a new quadrant devoid of all life. This could have been remedied with good strategy. Colony building in and of itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, but ultimately there is no *reason* for it. Your opponents do not build bases or new colonies of their own; the Hegemonic Crux has a few scant colonies and remain so throughout the game. Enemy ships don't wander systems, so you rarely - if ever - need to engage in combat. And when you do, good luck. Enemies seem hard-wired to flee from you so it's an annoying cat-and-mouse game. Also, ditch the silly pseudo-3D (press F5 switch to 2D - you'll thank me!) as I've never run into a planet so often thanks to that view. My Syreen Penetrator chasing down a DakTakLakPak was always an endless experience. The plot is fine and I find the criticisms overblown. It had some decent ideas (Mycon) but also some stupid ones (VUX/Vyro-Ingo) and some worthless rehashing (Ur-Quan, Utwig). The story is also time-locked giving you plenty of downtime with nothing to do until a new event pops up and allows you to move forward. You can't even safely engage in combat until a certain time-locked event happens; doing so will result in a game over for you being too aggressive. This long timespan between events is the only reason to start up new colonies: it's the only thing of interest to fill the vast, droll void of SC3. Ultimately, this all culminates into a very somber and underwhelming experience. Whereas SC2 was filled with wonder and color, SC3 is a black and gray patience-testing bore, filled with low quality MIDI music and lifeless puppetry along the way. Play it if you're a fan of the series, but hard pass it otherwise and go for the far better Star Control: Origins.

Wow this aged poorly. Beat this back in the 90s, forgot about it. Bought it on a sale, can't believe how much worse this is than Star Control II. Good ideas, good writing, but ugly as hell and the campaign is not fun. The melee combat is good, but still ugly. Somehow looks worse than a much older game with lower detail graphics.

For now, not really worth the time. Game port/controls appear to work somewhat, voice acting is appreciated. Does not appear to be worth the effort/nostalgia though.

Star Control 3 has the honor of being one of the first games I'd ever played, and to that I can give it credit for showing me a much different angle to sci-fi, a new variation on gameplay, and some interesting alien characters to engage in some very light diplomacy with. I can also give it the honor of being one of the games to show me that nostalgia can be sorely, sorely wrong. Dead wrong in fact. Now I'm not a Star Control 2 fanboy or advent or anything of that nature - and while I do enjoy the game immensely I've put way more time into re-completing Star Control 3 it should count as credit time towards a college course in absolute frustration avoidance. Star Control 3 is one of those games that's both hard and somewhat easy to recommend, if you didn't play it back then or have no context I can really see this game being a pretty okay time-passer given the low price point. On the other hand if you somehow avoided or skipped this in the proceeding 22 years, you are absolutely not missing much. Nostalgia aside? This game is just rough. Allow me to explain; while the Star Control franchise is somewhat venerated by some for being one of the bastions of sci-fi in games that both is original and replayable it shares some aspects with what eventually became Mass Effect with planet surveys and diplomacy. It ALSO shares feats with Mass Effect 3 in that it killed the franchise dead, but like ME3, it still has some perks which I'll get into. The first thing the game does upon loading is play some of the most bland and unimaginative MIDI music I may have ever heard in a game, ever. Not only does it totally not set the mood, it's downright laughable in how illfitting it is. Thankfully though, only a handful of tracks really do reach that level as some of the music tracks do really kick some ass - I'd say the Vux, Mycon, Chmmr, and a few of the exploration tracks in particular really kickass and some are very fitting for some diplomatic exchanges like the Doogs, Exquivan and Ploxis tracks. The music isn't 'bad' but - that main menu track still sticks out in my head is the first omen for bad tidings. The second thing is, the game exclaims on the back of the box that it includes a Colony Management system which is somewhat integral to the plot which I will ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ segway into. After the events of Star Control 2 and the destruction of the Sa-Matra (which looks nothing at all like it does in the FMV), hyperspace for some reason decides to take a vacation and not tell anyone for how long and thus leaves many of the other star faring races totally stranded wherever they were when hyperspace said 'deuces'. The Captain (you) decide to just furnish another type of transportation and a new ship (yes, seriously) outfitted with a "Warp Bubble Transport" system. The first problem I have with this is the Sa-Matra looks nothing like that, and given Star Control 2's ending you're last seen as an old man some years after the conflict with the Ur-Quan, telling your grand-kids of some other adventures you were going upon. So not only does this not entirely link up with SC3s premise it totally forgets it's starting angle when the game starts. Secondly, Star Control 2 leaves a very heavy implication that even if the Precursor factories are able to produce such a ship like the flagship from SC2 that it's also implied that resources are thin and could take even years to produce another ship. Thirdly, what in the ♥♥♥♥ is Warp Bubble Transport and why does it read like "Mary Sue technology" to me? Cause it does. Moving on from the story, the dialog and the alien races - which are as important to Star Control as mayo on a hoagie and on the whole I can't see much to complain about other than a few missing alien races like the Supox, Thraddash, or Yehat? Not a single one of them somehow ended in Kessari? So how am I to assume how any of the original races like the Spathi or VUX made it to Kessari? In any case, who is there works but your gonna notice nearly instantly these aren't the races you knew. Cast your minds back to the early/mid 90s when people thought making daytime movies into games was a good idea, yeah? not good? All the aliens in this game are FMVs of puppets. Yes, even the human, is a puppet. Why? Cause 90s. At least it's funny some 22 years later to laugh at. Onto the 'bread' of the diplomacy sandwhich - if you even spent the faintest half-awake hours playing Star Control 2 you're going to notice nearly ALL of the actual dialog is lifted straight from SC2, including quests. I dunno how many ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ times I need to tell the Utwig to stop ♥♥♥♥♥♥ dropping the Ultron outside the space Lowes or whatever, but at this rate I'm gonna leave them in a state of constant 'woe-is-me' stage-propped sadness until they get with the program. Some of the races do have hints of autonomy like the Ur-Quan splitting at some point into the Kzer-Za and Kohr-Ah but when the Kohr-Ah split they literally never leave the home borders. Ever. In fact NONE of the races do. Due to implications in the story it's implied that you SHOULD be setting up colonies for the various races to keep them afloat but you can seriously go through this game not making A SINGLE colony and never be slapped across the hands for doing so. Unless you wanna miss out on some honestly really broken power-ups your not gonna miss anything. In fact, that "Colony Efficiency" meter in the corner is a static picture and does not change at all. Either your producing so many RUs that you've in turn made so many colony pods the counter is broken OR you've wasted 200 colonists only to leave 1 behind to try again until you find the ONE planet to break the bank for you and never have to attempt it again EITHER. And the bugs; ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, I remember this game being buggy and I'm not gonna blame it on DOSBox this time. Quest triggers don't kick off as they should, dialog gets sped-up or is missing entirely, music cuts out and repeats in 4 second buffer-loops, the combat AI can became a serious pain in the ass and never fight but CONSTANTLY out-run you if it somehow 'figures out' your in a slower ship and flips between the screens so your only option is to attempt to throw yourself into a planet and hope you die before the screen flips and sends you FLYING across this quadrant of space in such a way that Issac Newton would have a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ temper tantrum OR the game crashes - yeah, I've had the game crash flying INTO planets ON ACCIDENT. I even had one bug where an item that was important to proceed just vanished, leaving me with a broken save file. So all in all you may think I hate Star Control 3, and on some days, I do, but given how cheap it is - you can either buy it to laugh at with some friends or you could just as easily come in to experience what killed this series dead at all but whatever angle, I really do think it's a game to be experienced warts n all, just bring a fifth of Jack Daniels to prep yourself.