Star Hammer: The Vanguard Prophecy

Star Hammer, Oh what a ride you gave me. Some major points people bring up about this game is how clunky the game is to control and how weak the storyline and writing is. While I agree that the game is fairly clunky to start out with until you get familiar with the control scheme, the writing is anything but weak. Let me explain. This game have a couple ways of playing it. Defensive, Neutral and Aggressive. The genius of the writing is that you get out what you put into this game. A lot of games out there boast about how choices actually matter, but in this game that is truly the case. One of the rare games where it's true. To explain why people find the game to be bland and boring, I have to first explain the Defensive/Aggressive system the game works under. You can pick missions, they're either defensive, neutral or aggressive. The way you play inside the missions also dictate how much points to either direction you get, once you are swinging a bit too much to one side, the other side becomes unplayable. A huge majority of players, probably +90% played the game on the defensive scale and the reason for that is because playing the game like a sane person, protecting your ships, managing shields, using counter-measures to take out missiles, taking your time, protecting escort ships all give defensive score. Stuff like RAMMING SPEED, putting all power to weapons when you're under heavy fire, rushing out of formation, lowering shields and not repairing your ships gives you aggressive score. The better you are the more likely you are to get defensive score. And here is where the mixed genius and problem of that comes in. The story you get when you play the defensive path is as basic as it gets. You follow orders, you do things by the book, you stay in the trenches with the others. And the story reflects that, you're not a hero. You're nothing but another soldier defending your home world from an alien invasion. I played the game on the hardest difficulty and on the aggressive scale, I didn't care for the story either... Until a certain point when i realised that the game was reacting to the way i played and the fact that I didn't care at all for the story. I noticed how the high command started getting frustrated with my actions, how I disobeyed orders and put not just my own fleet but the entire armada at risk. I also noticed how the further into the war I got and the more suicide missions I took, my crew got increasingly more frustrated, scared and worried. They started questioning my command, have emotional outbursts in combat, started fights between each other and towards the end, they even found strength and hope because they had survived this hell together. Real bonds were made, once they had to earn that you truly start to care for. You're fighting an endless swarm of aliens, victory is impossible and you're deep behind enemy lines and yet the enemy has learned to fear your name. The story changes based on how you play the game. If you play it safe and defensive, you get told to defend star bases, escort civilian ships out of harms way. If you play the aggressive, you take the fight to an unstoppable force and do the impossible. To be a hero, you have to act like a hero. This game blew me away with how it reacted to my actions, the writers clearly had a story they wanted to tell but they allowed me to completely ignore it and pursue my own goals, and it let me. If you can get past the clunky controls then this game can take you on a ride you won't soon forget, but you have to struggle for the game to recognise you and reward your efforts. So to end my review of Star Hammer: The Vanguard Prophecy This is a game that doesn't hold your hand. It will mould itself around the way you play and gives you a unique experience based on that. I recommend this game with all my heart.

This game is playable and I would love to be able to recommend it, but it really has no "soul" or direction to it. You just keep your fleet moving through a series of uninteresting battles with no real advancement or progression. What little story there is appears to be told through communication transcript blurbs, but the writing was bad enough that I lost interest in that pretty quickly. I was expecting the branching choices for the missions to matter, but it never seemed to have any bearing on anything. The missions were all the same. This might change later on, but the game isn't compelling enough to make me want to continue soldiering forward. I don't see any carrot on the end of this stick. All I see is the stick. Which is really a shame, because the art assets are all good, and while the UI is clunky it is serviceable. It doesn't help that the enemy forces are incredibly cliche space monster squid aliens which don't make for compelling antagonists.

Excellent strategy game. Now that i have completed the game, i understand why this team was chosen to do a game on Battlestar Galactica, look forward to play that game as well. In this game, you manage you fleets and follow a non linear campaign. There's a small management of you crew as well. While tricky, it'a really relaxing game as it's turn-based. The campaign is not too long (about 10 hours). The story itself is too much focused on texts. Overall, a very nice game if you want to be Adama or the like.

Ну в целом вполне интересная тактическая стратегия про бои кораблей в трехмерном космосе, перемещение кораблей по "высоте" в пространстве правда привязано к нескольким стандартным "высотам". В бою выбираешь направление движения, распределение мощности реактора, направление усиления щитов, приоритетные цели и т.п. потом жмешь ход и все корабли на поле боя совершают движение, маневры и стрельбу за какой-то отрезок времени, потом снова выбираешь что делать и снова делаешь ход. Сюжет тут присутствует и зависит, видимо, от того по какой цепочке миссий ты пойдешь, англоязычные отзывы вроде говорят что он неплох, но оценить данную англоязычную скатерть текста(330к символов в файлах игры) мне сложно. Судя по отзывам, часть достижений получить скорее всего невозможно в данной версии игры. Дата анонса, дата выхода, название и то что тут есть наш флот, предатели и аналог тиранид вызывает ощущение что разработчик в конце 2014 предложил компании гамес воркшоп свой демонстратор игры по вх40к баттлефлет готик, получил ответ аля "спасибо за идею, но нет.", после чего в 2015 игру быстро перепилили под свою историю и выпустили по сути демонстратор возможностей, который позже был доработан и использован для менее популярной(чем вх40к) вселенной Battlestar Galactica. Игра вызывает в основном положительные ощущения, но вне боев она топорная и покупать ее разве что по скидке.

OK, the game is ok. It's not fantastic, its not rubbish, its just ok. Needs more variety, needs more ability to modify ships, loadout, crew. I know its an old game, but its new to me.

I would only get this game on discount. I like the idea well enough and the ships are fun but there are too many bugs. I had a tough fight to escort these shuttles to the evac navpoint. All the enemies are dead and my ships are circling the nav point but the scenario doesn't end. Go play something with fewer bugs. The storyline is weak at best.

Ship combat is OK but given the small fleet sizes, lack of customization for ships and repetitive feeling maps the game can get stale quickly. Pick it up if your into space combat but only on a good sale.

A nice little tactical space combat game -- reminds me a little of Starfleet Battles from my tabletop gaming youth!

Overall I loved the mechanics of the actual battles. Where the game was weak is on story and enemy ship variation. Constantly fighting against the same faction got old. It is good for an evening or two of fun.

Decent graphics, interesting mechanics, story didn't really pull me in but the gameplay was unique and fun.