Star Traders: Frontiers

Think the devs leaned a little too hard on RNG for the entire game design doc. I love D&D and TTRPG based systems, but this game takes it to an extreme that makes outcomes basically impossible to predict, which leaves me feeling like I have zero agency or control over the gameplay in the same way a slot machine does. Traveling between any two locations will have you met with 50+ random skill checks, so much so that they just bleed into the background noise. You arrive at a randomized planet, and decide to explore. You are presented with a minigame where a random set of cards are shown and one is randomly selected, from which you get random rewards. Wow, I have almost ZERO control over what is happening. You can slightly influence outcomes with your build, but not in a way that feels like I have any real control (Something like, removing a bad card from one of the RNG card minigames. But I can't control which cards are presented at all, so even if I remove a bad card I have no real way to aim towards a specific card or control the reward from something like "Gain 20 resources" or "Find a weapon", it can just be ANY weapon in the game seemingly.) The game does a very poor job of explaining systems to a new player. The UI needs a UX pass very badly, things like color coding the attributes with the things that use them to make it much more obvious at a glance what is being used to influence a skill. The menus are buried in weird ways and can be difficult to navigate (I had to google how to get to the crew equipment screen, for example) Decided to check out a bunch of guides on the game's steam guide's page, and like 90% of them start with "Just follow the standard guide that has you exploiting the same early game missions for the first hour of the game, start over if several RNG factors don't fall in your favor" which ends up making every single run feel very homogenous and shows a poor early game design if the optimal route is so clearly solved.

This games first hour(s) doesn't help it much to get more positive recognition. I have played loads of games like this and even me got sometimes lost in those systems. There isn't anything super complicated here but hell is it not clear! That said, once you get, the games opens up and is a great experience.

This game does something that no other game is doing for space sims. It creates a living universe with actors who have agency, resulting in emergent gameplay which builds excellent stories in a living, breathing universe, which has enormous replayability. You can play in many different ways and all the many occupations have paths to success; the game rewards experimentation, thought and risk taking. The contacts system alone is genius, and maybe is only matched by Crusader Kings 2. The mission system is excellent and actually has consequences for success and failure, and usually also has time penalties for not completing actions in good time. Combat is difficult and often unpredictable, like real life, and often the best course is to run. It is a rpg at it's core but many of it's systems attempt to be realistic simulations. People complaining about RNG in reviews do not get this! The die roll/RNG system is also hugely innovative. It gives players the ability to influence the outcome without knowing exactly how the percentage chance of success/failure is derived, which creates important decision points for the player in everything they do - there is risk and reward in every action. To get the most from Star Traders (and it has a huge amount to offer) you need to accept that the learning curve is huge and the tutorial can only take you so far. You will need to do a little research online but there are many excellent player and Trese brother resources available to help you. I suggest you pick an occupation that appeals (you can't go wrong with Explorer!) and look up some builds and basic strategies and dive in. You will not be doing a single play through... You need to accept graphics may not be the best but they are very functional (have you played Battle Brothers?), and the ship designs are good and you get used to them. Trese brothers are a small (but growing) independent developer making games they love to play themselves. Each new game has got better and better, and have always been super well supported. The level of support for their games is probably more than any other developer I am aware off (and I play No Man's Sky). They have up dated the game regularly for years after launch based on feedback from the very culty and obsessive community, and they are very active with the community. Their latest game is very good, they have delved into 3D graphics and I hope that one day they remake Star Traders with better visuals! You also need to accept and enjoy the difficulty and RNG because that is the point... but remember that because of the all the updates game balance is excellent, and there is always a successful strategy. Star Sector is great but it does not have the depth of this. So in short this is not a pick up and play game (at least not in the beginning). You need to commit some time and effort but if you do it will pay back immeasurably!

no guide no tutorial

This game came out in 2018; it's now 2026 and we're on update #378 - and it won't be the last either. That alone should tell you the level of passion and care that went into this game. Is there a learning curve? Yes. But if you need to be spoon-fed and hand-held through everything a game has to offer, maybe rethink your approach to gaming in general. You are meant to explore and discover! And if you're willing to do that here, then a myriad galaxies filled with different characters, stories and adventures awaits.

The save system is terrible, and too much of what happens in the game (dice rolls) is obfuscated leaving you always trying to figure out what exactly went wrong and how to do better, while having to navigate the terrible save system to recover your game. There's no excuse for a save system this terrible and unfortunately, while I believe there's a great game waiting to be played, I won't be playing it.

It was a good game in 2020 when I bought it, and they have updated it continually to this date.

Holy crap - what an awful game. 20 random-ass events in first 30 seconds of play. What??? Space worms! Void plasma! Goobybobs! Who ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cares?! Like so many other reviewers have said, choice doesn't matter AT ALL; I have NO IDEA who this could POSSIBLY be fun for. It's just objectively terrible. I've never refunded a game so fast - and I was a little stunned on the help page to see I also refunded this game 8 years ago, also with less than 0.1 hours played. So it's STAYED terrible for nearly a decade. Steam needs to create a greater barrier to entry for listing games, and a fee for hosting games. There's so much aging ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bloat on this platform I've actually actively started looking for point-of-sale alternatives. This game is a scam, where they occassionally pay just enough sponsoring cash and sale the price just enough to reel in the latest crop of suckers. What a joke,. Real lesson to me to ALWAYS bother leaving a review. Could have saved myself 10 minutes.

Definitely not too difficult; a lot of those reviews must have been written without trying the easier difficulty levels (maybe they didn´t exist before?). Just follow the storyline missions and you´ll get plenty of money. I´ve won several battles - both ship and crew - without even upgrading my ship. My strat was to be very evasive so that I could run away easily if it didn´t work out. I ran away a lot. My critique is instead this: I wanted to be a smuggler, but the entry to the black market is a chance gamble (that´s fine) on which success does not really lead to what you need. I couldn´t buy or sell what was specific to my smuggler mission (with my one contact) and there was WAAAAAAY easier to make money in every other way possible (which I had not designed my crew for: Story missions, spying, scavanging, exploring... even robbing pirates). Why would I try to enter a high risk black market with no reward? When there is an abundance of trade and easy to do missions and then buy trade permits. Functionality has to go hand in hand with a role, for there to be a point to play the role. Also, be aware: The game has a lot of depth and story. Very cool. But you don´t matter. You are basically Malcom Reynolds without ever being able to touch the 10 alliances... you just earn money from them.

The shoehorned card game mechanic ruins an otherwise very interesting game. A test out of ~50 attmpts: - approx 20-25% of the time, when no talent-based card overrides are used, the outcome favors positive outcomes; 50% for minor negative, remainder very negative - approx. 45% of the time - nearly half - when selecting a talent-based card override (e.g. swap card, remove card, etc.), the outcome more frequently gravitates toward a negative -> very negative outcomes Summary: it appears best to not use replacement cards at all, even to remove the more difficult encounters (xeno combat)