Stellar Tactics

Being a one man project earns some understanding, but not quite forgiveness. It's impressive how much was accomplished by a single person's vision, and tons of store assets. And the scope of the universe is very impressive. Bonus points for allowing custom portraits, and sliders to customize the experience! But that starts to falter when, 130 hours in, I've only seen three types of dungeons with the same six kinds of rooms. And the absolute grind- I felt I didn't start to get decent gear until about 80 hours in, and a nice ship at around 100 hours. Couple that with pretty bad combat glitches of being shot through a doorframe, or a rocket round going through what I thought was a solid window (that it still wouldn't let me shoot out of) hitting my whole squad. There's narrative issue too- where it sets you up for some interesting things, but the way events turn out leaves you like you were overthinking it. I mean no disrespect to the developer, but my review is kind of a mess. And so is this game.

The Large Nothingness. This game bit off more than it can chew. While it features a vast world with thousands of systems, and even more planets, they are also pretty much all empty. Yes, you can mine, fight, scan, and do a bunch of things within those systems, but there is no difference between those systems. For someone who enjoys the story more than just reptitive tasks, this game is a disappointment. However, I don't regret buying it because it was only made by one person. But I think they overreached.

I pride myself of getting games to run smoothly since the nineties. This game just crashes all the time, and its not fixable on my end - so if you read this - hard pass until the developer gets these issues worked out. Its a nice little game in its own right though.

Been following this game for years & it gets better & better, great storyline getting fleshed out. You have a squad with you level them up & yourself, flying a ship which you can add to or get another. Ground fighting turn by turn, space battles with your ship a great deep tree of skill upgrades you could easily sink 100 hours into this, mining asteroids it has everything you could almost want in a game worth the price.

*** Recommended, if you're in for a long haul game. It's basically EvE Offline + Simplified XCom. Which to me is awesome, but it requires a time and brain investment. It really scratches the space game itch for me, and the ground gameplay can be fun, or kinda frustrating and excessive at times. It's good to note that there's MULTIPLE difficulty sliders for this game to help fine-tune your experience. If you don't like the ground combat, for example, there's a specific slider to turn that down to easy. It's also helpful to note that apparently you can skip at least the first of TWO "tutorial" story dungeons before you even get your ship. I played through them but found them kinda excessive for a game intro, as did many others who have left reviews. I did, however, arrive at a very satisfying gameloop so far, and I haven't even left the home star system yet. 1. Start as Explorer 2. Slog through both tutorial/intro dungeons, somehow. 3. Ditch the 2 creepy crewmembers you start with...well, one super creepo and one who's stockholm syndromed to the creepo. 4. Hire some decent folks at the first station. 5. Sell off gear I don't need to buy a HEAVY Mining Laser for the starter Explorer ship. 6. Start mining/selling. 7. Find shipwreck close to main trade station. 8. Realize I now have access to infinite AFK money over time. 9. Upgrade WARP DRIVE among other components, as energy output seems to be the main reason you can't fight anything in the starter Explorer. 10. Explode my first rat, find Exceptional Ore Refinery. Jackpot. More money, can refine on the go for bigger hauls. (And you can hot swap your ship gear while in space!) The game has a lot to enjoy, if you're into the sandbox, grindy, numbers-go-up, space game experience. For me, so far it's what I've been looking for in a space game for a long time. There's a lot of gear, lots of things to level up, and lots of ways to play and make money. Plus, I guess there's some story in there about a threat to the whole galaxy yada yada... Recommended, to a playerbase that appreciates this type of game.

My original plan was to get well into the game before I did a review. I've got over 50 hours in at this point and I am just leaving the first sector LOL. This game is so damn good. I have no idea why the reviews are mixed. If you like strategy and space games just get this one. I've paid more than twice the cost of this game for some big name titles and not gotten nearly as much enjoyment. Get a ship, assemble a crew, get missions, keep flying. There is a LOT more to it than this but if there wasn't it would be totally worth your $25. One perk that I have immensely enjoyed has been the ability to import custom portraits for your characters. With the included portraits, some photos from friends and family and a little help from ChatGPT they have flying the stars and hitting the ground on away missions with me :D. Some of you may remember the ability to do this from Baldur's Gate II except it is FAR easier. No resizing necessary. If you decide to get this game (and you should) my advice would be to give it a little time. The learning curve can be a little inconsistent in that you get hand holding and tutorials with some things and not with others. There is a good guide within the game that you can access at any time. For me, I get a great amount of joy when I discover something for myself. There have been many utterances of "Ohhhhh" "Ahhhhh now I see" The figuring it out could be frustrating for some and rewarding for others. Of Note: I purchased the game sometime last year I think when it was on sale but was waiting until release to actually play it. After purchase I had installed the game and then ran updates as they became available. After playing for a few hours I started getting game freezes. I did the normal video driver update and then file verification but the problem continued. I finally completely uninstalled the game and reinstalled it fresh and I have not had any issues whatsoever. My saved games were good to go so no restarts necessary. This game is a lot of bang for your buck and super fun.

This game is the 100% successor to Sentinel Worlds, it has every feature except better. Random loot and weapons and ship components. I have only played 6.5 hours and it is pretty epic and I haven't even gotten to fly to the other 999 sectors. For those people that are put off by the initial pages and pages of story, read it. This guy made an entire lore and has to dump it on you somehow. Not a fan of a lot of reading in games but the more that the game progressed the deeper the story got, and its not Ai slop. Sentinel Worlds mechanics are all here but better and in 3D. The ship battles, the surface fights, the boarding, the character sheets, everything. But he added a huge random galaxy based on a seed so you can reproduce it (maybe not perfectly) and play it through again. There is an infinite amount of RNG loot for your crew and ships. If you are off-put by the starting crew, dont worry about it, they are completely replaceable. If you are off-put by the text, dont worry that slows down a lot. If you are put off by the slow start... well.. yeah... ok... just deal with it :P If you remember the grind and grind of old games, this is just a toy compared to that. So far everytime I run into a new mechanic, I am impressed at how flawless it is executed. I think this is one of those "its just one guy who made it" games. Normally... I dont care since it is always used as an excuse. In this case, the "one guy" shows through in a fully coherent package. its not slapped together, it shows passion for the project. This game is something rainbow AAA Ai generated slop can't hope to replicate while they chase getting a 50% market share of 3% of "gamers" that would never buy a game even if they are the targetted group. EDIT: To people who "can't recommend it" when they have 139 hours in it? Assuming you paid full price of $25 CDN... what else can you do for $0.18 an hour and enjoy some of it? Even going for a walk would cost you more in shoe wear than that. Read the "negative" comments and see how many of them actually praise the game (which is confusing) or are confused and say "Space is mostly empty except for the planets, and ships, and salvage, and mining and scanning for special locations"... yeah... that is space... its not the local mall. You can fly from planet to planet in real time in 2 minutes and along the way you are scanning for incoming ships and special locations. Not sure what they expect space to be filled with? A sea of dwelling challenged aliens stuck with dirty needles doing the california lean? Maybe that can be added by modders or DLC :P

The Game needs more content more ship models higher tiers of progression but it is worth the money. I sunk over 900 hrs into this game

I deeply respect the tenacity of the solo developer who worked so hard on this game and endured so many trials along the way (he didn't give up and finished it). But unfortunately, I can't recommend it. The gameplay is incredibly monotonous, slow, and clunky, with endless backtracking, boring running around identical maps (tile sets), repetitive (and largely meaningless) encounters, monotonous gear, rather primitive builds, monotonous (and time consuming) ''quests''... And so on. Yes, the game is a sandbox (so procedural elements are expected), but the resulting mechanics and dynamics are not very successful. The grind isn't engaging, it's simply exhausting. The story and universe are generally are not bad in principle, but all the NPCs are very bland, and there's nothing to make you care about their fate, have any emotional involvement, or feel a personal stake in the events.

Can't even start a new game it crashes every time