This game is from the same developer who made the "Crying Suns", both gameplay mechanics and the story background are connected or even identical to the "Crying Suns". But arguably worse implementation than the first game.
I've completed 3 full games on normal difficulty. I think it is a mediocre game, gameplay-wise. You thought this was a strategy-based space combat game, but in reality, this is more like a "2D aimlab" with a pause function. Very boring gameplay without variety. And the random story/character designs are full of DEI content. (I don't mind the DEI personally, I just tell you there are DEI in the game)
I gave it a mediocre score because the gameplay is bad. You can't really plan anything strategically ahead of time or after the combat, or build synergy with your loadout. You feel nothing in this game is connected—just pieces here and there, and they do not interact. You will unlock more stuff either by winning or losing, but very slowly, and there will still not be much difference in gameplay. And then I used Cheat Engine to unlock all weapons/ships and play the last full run, and then found the game still doesn't offer much variety. Yes, it is the same problem from the first game, but the first game at least has a coherent "feel". While this sequel has a lot of unnecessary mechanisms that are detached and only exist for the sake of being different than the first game, which doesn't mean it's a better mechanism.
There's no synergy, no strategy. Just clicking your mouse for the ship to move to the correct location—a lot of boring micromanagement. The worst being that the enemy's now free-roaming, results in a less strategic plan than the grid-based system of the first game, where in the first game, due to its grid-based nature, you can trap your enemy or force them into a route that favors you, and the sequel ditched this aspect.
As for DEI, you can find it here and there, but I did not deduct any points. Well, firstly, I like Ebony; secondly, you rarely read the event story. The "story" text exists just for the sake of giving a reason to say, "hey, for whatever reason, you have to choose a debuff now." After reading a few of them, you will realize there's no need to read them. It's not like I'm in a moral dilemma where choice is important or anything—just give you a random reason to say why you are forced to choose a debuff modifier, and that is it. So no matter how woke or DEI the text is, you're not affected by it, because you don't read it at all. The event and the text are randomly chosen from the pool to make the game more difficult.
So overall, I rated this game badly. It was just not a very fun game to play.
The reason why the first game, "Crying Suns," is well-received is that, even though the ending is very cliché and inspired by 40k and many others. But with a plot involving "time resets" and an AI revolt, what else can you expect? The first game is highly plot-oriented. However, in the second game, after the tutorial, the plot is much less important, due to the developer wanting to push this game into a roguelike with more replay value, but I'd say it failed. It is now reduced to "modifiers text, and random pop-up events".
Although this game has a high positive rating on Steam, I believe it mainly benefits from fans of the first game. Additionally, many players might not feel the game is bad enough to leave a negative review. However, I'm more critical, and I do not enjoy this game as much as the first one, which had a more compelling story and better game mechanics. So this sequel is a step back from the first game, not a better one.
We are going to be dealing with more DEI slop in a few more years since alot of them likely are finishing their development. Although it doesn't help that alot of them are also likely going to be graphic slop.
Thanks for your review, I never was into BSG so I was wondering if this was even worth trying for me. Back to waiting for all the other in dev space games to come out I guess lol. Or maybe play X4 some more.
I've played X4 once and honestly it feels boring as hell.
The "learning curve" people so afraid of is just a bunch of different menus to either give command to your ships or to interact with stations. Once you realize how things work it's just a snooze fest... even more so now that patch 9.0 is out, fixing performance and a bunch of ship AI related problems, both existed for at least a decade.
I can understand that point of view. The real beauty of X4 is building an empire rather than the ship flight and piloting combat, where the game allows you to fly every ship, build anything anywhere, and do whatever you want really. I found the growth in Avorion more enjoyable though the empire aspect there is weaker and you cannot manage hundreds or thousands of ships, rather you are expected to move towards using only a handful of the most powerful ships you have unlocked access to. But I absolutely love the itemizing and custom building your ships there.
My biggest problem with X4 is the fact you can only "explore" certain limited areas. Once you exhausted every hexagon the game has to offer, you will NOT find anything anymore. It's more of "Sid Meier's Civilization: Space Age" and there's little to no exploration to be done - everything will be in roughly the same place every time you start a new run.
And to make it worse, planets are no more than mere backdrops, and they don't orbit the star.
True, after we got NMS and similar games, X series is lacking in the fact planets still hardly exist and you are in a confined universe. But those NMS style of games are outliers as they are, in that procgen changes the dynamic of the game so much and you cannot simulate all of that in X style anymore. Hence my mention of Avorion which is a very interesting middle ground that will give you more sectors to explore enough that you are unlikely going to see all of them (though you are still limited when you reach the core that there isn't anything 'harder' anymore). Though Avorion doesn't involve planets at all.
One day perhaps we can see something like star citizen that actually attempts to deliver this new era of space game without becoming a feature crept disaster.
the fixed environment setup might have helped with features like setting up your own trade routes. It might have made AI coding less complicated cuz your ships won't freak out when a station orbits to the other side of a planet or a solar system.
I guess they were locked in on the "war driven economy" direction for a reason.
As for Slop Citizen - let's just pretend it never actually happened 😅
This game is from the same developer who made the "Crying Suns", both gameplay mechanics and the story background are connected or even identical to the "Crying Suns". But arguably worse implementation than the first game.
I've completed 3 full games on normal difficulty. I think it is a mediocre game, gameplay-wise. You thought this was a strategy-based space combat game, but in reality, this is more like a "2D aimlab" with a pause function. Very boring gameplay without variety. And the random story/character designs are full of DEI content. (I don't mind the DEI personally, I just tell you there are DEI in the game)
I gave it a mediocre score because the gameplay is bad. You can't really plan anything strategically ahead of time or after the combat, or build synergy with your loadout. You feel nothing in this game is connected—just pieces here and there, and they do not interact. You will unlock more stuff either by winning or losing, but very slowly, and there will still not be much difference in gameplay. And then I used Cheat Engine to unlock all weapons/ships and play the last full run, and then found the game still doesn't offer much variety. Yes, it is the same problem from the first game, but the first game at least has a coherent "feel". While this sequel has a lot of unnecessary mechanisms that are detached and only exist for the sake of being different than the first game, which doesn't mean it's a better mechanism.
There's no synergy, no strategy. Just clicking your mouse for the ship to move to the correct location—a lot of boring micromanagement. The worst being that the enemy's now free-roaming, results in a less strategic plan than the grid-based system of the first game, where in the first game, due to its grid-based nature, you can trap your enemy or force them into a route that favors you, and the sequel ditched this aspect.
As for DEI, you can find it here and there, but I did not deduct any points. Well, firstly, I like Ebony; secondly, you rarely read the event story. The "story" text exists just for the sake of giving a reason to say, "hey, for whatever reason, you have to choose a debuff now." After reading a few of them, you will realize there's no need to read them. It's not like I'm in a moral dilemma where choice is important or anything—just give you a random reason to say why you are forced to choose a debuff modifier, and that is it. So no matter how woke or DEI the text is, you're not affected by it, because you don't read it at all. The event and the text are randomly chosen from the pool to make the game more difficult.
So overall, I rated this game badly. It was just not a very fun game to play.
The reason why the first game, "Crying Suns," is well-received is that, even though the ending is very cliché and inspired by 40k and many others. But with a plot involving "time resets" and an AI revolt, what else can you expect? The first game is highly plot-oriented. However, in the second game, after the tutorial, the plot is much less important, due to the developer wanting to push this game into a roguelike with more replay value, but I'd say it failed. It is now reduced to "modifiers text, and random pop-up events".
Although this game has a high positive rating on Steam, I believe it mainly benefits from fans of the first game. Additionally, many players might not feel the game is bad enough to leave a negative review. However, I'm more critical, and I do not enjoy this game as much as the first one, which had a more compelling story and better game mechanics. So this sequel is a step back from the first game, not a better one.
The "learning curve" people so afraid of is just a bunch of different menus to either give command to your ships or to interact with stations. Once you realize how things work it's just a snooze fest... even more so now that patch 9.0 is out, fixing performance and a bunch of ship AI related problems, both existed for at least a decade.
It's more of "Sid Meier's Civilization: Space Age" and there's little to no exploration to be done - everything will be in roughly the same place every time you start a new run.
And to make it worse, planets are no more than mere backdrops, and they don't orbit the star.
One day perhaps we can see something like star citizen that actually attempts to deliver this new era of space game without becoming a feature crept disaster.
the fixed environment setup might have helped with features like setting up your own trade routes. It might have made AI coding less complicated cuz your ships won't freak out when a station orbits to the other side of a planet or a solar system.
I guess they were locked in on the "war driven economy" direction for a reason.
As for Slop Citizen - let's just pretend it never actually happened 😅
(by that i mean, of course, is the blond in the game!??)