I finally played this over the weekend. Why I haven't done so sooner? 'Cus I'm a lousy piece of excrement, that's why!
Srsly, this is awesome work. Style and gameplay wise you totally see the influence of
The Expanse,
Freelancer and
Starlancer (even if the latter one seems to be rather unintentional) and probably a few other works which me ignorant jerk has never played (Homeworld?!). None of that is a bad thing. Beyond providing my general thumbs up and much appreciation for the ton of work that went into this, I cannot add much to what has already been said. In all shortness:
- I liked the way spacefights take place between large capital ships which are really menacing. You feel like a bug. However, that's also the key source of frustration because very seldom you fell that you, as a player, can really influence the mission. Often it comes down to disarming turrets and intercepting missiles.
- Worldbuilding, story, character development... are all far from being bad, but I think there could have been more. Being a modder myself I fully appreciate the difficulty of providing an engaging entry into your world. Yet... the deficiency is there. I would have liked to learn more about why everybody fights, both on the personal level and on the state level. What is this all about except 'us against them'? What was the Great War about exactly? What is this Elam thing about? The same goes for the characters, only in the last third or so do these people get real personalities. I see unused potential here.
- That being said, I totally got hooked on and am desperate to learn more about this universe. That goes particularly for the player character's distanced personality. I am myself rather unsociable, so I could connect with this guy very much and I'm looking forward to get to know him better. I've already played a few missions of part 2 and can totally see the improvements on the points above.
