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Carolus Rex
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Sweden
Jan 1970
time: 06:19
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...or, more precisely, 160 Swedish crowns. Should I?
When you read the back of the cover, this seems to be one of those promising games that gets you itching to play it...
Good atmosphere, an open game with many different ways to play it, space, exploration, trading, piracy... [where's a drooling smiley when you need one?]
What's 'Poly's verdict on this one? Dig in or let it be?
Carolus
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Kloreep
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of the pillow
Jun 2002
time: 00:19
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quote:
Originally posted by Spaced Cowboy
Send me $10, I'll send you mine. Fun for a while, but somewhat repetitive, with the exception of the main missions. |
quote:
Originally posted by Kuciwalker
It's OK. The open-ended parts are boring (all missions amount to "fly here, shoot stuff"), but the SP campaign is kinda fun. |
What they said.
During the SP it's not an "open universe of possibility" or whatever the marketing says, but that's okay, because you almost always are allowed to do as you wish within some limited area between missions, and since you're required to move from area to area, you always have new systems, equipment, and opponents to check out. In short, the campaign is very fun. 
Once out of the SP campaign, however, things do get repetitive. You can't access the best gear during the campaign, so you can try to upgrade further if you wish afterwards; but the random missions, and trading, are all you're left with once the campaign is over. The random missions will have gotten repetitive by the time you're done with the campaign, and while trading is interesting to try for a while (it really only becomes profitable once you're done with the campaign and thus free to travel across the map), it too gets repetitive.
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Locutus
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ACS CTP1/2 Manager & Civ4 Co-Manager
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Hengelo, The Netherlands
Nov 1999
time: 06:19
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What the others have said: the campaign is great, if all too easy for experienced players of this genre. The game itself is very solid: fantastic UI, graphics, sound effects and music, great voice acting (the lead characters are actually played by Hollywood actors such as George Takei (Sulu from Star Trek) and John Rhys-Davies (Gimli from LotR)), solid (if slightly cliché) storyline, fun gameplay, good performance with low minimum specs. However, after the main campaign the rest is pretty repetitive. Besides doing a little bit more unit upgrading, there isn't a tremendous amount of stuff to do anymore. The campaign offers 13 missions (most of which consist of several 'sub-missions') that probably take about an hour each on average. Then there's some time between the missions in which you have to do random missions, so in total maybe 20 hours of gameplay.
Beyond, there are basically two reasons to coninue playing, if you're into them:
1) To find out the entire backstory. There really is a HUGE backstory: every faction, every system has its own history, its own story. Just discovering all the systems alone can take quite some time, some can only be accessed through well hidden jumpholes in dense nebulas. I read in an earlier thread on the game (not sure if it was here or on some other forum) that people thought the 5th sleeper ship (Hispania) was not in the game so it could be used for an expansion pack. But it actually *is* there, you just have to do some exploring (and be friendly with the right faction) to find it. I wonder how many people here have found it? Anyway, if you're into discovering stuff and reading backstory, that can still be fun, but of course it doesn't offer infinite replayability as the PR promises and it requires a LOT of talking to people (repetitive) and scouting huge areas of mostly empty space (boring).
2) To get involved in big battles for some senseless but fun action. I still enjoy taking a poor or mediocre ship and flying straight to an enemy base or meeting point. Fighting off 10+ more advanced ships at once (and a few weapons platforms and stuff) is still just a great way to blow off some steam. Not something to do hours on end, but fine for just 30 minutes after a hard days work...
It really is a fantastic game in its core, would've been an all-time classic if only they had made the actual 'freelance' part of the game more interesting (dynamic economy, more different types or random missions, (limited) contruction and destruction of bases, ongoing intergalactic political developments, AI that actually use shield batteries and nanobots, etc). If it's worth $23 of whatever mostly depends on what your gaming tastes are and how much money $23 is for you. It probably is though.
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Kuciwalker
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of Schmooism
Feb 2001
time: 00:19
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quote:
Originally posted by Kloreep
What they said.
During the SP it's not an "open universe of possibility" or whatever the marketing says, but that's okay, because you almost always are allowed to do as you wish within some limited area between missions, and since you're required to move from area to area, you always have new systems, equipment, and opponents to check out. In short, the campaign is very fun.
Once out of the SP campaign, however, things do get repetitive. You can't access the best gear during the campaign, so you can try to upgrade further if you wish afterwards; but the random missions, and trading, are all you're left with once the campaign is over. The random missions will have gotten repetitive by the time you're done with the campaign, and while trading is interesting to try for a while (it really only becomes profitable once you're done with the campaign and thus free to travel across the map), it too gets repetitive. |
What is fun, however (at least IMO) is doing one or two missions from each base, reading the news and talking to the people in the bar while your their. TONS of content.
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10-05-2005 01:55
). If you intersperse it with a variety of randomly generated missions it's quite long too. Took me 40-50 hrs to complete IIRC.
).
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