very good game

Very rich 2D space game action/rpg with various NPCs, quests, weapons, ships and so on, especially when you install fan made mods. Highly recommend.

I give this game a rank C- (55-60%)
Average game - only if you have nothing else to do.
See my profile for more details about my reviews.

Very hard for me to rate Space Rangers when obviously this game is already quite old: more than 20 years later, playing even an HD version of it, without the nostalgia factor, without the passion for retrogaming, is just an impossible task.
The game is not ugly, but it is not pretty either - lot of it is actually in pre-rendered, and the overall look feels very kitsch (land on a planet? every base is one old school background, etc). The music is quite groovy, but once again very dated - not unpleasant however.

And now the reason why I end up giving about 60% to this game is because of the insane amount of work that has been put into it: the gameplay is rich with so many various things to do, yes it is your traditional Space/Trading/Combat game such as Elite or X. So if you like that genre, you know what you get. However, you also get MUCH more: planet gameplay is also there, with RTS view and game mechanisms! quite crazy for the time. Also, the amount of text (lore, dialogues, items, etc) is extremely generous.
As such, this game is typical from late 90s early 00s in the sense that you will find a crazily generous amount of things to read, places to explore, NPCs to talk to, quests to do etc. So much work and effort, hard to give less than 50% as a rating.

However, if you are like me, a gamer who never played this game in their childhood, I doubt you would find any reason to play it now. Just so many good/better/more recent games out there...