I'm no stranger to Visual Novels or gaming in general, and while Sunrider probably isn't going to epitomize any element of its genre, it's a solid fun game worth the play at $20, never mind free.


The plot is fairly straightforward, and a lot of tropes are played straight. To the best of my knowledge, no choice can lead you to a failure state (save through choices made in the combat layer); instead, choices decide what kind of a captain you want to be, and to act contrary to built-up ideals at some critical points is harder than to continue to play your beliefs straight (represented by the offering of the other option at a small cost of in-game command points).

The writing and dialogue isn't really award worthy, but it's certainly playable. I'd even call it better than average for a VN, and the occasional moments where things really come together more than make up for any bland parts.


The real meat of the game is its combat. Battles are challenging and rewarding at Captain, one of the six difficulty levels, and different tactical approaches offer different levels of risk and reward on scales from the immediate to the long-term. Much of this is accomplished through the surprisingly deep upgrade system. While there aren't any trees to climb or alternate ships to swap your pilots into, there's plenty of stats to focus on and their synergies can stretch beyond the immediately apparent. Play well, and you'll have enough money to invest in some pretty niche strategies.


The game's character work is about on par with its plot work, but it has the benefit of being fleshed out passively as a consequence of the combat. Even if you're not a big fan of the fairly unadventurous tropes many of the characters are built around, you may find it hard to stay mad when they're jamming half the enemy fleet's targeting for you, or sniping missile boats from accross the map. I know I did.

The in-combat voice clips got on my nerves at first, but they over time they grew on me, and I wound up pretty happy with them as the rampant devestation they heralded increased in scope and range. Not that you can't turn them off; if there's one thing Sunrider isn't wanting for, it's options.


The game has recieved balance and bugfix reports after release, and it's pretty well rounded. There remain one or two potential crashes related to the combat layer; about once in two hours I would guess, you may hit a script bug that quits you to desktop. However, the game has a very robust auto-save system, and a crash will set you back a few seconds at most.


This game is fun, good looking, free, and dare I say it: well made. Why not pick it up and see if you like it? You've little to lose except a bit of time, and if it grabs you enough to take that from you, wouldn't you say it's earned its price?

If does take your fancy, consider throwing a bit of coin at the developers' site. There's no requests for donations or cheap monitization gimmicks in the game, and if the money doesn't go straight to rewarding the devs for their good work, it'll most likely go towards designing more quality games.