While the promise seemed grand, the game just fails to deliver fun.

The tutorial presents an overview of your cockpit, but I can't read anything from my 15,6" 144Hz laptop screen - the UI is too small.

The flight/physics model is bizarre for my taste. If you're an arcade pilot who liked Ace Combat, Project Wingman, or H.A.W.X. - try it with caution. An obscure game, "The Tomorrow War (2009)", has spaceflight that is more accessible.

Something feels off for me, even after hundreds of hours in similar flight sims from Il-2 and War Thunder to Sky Rogue and The Brew Barons.

The biggest issue - I can't seem to hit anything. Bullets and rockets rarely connect and provide no feedback for the player when damage is dealt.

The game is not there yet.
I expected more from the 1.0 release.

Not a refund, though - the art direction is curious, and the premise is intriguing.

Let's help more people to learn about the game and support the developer so they can turn this release around.

The game feels fast and interesting to fly, but even on low settings it was struggling in a 1v1. Feels like ps3 graphics without ps3 optimization, which is a real shame. I'll keep an eye on it for future updates, but I'm refunding it until it improves. If you have a beefy pc try and see if it's better, as mine isn't, and tell that experience. If you don't have a beefy pc, don't try it yet.

specifics:
-kept kicking me out of the settings every 10 seconds forcing me to go in, change a setting or two if feeling lucky, then close menu and repeat
-tutorial mission establishes enemies as green targets while missiles are red, kind of weird and it took me a few minutes to get that
-launch sequence is very weird. Sometimes it lags, goes slowly, and thrusts you into the air randomly, while other times it would bug out and wouldn't let me change the perspective into 1st person.

WOW! this game/development team show A LOT of promise!! If you like aerial combat, spaceships, and stunning otherworldly settings than this game will peak your interests! I think what i like the most about this game is that the Dev Team ACTUALLY updates the game WEEKLY!! super cool to see a team that is dedicated to its craft!!! Deff give this game a try!! i am excited to see what this Dev Team has to offer in the future! multiple thumbs up!!

I can't recommend this in it's current state, and not for fifteen quid either. There's some incredible potential here, but it needs some work. TL;DR wishlist and keep an eye on, unless you can deal with the things below.

ETA: Steam doesn't seem to be tracking my playtime correctly - I've significantly more than the time listed.

1. Very little weapon feedback. It's almost impossible to tell if you've hit something or not. I strafed a row of fuel tanks with my machine guns and I couldn't tell if you if I hit them at all, if I totally missed, or if I did hit them and needed a second pass. A hitmarker for the guns would go a decent way to solving this.
   
   It's the same issue with guided weapons too - did my missile hit? Unless I can see the target go down, I have no idea.
   
   
2. The gunsight is tiny. It does count gravity for you, which is cool, but without any visible tracers to "walk" fire into a target, anything but the high RoF default guns are really hard to use, even on ground targets. I'd love to see some work done here, even some alternate styles. Elite Dangerous (and I loathe to bring that up here) allows for the selection of leading/trailing gunsights. But even if nothing changes, you could double the size of the current one and it'd be too small. More visible tracers would be nice too.
   
   
3. The scale seems... off. Ground targets seem too small, which seems to feed into the above issues with combat being difficult. Combined with the lack of visual clarity, enemy ground installations turn into a blob of HUD markers and tiny specks. Good luck picking out enemy AA installations or anything, because I sure couldn't. Targeting priority seems fine, but as before, enemy bases become a blob of HUD markers with very little way of getting useful information out of them.
   
   
4. UI. It's full of scroll boxes, and yellow text in a typeface I struggled to read. I like the style of it, and it certainly matches with what the games going for, but finding out what a weapon does shouldn't be a chore. The ship selection could do with some kind of overhaul too. I'd love to be able to compare stats at a glance, or filter by role or something like that.
   
   Cockpit instruments have similar issues too, but overall are pretty good for the ships I've seen.
   
   
5. More control options. I like the flight model as is, but controlling the throttle with a controller is a chore - I'd love to see auto centring for the throttle, like how Ace Combat does it. To it's credit, everything is re-mappable, but custom deadzones are always nice.
   
   
6. CTDs galore. I often have 3-5 CTDs before getting to the menu, which is never a good sign. Once I'm in the game, performance is great, everything runs smooth. It's just getting the thing started in the first place.

I appreciate there's a lot of negatives there, but it's clear that this is a WIP that has had a lot of love and talent go into it. This is all my experience too, maybe I'm just awful at the game, who knows. YMMV. The dev's done an incredible job for such a small team, and I can't wait to come back in a few updates and see how things are. If they keep this up, this could be up there with the other indie flight game greats like Sky Rogue and Project Wingman.

At this time this game feels like pre alpha. Real poor optimization for a game with graphics that look like they are from 2009 and basically just instant action with one level and a tutorial. I see that in the trailer it looks like theres more than one and there might be but you cant pick them or if you can it isnt obvious. This game needs way more time.

It's a fighting shooter, stars wars type of game, shoot the death star. Seems polished, if you turn the graphics to ultra it does look good, controls are ok for this type of game. My problems with it is why such small targets, the ship shouldn't be that big or the targets that small, the scale doesn't seem right, also when you get shot the ship becames a pinball for some reason, that's a bit anoying.

I had some problems getting the controller to work, the graphics seem to have some issues (just turn all options off), and the mission got reset for some reason, to many tries maybe, i don't know, lost my progress.

I still think it's fun, polished, looks good, plays nice

This is super early footage from 2021 where I had no idea what was going on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Bxi_FhOa8g

Game has come a far way it looks like. Worth Picking up to support the dev for not abandoning the game!

Game's quite hard but has a certain charm to it, particularly a fan of the RCS function that works similar to Ace Combats Post Stalll Manouvers or Project Wingmans AOA. A little unpolished but worth a go.

i was gifted this game from the developers, and in return as promised I am going to give my review, honest review.

Firstly, there is nothing like a flight combat game that puts you in the seat of some oddly world aircraft, it is very evident that this game is trying to take a different approach to sci fi gaming, like most Sci Fi games there are just too many similarities, however, Frontier Reach is taking a very different approach with a retro feel and innovative game dynamics.

1. Game play: from the get go I got the vibe of Crimson Skies if it had a sequel where pilots use jet powered craft rather than prop powered, and I was also getting a battle star galactica vibe, and that's down to the spacecraft design.
The game play is overwhelming at first with a very busy HUD, however after a few minutes you start to get the hand of it, flight dynamics is good and its fun to do a little free flight away from all the action, cloud surfing been one of my favorite things to do.

2. Graphics: As mentioned already there is a retro vibe to this game and the graphics really match it, it really is a different type of game, you could almost describe it as an alternative universe in alternative time, I like the style because it is different, it has its own unique style to it.

3. Sound: Ok I am a sound freak when it comes to gaming, I think this is where the game lacks, but not by much, the soundtrack is a little too retro for me, it almost sounds like an arcade machine in the background which becomes annoying after a while, I think it needs more umph, its a fast paced flight combat game, maybe it should be reflected with the sound track and give it some Top Gun style adrenaline.

Summery: I have to say the game really is unique, its very different and that's what I like to see in the Sci Fi genre, does it need work, yes of course, but it is still fun.
My only complaint is I think this game should have a multiplayer mode, I would only love to take down some mates in a dog-fighting battle, is it planned? maybe, maybe not, but I would consider this as a developer.

The game certainly needs a lot of polish. A proper Controller support (No button 3 for this or button 4 for that stuff) will be god-sent, because that could make this game hell of a lot more fun. I am especially starved for Ace Combat like games and this is right up my alley. But, I simply cannot recommend this now because of how janky it feels. But considering that the developers are still working on fixing it, I hope one day it reaches the place when I can heartily recommend it.

Just to clarify, underneath all the jank, there is something really special here. I, especially the low-poly look of the levels. But, I just wish it was fun to play.