Space Pirates and Zombies 2 is representative of one of the least-chosen paths a sequel can take. Rather than refining and rehashing the original, SPAZ 2 attempts to branch off on its own with an experimental spin on the original's gameplay. In some ways, this is a welcome change. In others, it hasn't gone so well.

Gameplay in SPAZ 2 is split cleanly between a strategic layer, a Mount & Blade-styled world map the player flies around, and the tactical layer, where their mothership does the actual fighting. Between fights, the player can assemble, strip down, or rearrange their mothership with collected parts. AI-handled captains follow similar goals with similar means all across the world map, forming their own relationships as they go along.

SPAZ 2's greatest strength is the versatility of its simple, yet robust construction system. Mothership designs are virtually endless; a flying scythe loaded down with lasers, an H full of remote-controlled buzzsaws, or even just a conventional "stick" ship loaded up with railguns and autocannons. If you've got a shape in mind, you can probably find a way to make it work. All you need are the parts and the creativity.

Battles in SPAZ 2 play out on a 2D plane between the player and up to three other motherships. Combat plays out in a fashion more befitting sea-going ships, as motherships cannot move up or down. Positioning and facing play critical roles in keeping a mothership's weapons within line-of-sight of the target, as not all weapons can fire through the mothership's parts. Further, every component of a ship can be ripped off, which strongly encourages the player to keep their best-armored parts faced towards incoming fire. Fights are often fast and brutal. Badly-damaged ships rarely leave whole.

On the world map, the player spends most of their time flying between starbases or other captains. Resource collection is done primarily through combat or by scooping up gathered stockpiles from player-owned starbases. There is a strong degree of emphasis on establishing a faction or joining a faction. As the leader of a faction, the player can declare war on others, establish alliances, and recruit wingmen to assist them.

Rez is no longer the player's primary resource and is now used instead for fuel. In its place is now scrap, which serves almost entirely as a form of currency. Goons retain much of their same role as that of the previous game, while data has been replaced by an everyday experience system. Levelling is now a more linear path to the top, where the player earns specific benefits through perks, such as more health or better trade prices.

SPAZ 2's biggest problem is that it spreads itself thin. Most systems in the game suffer from massive oversimplification or lack significantly in scale. This is seen best in the game's strategic layer; there is absolutely no reason to stay as an independent captain. Founding or joining a faction is a substantial benefit to the player, whereas independence leaves you a small fish with few friends and fewer opportunities.

Forging alliances is similarly useless - and I do not know of any benefits the player receives by establishing them. In most cases, the player is better off swallowing up potential allies instead in order to build more starbases and, therefore, receive more taxes at their capital. What little benefit alliances offer is mostly limited to the zombie war - which, again, the player can do better anyways.

Further, AI captains demonstrate very little intelligence, both in and out of combat. In combat, they'll charge headlong into incoming fire in dreadfully-useless ships. If they survive, they might park next to an exploding starbase and die at the very moment of victory. Neutral captains will attack player-owned cargo ships right outside the player's capital, right in front of the player, repeatedly. Poaching members from other factions - even when the player is at war with them - is nothing more than a few simple, easily-exploited bribes and combat assists.

Held over from the original SPAZ are a limited, tedious late game and poor weapon balance. This is further compounded by the player's exponential power curve. The player begins in a ship hardly worth the time it takes to fly and spends a great deal of time sucking on crumbs from other ships. Once established, the player is absolutely untouchable - and the limited performance by the AI only exacerbates the power gap.

The thumbs-up on this review comes from SPAZ 2's mid-game. That gap between early game and late game is where it shines. Ship designs begin to take form, skill remains a constant asset, and relationships remain significant. Adaptability remains key to success and most weapons retain their strengths. Combat plays out only as quickly as the player is capable of, rather than the nigh-instantaneous defeats or victories of the early and late game. In all the noise of meaningful fights and intensive ship design, the poor AI is easy to gloss over.

Graphics in SPAZ 2 are an odd toss-up. Just as with its predecessor, the background environments of each combat zone are top-notch. The game's UI is inviting and easy to read. Ship parts are interesting and unique. Effects on everything from missiles to exploding space stations are incredible. Unfortunately, many of the game's models seem to suffer from incredibly low polygon counts and limited texture sizes. Most ships look like enormous jumbles of neon lighting that can be downright painful to look at. Mothership designs almost always look like awkward space stations on close inspection.

Audio mostly holds up. While not quite tonally consistent, SPAZ 2's music in and out of combat oozes with quality - if not necessarily bit rate. Weapon noise and UI sounds are mostly ports from the original SPAZ, but remain pleasing. Sadly gone is the amusing ambient chatter from the original, but in its place are similarly-entertaining voice sets for each captain, a fully-voiced campaign, and fully-voiced tutorial tips. SPAZ 2's voice acting is a surprising high mark for the game, and remains consistent with the game's atmosphere throughout.

SPAZ 2's most critical assets, however, are its developers. Few invest as much care and effort into their communities as MinMax have dedicated. They have earned my trust for maintaining open, honest, continuous communication on their forums. They've earned my respect by doing their best to keep their games updated and their communities in order. While I can't say what SPAZ 2 will look like in the future, I've no doubts about the people who'll bring it there.

I can't describe how much I love this game. There is an amazing amount of polish and balance, from the visuals and the strategic depth, all the way to the raw and dirty visceral depths that combat can descend to.

Let me tell you about the combat; It is good. My most memerable battle so far was a 2v2 where I aided a weaker captain vs a bandit, only for a high level bandit to join in.

Bandit capital ships are weaker but they have an insane number and reserve of strike craft, which increases by level (not fighters, those are different). My ally engaged the motherships while I thinned the swarm but he was being overwhelmed, so I rammed the strongest enemy and kept thrusting to push him away (ramming is a big mechanic, more on it later).

Freed to 1v1, my ally succeeded in destroying the first pirate, but at high cost; his shields down, his nose and two wing modules torn off and floating free, a core destroyed and his health but a sliver. Sensing blood, the swarm of strike craft pounced. There was nothing I could do to save him. He exploded magnificently, destroying many of his attackers who were too slow to flee.

The remaining pirate and I circled while exchanging broadsides, each deadly piroette bringing us closer to a field of asteroids. His strongest weapons were on his nose and he fought to bring them to bear. I, meanwhile, was slightly more manoeuverable and clung on the the relative safety of his rear, while picking of the remaining swarm. Our shields failed at the same time.

Shields, armour and hull are not just 3 interchangeable stats in SPAZ2. Shields are the most familiar, a flat, regenerating, protective field. Armour is different. Every single non core piece of the motherships have their own armour, some of which is shared to the core. If a part loses all its armour, it is torn off, and sometimes destroyed. Hull, or health is only relevent to the cores of the ship and when that is gone; boom. So unlike other games, it isn't destroy shields>armour>hull with various piercing weapons, it is shields>tear them to pieces or shoot straight for the core.

We tore each other to pieces. I took his right wings out but clipped an asteroid at speed, destroying my left. Caught against it, he was able to bring his nose to bear, shreading off my remaining wings and one of my engines. Now he was more manoeuverable.

In despairation, I boosted, smaller asteroids tearing into my hull until I placed a large one between us. Frustrated momentarily, he stopped and reloaded. Seizing this last opportunity, I came out of hiding behind him, my last weapons pounding his engine, trying to even the score. But it wasn't enough. He began to turn and rained fire on my last engine. Before I could be left helpless, I once more boosted, this time straight at his exposed engine, knocking it into the void while my nose crumpled and exploded.

Both helpless now, no engines, but still he had weapons and he slowly, ever so slowly, turned to bring that hateful nose to bear. With nothing left, I had a moment of inspiration and grabbed the astreroid chunks with my tractor beam. In space, surrounded by the refuse of awesome technology, I beat him to death with a rock.

A narrow victory, I collected the refuse of our 4 ships to just bearly rebuild 1, and then jumped to the void.

All actions described above REALLY ARE IN THE GAME. If two things collide, they do armour type damage (very weak vs shields, weak vs hull) to eachother based on their mass and speed. If you can get an enemies shields down while yours are still up, boost at him/her, smash their bits off! Beware of ramming with your shields down, as you can wreck yourself. Finally, you can rebuild your mothership WHILE IN COMBAT. A wing came off? Try and grab it before it goes to far, and reattach it! Enemies powerful weapon came off? Remove your own and replace it!

Did I mention I love this game?

Also, there are so many viable ways of building your mothership, and none are perfect for all situations. I keep parts in storage to swap forms when dealing with different kinds of threats (General flying, starbases, pirates, mining) but my general form is the ION shield ram: Huge shields/thrust and some ION weapons or lasers to take down shields so I can ram them. It is weak to strike craft and starbases however, and is hard to mine with.

After playing this game for 19 hours learning all about the game since this is the first spaz game i bought i came into a troublesome bug that the dev team replied quickly and did thier best to help fix this problem but sadly couldnt due to it getting corrupted and the bug not able to be replicated. So the devs sent me a fixed version of just past the mission where it bugged out and gave some recources for lost progress after they did that i had to write this review and just say thank you to the devs for thier support and keep building an amazing game have a nice day :D

As a huge fan of S.P.A.Z. 1, I was quite disappointed to find that S.P.A.Z. 2 seemed to abandon much of what made the first game fun. Gone is the top-down twin stick space shooter and replacing it is a noisy autobattle mess.

The game is all-in on procedural generation and RPG-style ship components with random individual stats. The result is a complete lack of distinctiveness to ships, items and strategy. Every capital ship is basically an ugly nondescript mess with a threat number attached to it.

The battles themselves are flashy slugfests that all play out the same. The threat number of yourself vs your enemies is all that really matters. The game encourages you to manually aim, but in reality, you're better off staying in "battlewagon" mode to let the auto aim do its thing while you simply decide when to boost the shields. As the player, there's very little meaningful input you can give to change the course of battles.

The writing gave me a few chuckles, but it often interrupted what I was doing to make overly obvious jokes. If you've ever been around someone that thinks they're really funny, then you'll know what I'm talking about.

I tried to give this game a shot, but it was ultimately boring. It's awesome that the developers took a lot of risks with the sequel, but I think they got so caught up in making a more complex simulation, they forgot what made the first game fun.

So after playing this game extensively, it kills me to leave a negative review for it. Before you read ANY further, know this. The game is legitamately fun. The combat is hit or miss depending on your style, but I like how there's a "battle wagon" mode where you can have your crew man the guns and you focus on piloting (as a real space vessel might operate.) Building an empire and conquering the galaxy is super satisfying (if time consuming) and when the game works, it -really- works well. The problem is that there are just SO many places where the game's poorly coded AI get in the way of the fun.

To start with, the zombies. They're not overpowered in the sense that they're hard to fight. Rather, the human AI's have no idea how to fight the zombie AI's, meaning that if you don't hit them hard and fast, they will consume everything. I hopped from fight to fight, killing zombies every chance I got, purifying captains where I could, and it still spread like the plague. The only way to beat the zombies is to just ignore the base troopers and speed for the infestation's heart, where you get an automatic 1v1 against the swarm's heart, which eradicates them. After beating the campaign, i turned the zombies off in every subsequent encounter, which is a shame. They're part of the game's title, they should contribute to the fun, not detract from it.

Next on my list of gripes is the "Relations" system. It's one sided, and as long as you only see that one side, it works. If you raid a faction's supplies, they'll dislike you. Do it enough and they'll attack you on sight, or put a bounty on you. makes sense, works well, good times. Then when you join a faction, and get a base for yourself? Other factions will CONSTANTLY attempt to steal your supplies, literally at every turn. Now, you have three options; let them steal from you (bad), tell them to heck off (they dislike you) or fight them and force them to leave by destroying their ship (They REALLY dislike you.) The problem is that, if a captain dislikes you, they're more likely to try and steal from you. Do you see where this is going? I made a base and defended it vigorously. Rather than take the hint, and, I dunno, NOT steal from the guy who's twice as powerful, they blamed me, set bounties on me, tried to steal literally anything that hit the ground near me, and basically made it quite difficult to accumulate supplies.

Oh, and that's not the end of where the game's diplomacy system breaks down either! Now, after deciding that I wanted to start a faction of my own, I, of course, got on everyone's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, because god forbid a person try to start a new club. Again, if you're powerful, and you can murder everything in sight, that's no problem, but if you try to start a faction too early, you just get crushed into the dirt by all the people who suddenly hate you. Because hey, me working for a faction apparantly means they're the first to try and kill me when I leave.

The worst part though, is how the enemy AI handles threats. Now, when you die, you have two options. Revert to just before the battle started, or lose everything and ship your space pod back to the nearest base, and let me tell you, it's better to just start a new game than it is to pick option 2. You see, if you're weak (Say, you just lost your ship and have to cobble one together from scrap) other captains will hunt you down and demand you pay them tribute. It doesn't matter how much money you have, they'll still demand that you give them something. So, from the moment you exit the life pod, you get a constant stream of other captains demanding you fork over literally everything you have every few seconds, making it literally impossible to progress. The kicker is that it DOESN'T EVEN MATTER IF THEY LIKE YOU OR NOT. I had other captains who were at 30/100 (meaning they were friendly) who would ride up, demand tribute, leave for two seconds, then imediately turn around and demand more tribute.

So in short, you're the only person in the galaxy with the half of a brain needed to resist the zombies, the AI lights up a hell of a grudge if you dare prevent them from stealing from you, and if you lose your ship once, you may as well start a new game.

I'll say it again. I enjoyed my first game that I played. It went well, I played cautious, and I reverted to save whenever I lost a fight. Life was good. However, the moment I stopped abusing the save system, the game turned unplayable.

TL:DR The Zombies are a nuisance, the AI will hate you for basically no reason, and you're screwed if you don't abuse the save system. Good idea, fun when it works, but needed more polish and balance.

Space Pirates and Zombies 2 (SPAZ 2) is a hybrid 3-D space simulation crossed with a real-time strategy game developed and published by the company MinMax Games with emphasis on combat mechanics and customization.

Pro & contra:

++ Customization. Fully customizable ship systems with modular elements facilitates the creation of unique configurations. Broad spectrum of weapons allow for various tactics. The mass added to a ship influences its inertia und mobility; bigger is not always better, especially when several photon torpedoes are headed your way.

+ Gameplay. Fluent and satisfying combat. Each part on an enemy ship can be destroyed, weakening the combat effectiveness of the opponent.

+ Atmosphere. The developers managed to deliver a believable space world around the resource REZ. Exploration and interactions with the different factions were actually enjoyable. The power balance between them can be influenced and shifted by your actions.

o Music. Average space soundtracks.

- Story. The campaign is rather short with a simple and predictable plot. If you played the first part, you will know what is coming for you. It also lacks the humouring side quests, which the predecessor offered. However, I have enjoyed most of the characters presented. Furthermore, solid voice acting.

Summary:

With the innovative modular ship building system, mixed with the tactical combat, SPAZ 2 is worthwhile investment for fans of space simulations. Especially the faction system provides enough long-term motivation, in order to subdue the galaxy under a unified command.

Recommended for space enthusiasts with masochistic tendencies for zombie outbreaks and interstellar power play.

Achievements:

Estimated time for 100 % completion: +30 hours

Singleplayer achievements: 42
Multiplayer achievements: none

All in all I have to give the game a recommendation. It was fun, and I played through it to the end, which is "good enough" for me. But much of what else I have to say about the game is going to be a critique.
People aren't kidding when they say the game isn't really SPAZ. The top-down arcade action, the desperate resource harvesting, and the panicked tactical withdrawals are all missing. The combat system is totally re-worked, and all the nifty ship designs from the last game come into play as highly disposable fighter craft.
Which is all fair enough, but the elements that replaced the old SPAZ could use a LOT of work. Nearly everything falls short of its potential.
The meat and bones of the game, its combat, is very straightforward when applied to bulky motherships. The player who warps in with the best mix of weapons, stats, and/or backup wins. There's very little room for tactical nuance, although a clumsy player can easily ruin their battle by failing to get close enough for some of the shorter-ranged weapons. There are obstacles scattered around the battle void, including the inexplicable exploding canisters from SPAZ 1, but they're very easy to avoid even in the heat of battle and didn't once contribute to a win or loss during my run. Fighting ships is fun, but fails to stay fresh and exciting the way it did in SPAZ by slowly introducing new models of bigger ships.
The second most important component is building and maintaining the mothership, and this is where I think the developers really dropped the ball. Assembling a ship out of boring same-y blocks is dull, and combing the galaxy for pieces that have the right weapon, look, or quality is tedious. Rather than giving the mothership turret or weapon slots, like the strike craft, weapons are built into the wings, nose, and engine pieces. There are no utility or equipment slots. The game incentivizes you heavily to maintain a big, blocky craft, and cores are all one size with no weapons, They could have done some very impressive things with the mothership construction, and instead it's mostly a matter of sifting through starbases to find the wing turret you want (ideally in the right faction too, because otherwise it just looks ugly).
One aspect I did like was the presence of numerous other starship captains, all with their own allegiances and numerous options. Character portraits were colorful, and their AI behavior generally made sense. The only complaint I have about this system is that a battlefield with four players is quickly exploited by the player to fight frequent 3-on-1 battles, especially when the zombies show up. Ganging up on extremely powerful captains is a fine way to take them down, but since tactical combat is stunted (as noted previously) ganging up on enemies soon becomes the "main" tactic. You search out a zombie ship and try to catch them alone or while their friends are occupied. Friendly ships jump in and fill up the battlefield in your favor, and the enemy's fate is sealed. I would prefer to outfight opponents like I did in the original SPAZ, but alas, that's not feasible.
Finally, the writing is good. I found it bizarre at first that the characters had synthesized voices, but the charming bickering and the random tidbits of humor did a lot to keep my interest going until the end.

I want to preface this review by saying that not only am I a big fan of the original SPAZ, I also respect and admire MINMAX for experimenting with their original model and stepping outside the box for their sequel.

That being said, I think they stepped out of one box and into another.

SPAZ 2 retains the charmingly witty-yet-stupid writing and dialogue of the original game that reminds of a Saturday-morning cartoon. The aesthetics have also remained the same; blurry textures composed of screamingly high contrast colors that bore into your retinas. On top of that, the from-scratch gameplay is also retained from the original game, where you start with practically nothing and build your empire on top of that. Aside from the actual space combat, these things define SPAZ pretty well, and if that's all you're looking for, you won't be disappointed.

This is all SPAZ 2 has in common with the original, however. In the transition to 3d, much has changed. You now get to fly and build the mothership, you are now the biggest fish in the sea. Right Hooks and Tugs are tiny compared to the hulking, glorious piece of junk that is your ship. You start off with a scaffold looking like it was built entirely out of old bicycles by an inpatient from a mental hospital. Over the course of the entire game, from start to finish, you will upgrade from bicycles to smashed car-shaped objects.

This modular mothership, along with the ability to establish and govern starbases, seems to be giving us what we didn't have, and wanted in the original SPAZ. An interstellar empire. Flying the Clockwork. AI that don't run face-first into the enemy's largest ship and die instantly, wasting thousands of Rez. Actually, that's still a thing, but they only waste small amounts of scrap instead because they're only piloting small fighter ships.

This lends a much more strategic feel to the game. And I'd call that an advantage. However, much was lost in the transition:

First of all, everything feels like it's about the same size. Gone are the days of warping into a battlefield and attempting to take down a ship 20 times your size with bombing runs. The smallest mothership is maybe 1/4 the size of the largest. Heck, even space stations just look like circular, spinning motherships that can't move.

Next, ship design doesn't matter as much. In the original, when you were restricted to chassis with a set number of module slots and module types, you knew exactly how your own ships worked, and their strengths and weaknesses. When you looked at an enemy ship, you could distinctly see what modules were attached to it (unless it was cloaked), and you knew how those weapons would affect your fleet. What weapons a ship had often determined whether you'd try to take it down for its blueprints, or flee with your tail between your legs.

Now, you pretty much slap whatever module will fit on your mothership and has the most stars. Because of the randomness of parts, both in terms of their perks (the bonuses they confer to your ship, like shield strength, speed, health, etc.), and in terms of the weaponry on them (cannons, beams, the works), both when you're scavenging, and when you're shopping at space stations, it's very unlikely that you're going to find exactly the part you're looking for.

I get what they were going for here; you're a scavenger among scavengers. It's not about what you want, it's about what works. But, that being said, it isn't very compelling. The chances of me finding a part that: a) looks the way I want it to look, b) has a weapon that I want on it, and c) has the bonuses that I want (which I don't even keep track of anyways), is almost null. The chances of me finding *multiple parts* that I actually want are nonexistant.

This results in your mothership EITHER looking like a piece of trash, that has EITHER nice weapons OR nice stats, OR a mothership that looks nice and is completely worthless in terms of battlefield effectiveness. Yes, that was a nested either-or statement. And, usually, what ends up happening is you get a muddy mix of all of these things.

The end result is that you don't feel like the ship you're flying is *your* mothership, even though you built it piece-by-piece. It feels like you just cobbled together what the game gave you and now you're flying it around.

And, all of these things would be fine if they took advantage of the things they gained; We're in 3d now. There's a lot to explore, right?

Not... Really. You still fly your ship in 2d, while asteroids hover tantalizingly over and under you. You still effectively fight in 2d; you can't go over or under an enemy ship. The battles are more bland than the original game. Explosive barrels don't matter as much, and neither do asteroids. They feel much more staged, 2-4 ships warp in, 1-3 ships warp out. The outcome is largely determined by your stats, and who warps in with you. Positioning can matter, but ships are so random and cobbled together that it's hard to tell when you're facing directly into an enemy's broadside, or if the other side is even worse. You can't "get used to" an enemy faction. You can't take advantage of a ship's slow turning speed and its blind spots. You really can't dodge missiles anymore. There is no longer a cloaking system (except for in the star map, where it doesn't really matter), and "big" weapons like Mass Bombs don't feel as significant.

That's what it is. A lot of elements have lost their character. Rez is no longer the rainbow-colored candy it was, now it's just a generic purple blob that you pick up. Finding a new color of Rez stone felt like moving to a different level. Things are worth more now. Ships are bigger. Now it's just numbers on a screen.

Goons have gotten even less important. You no longer scavenge for rescue pods, or steal from hotels; just numbers on a screen. You need to maintain a minimum number of goons, and you shouldn't have too manygoons.

Finding the last blueprint to a weapon you really want is no longer a thing. Sometimes you stumble across a part that has a unique weapon on it, and you get to use that one part, and you will never find that same weapon ever again. And if you do, it's going to be on a worthless part.

The game feels smaller. You can cross the whole starmap in a matter of minutes, faster towards the start of the game and slower towards the end (the opposite of the original game), and you probably won't be attacked.

It's not a bad game. I just don't see why I would play it over the original SPAZ, which has much more crisp, interesting RPG gameplay and gunplay. Or Istrolid, which offers the modularity and customizability of SPAZ 2 with much faster, more satisfying top-down gameplay. Or why I would play it over Dreadnought, or Fractured Space, which are full-blown third person space shooters with interesting tactical gameplay and the advantage of other players.

SPAZ 2 seems to be a mashup of various genres, and sadly, it doesn't work, at least not for me.

Det första SPAZ var ganska så oväntat briljant. Fantastiskt kul rymdaction med lagom mycket strategi, konfigurerande och småuppdrag mellan huvuduppdragen.


SPAZ 2 är även det briljant, men väldigt annorlunda ettan. Det är större fokus på att bygga sitt skepp från olika moduler och strategi-delen är mer dynamiskt, levande och intressant än i ettan. Man får åka omkring, bygga upp sitt rykte med olika faktioner, skapa en egen, bygga och spränga baser, sätta bounties på stuff man inte gillar mm.

Är det ett djupt spel? Nej då. Det finns lite komplexitet i hur man bygger skeppet och själva striderna tar en stund innan men behärskar, men det är i första hand ett pew-pew-pew spel där man relaxar och spränger rymdskrot. Och det är något som spelet briljerar på rejält. Rymdstriderna är visuellt helt fantastiska, vapenen är väldigt varierade och striderna är snabba, brutala och lagom komplexa för att man ska kunna bara njuta sig igenom dem utan för mycket tankeverksamhet.

Så jag rekomenderar absolut SPAZ2 till alla som gillar halvdum rymdaction och lite strategi-inslag.

I felt the need to expand the review, since there was a lot of complaining going on all over the place, from people that have barely played through a tutorial but presenting themselves as able to properly judge the game. There is also a lot of complaining that it's not SPAZ 1.5.

If you've played SPAZ 1, this part is for you, otherwise you can skip it entirely:
1. All resource collecting is done on strategic map now, without pointless grind and a waste of time. There is also no limit on resources you can carry, which is great news.
Having to watch how ships mine for ten minutes straight was a chore of SPAZ 1 and I never liked it even 1 bit.
All that resource micromanagement never added to the game, since after you've lost a battle or it was hard and led to loss of resources, game STOPPED and you would spend next half an hour collecting resources.
2. Skill trees are gone and replaced with three random skills per level.
Some will say, that skill trees in SPAZ1 were great, when they were actually not.
You had to upgrade a skill to be able to use better tech, and once you knew a cookie cutter build you could easily blast through the game, or got gimped for a looong time if you didn't. Because of this you could never upgrade everything or try everything in one play (and that is an extremely long time). Game could actually punish you for trying wrong and it did.
Skills in SPAZ 2 are extremely helpful and relevant to the player actually making you stronger, and unpredictable pattern doesn't allow a winning level up in each gameplay. With new content, there can be more skills added leading to more variety, without the need to lock them to a path.
3. Blueprints are gone. Finally, for the best.
That was another grinding aspect in SPAZ 1.
There were barely two viable strategies: blow up the station (if you can, huh) to get all blueprints inside, or spend goons to impove relationship and then REZ to buy it (and then get back grinding goons/REZ back).
With ship blueprints, you had to destroy a ship a number of times to get all parts of blueprint to unlock that ship. Incredible chore, cause you either had to be lucky, or repeat a mission to get those blueprints.
In SPAZ 2 an ingame economy and leveling up gets you better and bigger parts. You protect transporters in order to get better tech, and upgrade bases. And of course you loot enemies for it as well, even on the battlefield, which is great.
4. Combat is deeper however you disagree with it. Instead of basically an energy regeneration for everything in the game, you now have separate sources to manage.
Energy battery can protect your shields from getting down with a boost under heavy fire until enemy need to reload.
Boost engines allow you to ram through the enemy or get further away.
Energy battery allows you to keep firing and once depleted you have to reload, which also makes it impossible to boost up shields or regenerate them if they are gone.
Asteroids protects you from heavy bombs and enemy fire, while can also be used with a tractor beam to damage the enemy. There are powerups on the field, REZ "balls" that might spawn some zombies and barrels to blow up.
Battle wagon mode allows to pass weapon controls to AI, which is incredibly useful against small strike crafts, but it uses battery ineffectively which leads to more reloads and decreases survival chances.
5. Mothership is not smaller ships from previous game, those are still here and they're recognizable.

How can one describe SPAZ 2?
Have you played Mount and Blade? Good, cause the idea behind strategical map, factions, captains and other stuff is basically the same.
Economy is real, bases produce stuff, ships transfer stuff, captains trade and fight, zombies infect, bandits mess up. Diplomacy allows for alliances, friendship, bounties and so on. You can even share parts and resources if you need to.
You can start a proper faction and take over eventually, but it's NOT easy even one bit since there are lots of threats that needs your attention.
In combat you manage a number of ship resources to increase performance, and survive as long as possible until you catch an enemy on reload phase when they are most vulnerable, strip off their shields and ram them to death. :) You won't see it in low level fights, but then it gets important.
Ship building is difficult, since parts are hard to find and there's always more you want to install than you can with different strategy involved. In 7 hours I have barely seen any tech at all with 16 level. You can't slap random crap on a ship and win, nope, only in the tutorial.
There is nothing in the game that MAKES you waste time on routine stuff anymore and it's awesome!
You can attach to you ship a torn apart enemy part on the battlefield any time, or reattach something you've lost yourself. You can even throw it in the enemy with a tractor beam.

The game is incredible already, since it has solid well planned foundation and it can only get even better in time with the help of developers and mods. I mentioned it before, that there is only one feature needed - LARGER battles with more ships involved. That is one thing I want to see, something like 10-15 motherships in one intense battle.

For the 18$ it's one of the best purchases I've made, besides the.. M&B.

*Some small fixes..