Wasn't there a Star Control 3...

[Jhonis]

That no one liked?

[Mharr]

The thing is, all those good things it had were copied wholesale from the second game, which was more impressive still for being from an even earlier generation. (I first played it on a monochrome 80386 based IBM clone, it was the only game to coax actual music out of that thing) Meanwhile, all the new things it tried to add to the formula were some combination of broken and awful.

In awesome news, Turns out Toys for Bob are bored of raking in Skylanders money and are coming back to make a new sequel. https://dogarandkazon.squarespace.com

[Jhonis]

I am possibly not the only one to wonder this, but do you every wonder what the game would of been like if they had some more time to fix these problems?
Part of the problem is that remakes can't do that due to not having access to the coding needed, and they are only normally there for a quick buck, and the best you can hope for is it without the original bugs, the worst being that they made new bugs...

[Mharr]

If Origins' modding tools are on a par with something like RPG maker (In Space!) we'll probably see a fan remake with all the good bits of #3 in a year or two.

[*COG* Salamander]

SC3 wasn't outright bad but they tried to tie up all of SC2's "loose ends" and it came out poorly. The story would have been fine had they not tried to do this, it really hurt the game and the lore and which is why the game is not canon. The way they handled the Orz here, trying to continue what we knew of them from SC2 but without Toys for Bob's input, was especially egregious.

The actual combat was fine, some of the ships were cool (although some had issues), but the fact that several old ships were missing was unforgivable. Also the puppets were mostly ghastly, the Syreen was abysmally bad for example although the Spathi one wasn't bad.

The colony system was ignoreable. It seemed easier to beat the game without ever making any colonies beyond the starter ones and any you got through diplomacy and advancing the story.

[LordBlade]

Originally posted by *COG* Salamander:

The actual combat was fine, some of the ships were cool (although some had issues), but the fact that several old ships were missing was unforgivable. Also the puppets were mostly ghastly, the Syreen was abysmally bad for example although the Spathi one wasn't bad.

The balance for the new ships was pretty much non-existant. I just remember the dog people race, the guys who were slaves. Their ship was insanely broken. It had an auto-aiming rapid fire rocket launcher with decent range that cost pretty much nothing to fire. And their special ability was "self repair" which gave them crew back, which had no limit to it. Once you got one of their ships, you pretty much won every battle from then on.

[*COG* Salamander]

Originally posted by LordBlade:

Originally posted by *COG* Salamander:

The actual combat was fine, some of the ships were cool (although some had issues), but the fact that several old ships were missing was unforgivable. Also the puppets were mostly ghastly, the Syreen was abysmally bad for example although the Spathi one wasn't bad.

The balance for the new ships was pretty much non-existant. I just remember the dog people race, the guys who were slaves. Their ship was insanely broken. It had an auto-aiming rapid fire rocket launcher with decent range that cost pretty much nothing to fire. And their special ability was "self repair" which gave them crew back, which had no limit to it. Once you got one of their ships, you pretty much won every battle from then on.

Oh yeah. It had balance issues for sure. The Doog Constructor you mention was one of them. The Herald Eradicator was a bastard too and the Ploxis Plunderer was sick. I was playing with my friend; he was flying a Kohr-Ah Marauder and I was flying that Ploxis Plunderer and I destroed him without taking any damage. Our skills were pretty closely matched too.

I did like the K'Tang Crippler and Clarconctlar Pinnacle though.

[JohnnyCiocca]

Originally posted by Jhonis:

That no one liked?

I feel like I'm the only one who liked SC3... but that's probably because I never knew SC1 and 2 before that o.o and recently when I tried to play SC1 it made no sense, and gameplay of SC2 doesn't seem to have aged well... would love a remake/remaster of that.

[Frogboy]

Star Control 3 is a case study of why you shouldn’t use someone else’s lore midstory.

The game was pretty decent. But as a sequel to the Ur-Quan story, it had issues.

[Manndroid]

DAKTAKLAKPAK!

[Metal_Bard]

My personal opinion is that Star Control 3 was actually quite awful compared to the other 2. From the artwork, where races didn't really transition well to the new format (SC 3 Arilou and Spathi are atrocious in their new renditions), up to the story, which was such a butchering that it became one of the main reasons the original devs (Toys for Bob) declared it Non-canon. The vast majority of SC players seemed to prefer to disavow the very existence of SC 3. On top of that, when it was released it was also infamous for being a shoddy product from a technical standpoint. Bugs, and crashes galore, and poor support. And as far as the story in concered, I would go so far as to say that it's story is skimming on top of the surface of the mighty yellow ocean of bad fanfiction.

Though if upon fixing up all the issues, and if you scrubbed any mention of the SC universe from that game and replaced it with new lore, it would not be all that bad. As it stands now, it is not a good game, it is a reminder of what we got stuck with for many years due to the grubby publisher practices. But there is a light on the horizon. Toys for Bob wants to start constructing a true sequel, and I look forward to seeing what they have in store for us.

[Rapajez]

All I know is I'd feel beter about myself if I had never tried to play it. I think SC2 set the bar so high, that it made SC3 look even worse.

[times05]

SC3 was the first game I ever owned on Windows PC x86 based. Windows 95. This was around year 1996 maybe 1997. Before that I only had ZX spectrum, Atari, some nintendo clone, and Sega Genesis. Have been playing pretty much exclusively on Windows ever since then. Fond memories of this game.

It was very good for its time, the story was amazing, and the fact that everything was voiced was very cool compared to your usual Genesis stuff that I used to play. It had a cool feel of exploration to it. Meeting new races, their personalities, humor, was my first introduction to Star control type of battles (although a bit later I also bought a genesis version of Star Control, which was 99.99% battles without story, but with some lame strategy campaign component built in).

Again, most of that stuff didn't age well, but for its time, SC3 was a very good game. I spent a great many days/weeks playing it alone and with friends (no mp back then, no co-op, just several friends playing RPG story elements and discussing them, that was probably what made it a lot more fun. You just don't do that kind of stuff nowadays.)

Lol, but as to entertainment factor, keep in mind, internet wasn't that widespread in those days yet, so I also enjoyed browsing multimedia encyclopedia on 2 CD Roms. Like months of entertainment!!!! So in contrast you could say I was much easier entertained back then.... A kid today wouldn't go near encyclopedia... but to me it was cool how media files worked, the videos, the voices, the interactive little bits. The info was cool too. I'm just saying compare that to a game like SC3, and you had a kid like me literally daydreaming all day in school about coming home and playing more Star Control 3.

[Itharus]

I loved the fully 3D star map and had no qualms navigating it. People just have low spatial reasoning capabilities, IMO.

The game wasn't bad. It just... felt different. Cuz the creators didn't make it. So it was like Star Control but missing all of the charm and awesome.

Still though, taken by itself, not that bad a game. I honestly expect about the same (not to sound too rude) from Stardock with their Star Control. It will undoubtedly be a fun game... but not... Star Control. Not really. Those dudes are just the ones who can make it work. They're required for it. It's their baby.

[Mharr]

It would have helped if Legend had taken Stardock's approach and populated their galaxy entirely with their own new creations. Attempting to recreate the SC2 races in plasticine was horribly unsuccessful, and the copy-pasted dialog and lore dumps felt cheap and lazy.

[capt.phoenix]

I finally finished the game a few weeks ago - I got it with the bundle. I had played it when it first came out but never finished it. My thought was that it should have been a "reimagining" rather than a continuation.
The developers clearly had their own universe in mind. Having to put so many SC2 races into it made it a bit of a Frankenstien's Monster; the stiches showed. It also created a dilution of resources in the story-telling. having to stich small stories for the origional races (the Mycon Deep Children, the Syreen - Orz...thing, even the Ur-Quan) left less resources for digging deeper into their new races. It effected both the pacing and the continuity of the storytelling. It left me feeling disappointed with the old races and unsympathetic to the new. I do, however, still call my pet a "Doog".
The technology of the time just wasn't up to what they wanted to do. I learned to use the 3d galaxy map, but never enjoyed it, and it added nothing to the game. In fact, it detracted because travel was just "blip" here and "blip" there. No sense of exploration or movement. The same thing with the story-telling having to rely on event-triggers and time-triggers. You often ended up with nothing special to do as you waited for the next thing to happen and wondering if you missed triggering something. The game would have made a wonderful "Visual Novel" with the arcade to resolve combats. But the Visual Novel didn't exist as a game type and their attempt to invent it with the tools at the time just didn't work as well as they (surely) wanted.

My advice: Play the game for the story. Enjoy the ship combats and try out different combinations. Use the internet to make sure you don't miss triggers and back yourself into a corner where you can't advance. The game is still fun. It's worth playing to the end. Enjoy.