If someone would ask me "Is this a good game?", my answer would be: "Well, ... it´s how the big boys do battle!"

You dont know what im talking about? If you should play this game, you will. :)

Imagine this:

You are the Captain of a Heavy Cruiser. You are in a space fight. Its your ship against two others.
The difference: Your ship is not very manoeuvrable. Its a large vessel. The term "Heavy" is no coincidence.
The two enemies are smaller, Less powerfull, but more manoeuvrable.

So, Captain! Give some orders! What are we going to do?

You decide to go straight in. Shields up, Weapons up!
"Give them everything we´ve got!"

After a short time, you will realise, that this may not be very effective. Your ship keeps firing and firing and nothing happens .....

Well, Captain. We need a new plan. Decide!
"Plan B: First, let us use our lasers! Target for their ...ahm, shield device. Without shields, they are helpless."

Here we go. We are firing. First hit. Second hit. Minor damage to their shield device. Looks good.
Then, our lasers stop firing.

Why?
Because, as mentioned, the enemies are more manoeuvrable than we are. They got behind your ship. They know what they are doing and they keep firing.

(Note: The good thing is, you dont have to press any buttons to turn your ship around. Your ship will do this for you. Tell the ship where to go, and it will do so. Because if you would also have to navigate while fighting, this would turn into a mess ..... unless you are George Takei)

But here we go. Your Ship-AI activates your thrusters (Yes, you can see them doing so and it looks great). Your ship turns around. Target in front of us. First hit. Second hit. Third hit. Your lasers keep firing!
"HAHAHA! TAKE THIS YOU B*******! What? ...... no damage?"

Why?
Well, the enemy ship did just turn around. The shield device is located at the top. Your lasers DID hit the target, but the wrong side. The lasers have no effect on the Hull and there is no shield device at the rear of that vessel.
The enemies keep firing.

"To Hell with them! Launch the Fighter Squadron!"
"But Sir, they ....."
"ATTACK!"

(Note: Fighters and Bombers are very effective in destroying devices. And they are fast. Rotation of enemy ships does not bother them)

Your fighters are going in.
"They won't know what hit them!"

Well .... your Officer tried to warn you. They have a laser flak system. Perfect for ........

AI Voice: "Fighter Squadron lost!"

Did i mention, that the enemies kept firing?

Now you may say: "What kind of idiot would do that?" I would say: "Vice-Admiral Norbank!" :)

You will see.


There are a lot of things that can go wrong. Most of the time, it is your fault. But you will learn from your mistakes.
After reloading, you will take down their flak and launch your fighters, or you will focus on their engines so that they wont be able to outmanoeuvre you.
Shields of the first ship are down? Let your laser aim for the devices of the second ship and activate your hull damaging weapons to finish the first one. There are a lot of possibilities.

There are situations, when you need a lot of patience. Even when flying trough space. Your ships wont charge in an instant after you gave the "Move" command! They are Heavy Cruisers with Fusion Engines! What do you expect?
It will take two seconds to heat up, then your ship will start moving.
Simple rule: The bigger they are, the slower they move.

Last words:
The Mission "The Fight for Earth" was one of the most entertaining missions i have ever played in a Space-Sim. And it was one of the hardest missions in this game. (Dont worry, you WILL restart the mission if you play it for the first time)
Advice: Dont start with the highest difficulty level. You wont stand a chance.

My opinion: Yes! It is a good game. I had a lot of fun playing it.
It is not a perfect game but it has many good moments, it is entertaining (very important for a game) and it has an awesome "Final" Battle.
Therefore: 6.5 out of 10.

A rollicking good 25 hour space opera. The tactical battles are difficult but fun and upgrading your ships with new goodies is gratifying. It's even fun to hate Admiral Norbank, who has got to be one of the biggest asses ever put into a video game. The gameplay is unique in that you have a relatively small fleet of large, powerful capital ships that do not maneuver quickly and have multiple weapon systems. They have a weight to them that feels awesome.

There are a lot of tools available for modding the game but precious little has been done with them... not sure why. I got the game for $2.49, figuring for that price I could hardly go wrong. I was completely stunned at what I got and I can't figure out how I managed to miss this gem. Even if it isn't on sale it's worth every penny. If you like Sins of a Solar Empire or Homeworld then I can't imagine how you wouldn't like Nexus: The Jupiter Incident. Oh... and the Angelwing is simply an awesome craft that you can hardly help getting attached to.

I've seen a lot of bad reviews that complained that the game wouldn't run or that it crashed a lot. I'm not sure what their issue is but I can say that Nexus ran fine on my system (Windows 7, Intel CPU, Nvidia GPU) and I never crashed once while playing. On my original playthrough, the game lost some key bindings when I alt-tabbed out and it didn't have any Steam Integration, so I couldn't use shift-tab to access messages and whatnot. I also had to create my own desktop shortcut, as the game wouldn't run via the Steam generated desktop shortcut. The in-game videos also ran choppy from time to time, which was odd. ALL of this has been fixed with a recent update. Current generation resolutions are supported, it has Steam Integration, and the videos now run smooth as silk, though they are somewhat low res when compared to gameplay resolutions of 1920x1080 or higher. The game always looked good but now it looks better than ever! I'm finding myself just as captivated with the story, visuals, and gameplay on my second playthrough as when I first played it. Simply astonishing! If you have been on the fence about getting Nexus, don't wait another moment.

Hint: Read the manual. It won't take long, as the information is very concise, but there are some nuances to successful navigation (how to create your own navigation points), using all your weapons (how to attack multiple targets at once), and managing systems that you won't get from the in-game advice popups. :)

Great and intense space battles with cruisers, destroyers, fighter carriers and other heavy class battleships. Real time with pause -gameplay works ok and reminds me of old Interplay classic game "Star Trek: Starfleet Command".

During a battle, various weapons and resources play differing roles. Lasers and other beam weapons are used mainly for disabling enemy devices. Large missiles are slow and can be shot down with small fighters or FLAK-systems but have massive blast radius. Gatling guns, rail guns, plasma weapons and torpedoes are for hull destruction. Energy bombs are used for anti-shield purposes. Weapon power generators. Sensor arrays for detecting enemy equipment, ECM systems, ECCM systems!! And your battleship can hold few squadrons of small fighters, bombers, gunboats (or shuttles packed with space marine commando teams).

Visually game still looks very good after all of these years! The game difficulty can be pretty frustrating.. Even beginner difficulty level is really hard. Players who don’t manage their fleets very carefully are going to find themselves in pretty terrible situations, fast and brutal!


Some useful keyboard shortcuts (not explained in tutorial mode during first missions):
[] - Yes! You actually can create custom NAV points!
[] - Select all fighters and other smaller craft.
[] - Select all large ships.
[] + [] - Select all fighters from selected large ship.
[] - Manual control panel on or off. [] - Repair panel on or off.


http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=323846025

Nexus: the Jupiter Incident is a great game for fans of scifi tv from the 90s and early 2000s. Love Andromeda, Battlestar Galactica or Babylon-5? Loved the Dominion War battles from DS9? This is your jam.

The game looks amazing. Even for how its aged the ship models are superbly designed and rendered. Capital ships move like big ships should. They don't stop instantly, they ignite massive reversing thrusters and stutter to a halt. When they turn they're lumbering behemoths coming to bear. They fire great big guns that put great big holes in whatever is unfortunate enough to be standing in their path. Destroyers dance and twist and zip along at high speeds and its fun to watch.

The galaxy itself lends itself to the feel of old gritty scifi. Planets move and rotate between missions as time passes. There's a real sense of travel and distance. The HUD is clean without cutting out necessary information. Everything is at your fingertips, and if you feel overwhelmed? Spacebar pauses the action. You can play at your own pace. Issue orders, observe the battlefield, get a sandwhich, get a coffee, plan your enemies destruction.

The story is appropriately late 90's scifi crazy. Weird alien fleets, a bizarre AI woman who lives in your computer (before it was overdone) and a mysterious precursor ship that you use to tear through the galaxy looking for answers and by answers I mean enemies and by looking I mean shooting them in the face repeatedly. Save the galaxy, save yourself, murder everyone you meet.

The multiplayer is a blast. I mean seriously, its hilariously fun.

And for such an old game? I didn't have a single problem getting it running and I was a bit surprised at that considering some of the other revews. I'm running a new computer and it launched up for me but standard warnings apply as with all older games on steam. You might have to do some troubleshooting to get it to run. If you're not comfortable with that I understand, and that's perfectly cool: but if you give Nexus - the Jupiter Incident the effort you'll find the payoff was well worth it.

This is one of the games you can refer to as a hidden gem, largely ignored but actually quite incredible, which is a terrible shame. Metacritics and the score is mainly bashed down due to the learning curve and massive technical aspects.

Mission briefings give you fully explorable solar systems, with impressive lighting looking akin to something from KSP.
Ship explosions look really good, there's no magically disappearing models, and they even launch escape pods.
The ships can be disabled as well and proceed to drift in space (but can still be destroyed)
Ship systems are fully modular, which is a crucial aspect of the game campaign, these systems can be targeted and disabled as well. (shoot all engines and the ship stops).
Ship movement looks far more real and is far, far less arcade like than the vast majority of mass produced space RTS you find today, they even have small directional engines on board that are fired when the ships turn.
The learning curve is indeed very steep, but if you can overcome the vast technical aspects the game offers you'll find yourself a space combat RTS which is Homeworld tier good, it really is worth a try, and this is a game from 2004.

I've always felt that it was a shame that Nexus - The Jupiter Incident didn't get more press. I realize that it's somewhat Russian in nature (which is obvious from the storyline and the odd dialogues), but the core of the game is brilliant.

Nexus is, at its heart, a fleet management game, a tactical strategy game set in space. Folks have compared it to Homeworld, but they are completely different. Homeworld was an RTS, with the emphasis on "Real-Time". Homeworld was hectic and fast-paced, and also involved creating swarms of enemies and sending them at your foes. In Nexus, you control a ship (and later, a fleet of ships) that you may have the option of configuring with different weapons, and during battle, you can pause, and target specific ships or even specific subsystems on ships, and oh, it is so good!

Even though this is an old game, the graphics are stupendous. The ships are detailed, and individual ships have their names written on them. As ships take damage, you can see the scars on them. Weapon turrets rotate and swivel. Even better, the ships feel like they have mass, in that turning and speeding up and slowing down takes time. I've only ever played this on a widescreen monitor, previously with a hack. Seeing it now, the way it should be, makes it really special for me, because I can finally see the briefing videos the way they really are. Not that the briefing videos are all that good, but at least now I know what's going on.

Sounds are passable. It's the usual pew-pew and rattle, though the sound design is really well implemented. If you zoom in towards a ships' engine, the screen seems to shake, and the engine sound is magnified as though you're caught in the ship's wash. Zoom in towards a particular turret, and you can hear that louder than the others.

Voice acting isn't bad, but the writing is odd. It's understandably English, but you can tell that it wasn't written by someone whose first language is English. There'll be a turn of phrase, or an out-of-place idiom, or something that's a bit out of place. The voice actors do the best they can. The guy voicing the main character, Marcus Cromwell does a pretty good job of narrating the story. It's not going to win any Oscars, but it's servicable.

The gameplay is simply brilliant. The earlier missions act as tutorials, not just introducing the Universe, but also introducing basic mechanics. It gives you enough to get you started, but you will need to figure out the advanced targeting features if you want to get good at it.

I love Nexus, and I think that anyone who's the least interested in strategy or space games should check it out.

Honestly, a really fun strategy game with a few balance and unit responsiveness issues holding it back from being amazing.

I've played a lot of games in this Genre, and none of them do it quite like Nexus - this game is more about commanding a small fleet of ships. So I won't be comparing this to O.R.B, or Homeworld 1/2, because this game isn't really trying to be like those two, so if you're thinking "great I loved O.R.B/Homeworld I want more of the same" Nexus isn't that. Nexus focuses heavily on each individual ship, down to its weapons, systems and devices - in battle you can control each and every system of each ship if you want, or more general commands. There is a really cool aspect of ship customization and upgrading as you go through the game - which I'm a sucker for. The game is really fun at the core level, the missions are varied and usually entertaining, though some of them suffer from some really questionable balancing and design where it can just feel like luck if you manage to win or not. I usually found the missions which give you more than your usual amount of ships are often the weakest. I feel that this game is at it's strongest when you're commanding a small taskforce.

For reference I played this game on "Experienced" Difficulty, which is the middle difficulty.
This isn't the kind of RTS where you can one-shot every level, the majority of the time you will have to go back to the equipment screen, re-equip your ships and try again, and usually multiple save-loads within a level. If you're expecting an RTS you can blow-through with no issues you're going to have troubles with this game, even on the easiest difficulty from what I've heard. This is quite a hard game, especially if you really want every ship to survive the whole campaign and get all the secondary objectives.

There are a few big issues with this game which hold it back though. The aforementioned questionable balancing of some levels and unit unresponsiveness. Your units can be VERY SLOW to perform your commands, they'll drift around in space like dead-whales for a good minute before executing your command, which is not particularly useful when you needed them to open fire yesterday and a cruiser is taking the beating you wanted your battleship upfront for. It can be a very frustrating experience at times and often makes it feel like you're at the mercy of your units doing what you tell them to rather than the mission itself. This is why I maintain that the levels with smaller fleets are the stronger ones, the units really require you to micro-manage, and doing so with more than 3-4 ships is a bit of a chore. I also wish the games soundtrack was a bit more extensive, but for most people that's a minor gripe. I did have a few crashes during second to last level but other than that it was pretty stable.

When this game is working as intended though, there is an incredible amount of depth, and the focus on small-scale fleet battles is a refreshing take on the RTS genre, and you really get an attachment to each unit under your command, I still regret that I lost one of my ships in the campaign, but it was a tough fight. There's fighters to be commanded, sub-system targeting, siege tactics, different engine-types for different situations and all sorts of really detailed stuff. This game looks amazing for its time too, I know it had an HD rework, and it doesn't look like a 2019 release of course, but considering the technology this game is based upon it's gorgeous. I also enjoyed the story ... it's nothing crazy or massively unpredictable, it's a pretty campy space-game story, but it has charm and its definitely interesting enough to serve as an engaging backdrop to the (usually) good RTS gameplay and keep things flowing through the game, ultimately I had a lot of fun with it even if it wasn't the most crazy out-there story ever.

I definitely have to give this game a recommend IF you like an RTS that will challenge you mentally, you need to be thinking with this one, switch off for a moment and you could lose a lot. Also, to enjoy this one you need to be okay putting up with a little clunk and lack of polish in some areas, it's an old game after-all, U.I design and game design in general has changed a lot since then, with a bit more focus on quality-of-life type things, which you do feel a bit when playing an older game like this. So if you're okay with those two things, and you like a good Sci-Fi RTS with a campy but fun and engaging story, definitely give Nexus a go, it's well worth the £7.00 my steam says it's currently at!

Wow. Well, I don't even know where to start with this game. I first played it when I was 13 years old and I fell in love with it right away. The game is difficult, so at that time with hardly any experience in the field I got stuck pretty early in the game, specifically the scout ship mission.

Boy was I in for a ride 7 years later. Everything is just the way I remembered it. Controls are a bit rough around the edges, but it is what would be expected of battleships. Aside from that and a slightly flawed AI, there is nothing I can't recommend in this game to those who love sci-fi. The story is well laid out, no particular flaws. Battles are sometimes easy, sometimes difficult, harsh and unfair, and I can't even start explaining the frustration in the last battle mission (Not to be confounded with the last mission).

Yet here I am, 14.5 hours into the game, finishing it for the first time. There are no words to describe my satisfaction, along with my sadness of it ending and the dismay of not ever being able to see a sequel to this magnificent masterwork.

As a note to the developers, who might never read this review, thank you for such a great game. It's an element which shaped my imagination beyond most books. Definitely placed along my all time top 5.

Despite any bugs that this game has and that any sequel is effectively dead thanks to the failure of the Kickstarter campaign, this wonderous game is a surefire treat for those in love of the space opera and sci-fi setting. This game is, despite it's faults, pure distilled awesomeness.

The best tactical space battle sim/game out there

You have control over all systems in the ship!

Here comes a long paragraph you should read

The ship behaves like it would in real life if it existed, the thrusters fire and it accelerates to its cruise speed, it even overshoots a bit then cuts the thrusters and uses reverse thrusters to slow down THEN re-engages the forwards thruster to maintaine cruise. When the ship is trying to manuevar around and obtsacle or around an enemy you wil clearly see it firing its reaction control thrusters to spin it or strafe around. The greatest part is if you install auxiliary engines like deflection engines or combat drives then the ship uses main thrusters to get close to the enemy and engages the combat drive and you see it spinnign and dancing around the enemy to make it impossible for them to target specific devices of your all thr while destroying what ever system you have targeted with its own weapon. I like being able to decide what kind of ship I want to fly, for example I can set it up to be deivce killer, get close and knock out there weapon generators and shields with my lasers and bombard them with torpedoes or fit it with bubble energy shells which drains shields then destroy the hull with either torpedoes or mass drivers. If you want to be a bad ass you can equip battleship grade weapons on you little ship like long range CRISIS energy torpedos which (if they hit) will utterly destroy the enemies shields (they can be dodged easily if the enemy has a combat drive equipped), after dropping the enemies shields launch some BIG BANG EM missiles and watch as the brightest explosion you've ever seen destroyes there hull (if their flak system didnt shoot down the missile). Most later missions you get some small ships with a torpedo boat and ofcourse your own unique flag ship, you get to allocated resource points for each ship being able to decide what each will focus on, you could for exmaple have the small quick and agile ships focus on taking down devices like shields and weapons of an enemy with lasers which bypass shields so your torpedo boat can come in and annihalate them or have all of your ships work in unison to bombard their shields with energy shells after which they, in unison, wreck the hulls with mass drivers. I've literraly been playing this game since 2004 and have never gotten tired of it, even with online being down. Its just so good, theres nothign else which comes close to the realism of the zero-g physics which you will clearly see. Theres no game out there that has the cinematic feel this one does, you just sit there as these large capital ships lumber around slowly firing thrusters left and right trying to maneuver around each other to get the best firing position, you will never see any other game that has the same shield ddynamics this one has, a projectile comes towards you and it just smashes in to your bubble shield, the shield reacts, you see magnetic distortion in it as it stabalizes then dissapears and recharges. You wanna be faster? just allocate more power to the engines, you want shields to recharge faster? just give em more power, wait your out of stored energy? turn off support systems and your engines and let the storage batteries recharge.

I've played this game dozens of times, and will play it more and more, its just sad that nexus 2 never got the funding it sohuld have, maybe the creators waited to long to bring it back... Only a select few know about this game, shame.