Recent reviews by Caphrion

Well, I spent a few hours just messing around with this game, slowly but surely working my way up from a small ship with a relatively effective yet basic starting blaster to a vanguard-class ship with a couple of the stronger heavy weapons in the game, and I think I can make a decent first impressions review of this game after looking through the a couple reviews of fellow players.

I think the biggest obstacle to overcome right out of the gate is getting used to the controls. Sure, the tutorial does help cover a good portion of it, but it still takes some time to adapt to the way the ships move. After that... it really just came down to finding the best ways to progress and work your way up. Whether it be starting out with mining, attacking a couple of the weaker enemy platforms in the starting system, or perhaps landing on the closest planet and carefully picking off the enemy ships (and depending on how you play, stay near the trade stations on those first planets for a little extra protection if needed), there are a number of ways that the player could pick from to progress and upgrade their ships over time.

The exploration and combat, while admittedly somewhat clunky, doesn't get to the point where it seems downright irritating, either. Granted, you could be going at full speed in your ship and get a notice that an object is rapidly closing on your ship and before you have time to effectively react, that object smacks into your ship and does a small portion of hull damage, but that's about it in terms of nitpicks and that could admittedly be adjusted some in the future so players could better react to it, but that's just my opinion.

AI... while for the most part decent when it comes to the open space areas, there are some areas where that could use tweaking as well (specifically how the AI interacts with planets). Example being that some AI ships, when in a planet's field of influence, seem to derp about and have trouble navigating to attack you if they were hostile, or in some cases, they just derp about. I did have a rather silly experience seeing that big vendor ship tumbling about on the planet I was on when I was playing and it almost seemed like it was trying to roll onto me or find a way to get me inside his docking bay and otherwise he was just floating about a little wildly near the edge of the planet's gravity zone. I'm sure these issues would be addressed in time, yet it was still kinda funny to see.

Now, it may sound like I am criticizing the game a little bit for it's little bugs and a slightly rough learning curve for first-time players, but once one can get past learning the controls and giving it a little bit for the various elements of the game to sink in, I can see that there is a lot of enjoyment to be had here in a budding game such as this. I am aware that it is rather lacking in content (being just two systems and very little to do once you get to the "endgame", per se), but that's kind of expected with a game that is still so young in development. There is a -lot- of potential within this game that has yet to be unleashed, and for what the game has so far, it leaves a lot to look forward to as well when the game is developed further. Perhaps we'll see more in the future like more planet types, ships, weapons, and even new types of content to keep the player engaged such as missions, trade routes, multiplayer... maybe even going as far as making your own outposts and doing things like research, fleet construction, and more?

Right now, though... I can honestly say that Destination Sol is a really fun game that deserves some attention and play time. It may be a little lacking in content now, but what it has already is addictive and fun once you get a feel for things, and I really look forward to seeing how this game will grow in the future.