Still recommending this game because I know some people don't think as deeply about ♥♥♥♥ like this and it was, for the most part, a fun and worthwhile experience. Maybe not 20 dollars, I got it for 4 dollars - but I would've gotten it for 10 even if I knew what was in store.

The first part of this review is essentially spoiler free, and I mark where the actual spoilers come in. The spoiler free section goes over some of the basic aspects of why I think the world building in this game is incredibly flawed - if you want my consensus from beyond that point without spoilers it is that - all of the issues listed with the story, scale, technology, etc - get progressively worse.

If you don't care about inconsistencies like that, but want a space exploration game with some fun combat and interesting ideas, then you'll enjoy the game.

Addendum; I don't give a ♥♥♥♥ if you are or are not analytical about these kinds of things - you can like whatever you like, for whatever reason. Your preferences are your own. I am only publishing this review because the content matters *to me* and it might to some other people as well.
________________________

So I just beat this game a few hours ago - I didn't complete every single anomaly/quest I found but I feel as if I covered roughly 90-95% of the content, got some of the rarest achievements on steam, etc - and was able to piece the story together myself.

I haven't played the sequel, and I do enjoy this game - but from a narrative to game play standpoint, there's a lot of contradictions and inconsistencies that drive me insane.

I'll start with the most simple one, research progression. In some cases, you go about and make deals with aliens or find advanced technology that you can research to improve your own tech.

Okay, that's cool.

However the entire narrative starts to fall apart when you have to collect pieces of alien technology to "figure out" how to build a missile launcher. I'm sorry, what?
Did the brightest mind at Starcom, stationed on Kite, along with their heaps of engineers and pilots suddenly forget how propulsion works? How are you building engines for your star ship? For your landing craft? We understand how to make Plasma weaponry, but not how to make lasers..? The Lander itself has a laser that can be used on survey missions all the time though.

You just, conveniently forget how to make technology humanity has had for 500-600 years.

The size of objects are, horribly inconsistent. I believe we're meant to see it as you are flying relatively far and above the planets, that is why the perspective is that your ship can be a large fraction of, to several times larger than the planet below you. That would be fine, you do fly "over" them.

But you don't fly over stars :) You fly through stars. So the stars are on the same plane as you and can be several times smaller than the planets orbiting them or even your own ship.

And then you see the Derelicts. Which are, literally, utterly insane in scale. 1 AU = 150,000,000 kilometers or 93,000,000 million miles. Some of them are at least 100~ au in length, and they are set off in the distance.




-- -- SPOILERS BELOW SPOILERS BELOW SPOILERS BELOW SPOILERS BELOW SPOILERS BELOW SPOILERS BELOW SPOILERS BELOW SPOILERS BELOW SPOILERS BELOW -- --





So, the planets can be relatively big, especially compared to the stars, but the Derelicts compared to the stars and planets are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ unfathomably massive. So it is clear the Developer (justkevin) did not have an issue with making some things large in scale, so planets, stars - whatever, could have been more aptly scaled.

And then there is Eso.

The dyson sphere takes up an entire sector. It is several thousands of AU in size. To try and give any degree of perspective - pluto is roughly 30-40 AU from the sun. The sun itself is not even a 1/10th of an AU. (it is only 1.4 million miles.)

I just - why? Was this a specific artistic choice to make the size of all these objects hilariously inaccurate? I'm to believe 15 people are piloting a ship bigger than a star? Who also don't know how to build rockets? What the ♥♥♥♥, man.

I could actually forgive a lot of this, the gamification of things (like collecting technology to make a missile launcher), wonky scales, if the game did not try to approach actual science/speculative fiction in a lot of it's world building and then actively contradicting itself. Make it a shooty pewpew alien twin stick shooter kinda game with some fun stories or commit to the hard science fiction, or at least don't put in stuff that doesn't make any sense at all.

For instance, in one system - a species on a planet orbiting a pulsar describes gamma ray bursts as life giving. (This is incredibly inaccurate.) If you get hit by one of the ray jets while piloting your craft, it deals massive damage. (That makes more sense.)

In another star system, a gamma ray burst obliterates all life on the planets. (This is the most accurate depiction of what might happen.)

It ruins the immersion for me, in your setting are GRB's capable of giving or taking life? It's worse when you consider that the system hit with the GRB is described as being a "long gamma ray burst" - so a burst lasting longer than 2 seconds - likely from an entirely different point in the galaxy, meaning the GRB would have dissipated somewhat in potency. The planet, orbiting the pulsar - could be being hit with gamma rays every few milliseconds, so essentially constantly :)

Gas giant that is capable of being used like a cloud chamber? Damn that's super ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cool. We boutta learn a ♥♥♥♥ load about particle physics. (My actual, excited response to finding actual science terminology being applied in the setting, before becoming progressively more disappointed)

- Oh btw, we found this entire skeleton made from adamantine. Yeah the xenobiologist thinks it might be legit, but we think it might just be a art project or something. Take it aboard the ship to study/set up an exhibition? Never find out if it's actually a naturally formed skeleton or if it was manufactured. Lose all the adamantine you coulda gotten if when studied it turned out to be fake. I get there was supposed to be a decision to be made here, but maybe the decision should've been to either melt it down, or set up an archeology exhibit or research site on the planet instead..?

- Yo so, there is currently a sincere existential threat going on buddy. Like uhh, immortal metahumans from inside this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ giant dome, controlled by a genocidal AI whose goal is to exterminate literally all life in the universe and or keep any other life from ever evolving, and replace it with humanity before going back in time to do it again. We've literally uploaded every single log our ship has made since we came here to a lightwave frequency(?), including any weapons, science, technology, etc - that we discovered in the hope that someone knows something about stopping them, or could at least help hold them back while we work on figuring out what to do.
Oh, uhhhh,.,.,,.,, ,, you'd-- uhm. You'd rather continue to shoot at us, while getting shot at by them, because we didn't give you enough free technology, even though we've just shared with literally the entire galaxy (possibly entire universe since this ♥♥♥♥ apparently distorts the CMB or someshit) everything that we ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ know??? Okay cool cool cool cool cool cool cool cool cool that is rational and makes sense.

Game is fun, if you turn up the difficulty combat can be rewarding. Some of the concepts are neat, even provoking an emotional response - like the crashed ship with 3 guys, two of which died with a ton of wealth and valuables, with the third one only having a couple of empty bottles. The remainder of humanity after the NGL sentinels continued to kill every human they came across being forced to evolve into the other species to survive is a very cool concept.

But uhhh, the rest of the ♥♥♥♥ was driving me insane.

Still recommending this game because I know some people don't think as deeply about shit like this and it was, for the most part, a fun and worthwhile experience. Maybe not 20 dollars, I got it for 4 dollars - but I would've gotten it for 10 even if I knew what was in store. The first part of this review is essentially spoiler free, and I mark where the actual spoilers come in. The spoiler free section goes over some of the basic aspects of why I think the world building in this game is incredibly flawed - if you want my consensus from beyond that point without spoilers it is that - all of the issues listed with the story, scale, technology, etc - get progressively worse. If you don't care about inconsistencies like that, but want a space exploration game with some fun combat and interesting ideas, then you'll enjoy the game. Addendum; I don't give a shit if you are or are not analytical about these kinds of things - you can like whatever you like, for whatever reason. Your preferences are your own. I am only publishing this review because the content matters *to me* and it might to some other people as well. ________________________ So I just beat this game a few hours ago - I didn't complete every single anomaly/quest I found but I feel as if I covered roughly 90-95% of the content, got some of the rarest achievements on steam, etc - and was able to piece the story together myself. I haven't played the sequel, and I do enjoy this game - but from a narrative to game play standpoint, there's a lot of contradictions and inconsistencies that drive me insane. I'll start with the most simple one, research progression. In some cases, you go about and make deals with aliens or find advanced technology that you can research to improve your own tech. Okay, that's cool. However the entire narrative starts to fall apart when you have to collect pieces of alien technology to "figure out" how to build a missile launcher. I'm sorry, what? Did the brightest mind at Starcom, stationed on Kite, along with their heaps of engineers and pilots suddenly forget how propulsion works? How are you building engines for your star ship? For your landing craft? We understand how to make Plasma weaponry, but not how to make lasers..? The Lander itself has a laser that can be used on survey missions all the time though. You just, conveniently forget how to make technology humanity has had for 500-600 years. The size of objects are, horribly inconsistent. I believe we're meant to see it as you are flying relatively far and above the planets, that is why the perspective is that your ship can be a large fraction of, to several times larger than the planet below you. That would be fine, you do fly "over" them. But you don't fly over stars :) You fly through stars. So the stars are on the same plane as you and can be several times smaller than the planets orbiting them or even your own ship. And then you see the Derelicts. Which are, literally, utterly insane in scale. 1 AU = 150,000,000 kilometers or 93,000,000 million miles. Some of them are at least 100~ au in length, and they are set off in the distance. -- -- SPOILERS BELOW SPOILERS BELOW SPOILERS BELOW SPOILERS BELOW SPOILERS BELOW SPOILERS BELOW SPOILERS BELOW SPOILERS BELOW SPOILERS BELOW -- -- So, the planets can be relatively big, especially compared to the stars, but the Derelicts compared to the stars and planets are fucking unfathomably massive. So it is clear the Developer (justkevin) did not have an issue with making some things large in scale, so planets, stars - whatever, could have been more aptly scaled. And then there is Eso. The dyson sphere takes up an entire sector. It is several thousands of AU in size. To try and give any degree of perspective - pluto is roughly 30-40 AU from the sun. The sun itself is not even a 1/10th of an AU. (it is only 1.4 million miles.) I just - why? Was this a specific artistic choice to make the size of all these objects hilariously inaccurate? I'm to believe 15 people are piloting a ship bigger than a star? Who also don't know how to build rockets? What the fuck, man. I could actually forgive a lot of this, the gamification of things (like collecting technology to make a missile launcher), wonky scales, if the game did not try to approach actual science/speculative fiction in a lot of it's world building and then actively contradicting itself. Make it a shooty pewpew alien twin stick shooter kinda game with some fun stories or commit to the hard science fiction, or at least don't put in stuff that doesn't make any sense at all. For instance, in one system - a species on a planet orbiting a pulsar describes gamma ray bursts as life giving. (This is incredibly inaccurate.) If you get hit by one of the ray jets while piloting your craft, it deals massive damage. (That makes more sense.) In another star system, a gamma ray burst obliterates all life on the planets. (This is the most accurate depiction of what might happen.) It ruins the immersion for me, in your setting are GRB's capable of giving or taking life? It's worse when you consider that the system hit with the GRB is described as being a "long gamma ray burst" - so a burst lasting longer than 2 seconds - likely from an entirely different point in the galaxy, meaning the GRB would have dissipated somewhat in potency. The planet, orbiting the pulsar - could be being hit with gamma rays every few milliseconds, so essentially constantly :) Gas giant that is capable of being used like a cloud chamber? Damn that's super fucking cool. We boutta learn a shit load about particle physics. (My actual, excited response to finding actual science terminology being applied in the setting, before becoming progressively more disappointed) - Oh btw, we found this entire skeleton made from adamantine. Yeah the xenobiologist thinks it might be legit, but we think it might just be a art project or something. Take it aboard the ship to study/set up an exhibition? Never find out if it's actually a naturally formed skeleton or if it was manufactured. Lose all the adamantine you coulda gotten if when studied it turned out to be fake. I get there was supposed to be a decision to be made here, but maybe the decision should've been to either melt it down, or set up an archeology exhibit or research site on the planet instead..? - Yo so, there is currently a sincere existential threat going on buddy. Like uhh, immortal metahumans from inside this fucking giant dome, controlled by a genocidal AI whose goal is to exterminate literally all life in the universe and or keep any other life from ever evolving, and replace it with humanity before going back in time to do it again. We've literally uploaded every single log our ship has made since we came here to a lightwave frequency(?), including any weapons, science, technology, etc - that we discovered in the hope that someone knows something about stopping them, or could at least help hold them back while we work on figuring out what to do. Oh, uhhhh,.,.,,.,, ,, you'd-- uhm. You'd rather continue to shoot at us, while getting shot at by them, because we didn't give you enough free technology, even though we've just shared with literally the entire galaxy (possibly entire universe since this shit apparently distorts the CMB or someshit) everything that we fucking know??? Okay cool cool cool cool cool cool cool cool cool that is rational and makes sense. Game is fun, if you turn up the difficulty combat can be rewarding. Some of the concepts are neat, even provoking an emotional response - like the crashed ship with 3 guys, two of which died with a ton of wealth and valuables, with the third one only having a couple of empty bottles. The remainder of humanity after the NGL sentinels continued to kill every human they came across being forced to evolve into the other species to survive is a very cool concept. But uhhh, the rest of the shit was driving me insane.