Alright, time to finally do this. Having spent hundreds of hours (which steam won't show because it was across many different computers, only some of which had steam) I have finally managed to unlock every ship, thereby giving me the completionist feeling I needed to justify writing with authority. However, now I can do just that, so let me break down for you exactly how it feels to play FTL. That's right, this review isn't analyzing it from a conventional perspective. This is a dose of the experience.

Alright, so you've just purchased the game. Congratulations. You open up your first run in the standard federation vessel, and you're trying to figure out how to play. Eventually you get a hang of the controls enough to know how to move your guys through the ship and how to destroy enemy vessels. Cool. After a few hops, you get a unique situation where spiders are invading a nearby station, and you can either send your crew to help or hang back. "Sure, let's help them!" you say, full of naive confidence. Immediately one of your crewmen evaporates, and you're left with two feelings: regret and dismay. You're down to 2 men on a large ship. "Alright," you say, "I can make this work." So you press on, get to the end of the sector, and prepare to jump to hyperspace. You're given a prompt, however: You can either jump to another civilian sector or a red Mantis Controlled sector. Curious, you choose the mantis sector, and your first encounter there involves being boarded. Confused, you pause the game to analyze the situation. "There's nothing I can do!" you say, unpausing to witness your miniature crew of two men get butchered by four of the creatures from Alien. Your ship is doomed to drift forever or until looters destroy it, the game tells you. You frown and close the game to do something else.

The next day, however, you come back to it. Despite the harsh punishment it dealt to you, you felt you could have done better. So you try again. Then you die in sector 2 again. But you don't close it this time; you try again. And this time you make it to sector 5 before perishing. But what's this? You unlocked a new ship! You quickly try out the engi cruiser to find it's a lot easier to mess up than the federation ship, and you immediately return to that one. You play for a solid three hours, determined to beat the game, and eventually you figure out how to optimize your weapons systems to get to sector 8 alive. A miracle! You've done it! And then the message flashes in your face that you need to defeat the Rebel Flagship. "Oh, it can't be too hard," you think to yourself. It promptly hands your rectum to you on a silver platter. In a mix of fury and sadness you alt-f4.

A few days later you return. That flagship may be BS, but the game is still fun and there's so much to do. On this run, you get to a situation in the Zoltan Homeworlds where a rebel wants to make peace. You decide to take the idealistic route and tell him that true peace can only be achieved without bloodshed, and just like that, you've unlocked another ship: The Zoltan cruiser! Sure, it's a piece of garbage, but hey, another ship unlock gives you hope! You try again at the flagship, and - while you don't beat it - you put up a fair fight and almost got past the first stage.

A few weeks later you have the game completely in the bag. You've memorized the best items to get for the Federation ship, you've unlocked a few more that were ok, you guess, and you're ready to beat the game. You confront the flagship, you stand your ground, you barely survive, and you beat it. A wing falls off and it warps away, the game prompting you to give chase. "What, it's not over?" you ask yourself in silent disbelief. You follow it to the next system and it almost immediately tears you to shreds with newly repaired weapon systems. You get up and walk away right then and there, furious at how deceptive the fight was.

Over the next month you continually improve. You unlock more ships, get a few variants, and approach the flagship in the Federation ship model B, the Red-Tail. Starting with four lasers is quite powerful, you decide, and work your way through the game with it. You make it to the flagship surprisingly easily, and you have a few new tricks up your sleeve for this fight. Firstly, you use a teleporter at the start of the fight to take out the flagship's weapons systems. You manage to beat phase one with no damage, sweat dripping from your forehead. The second phase was a lot harder. However, by using a combination of insane laser spam, teleportation disabling the primary weapons, and an drone that shoots other drones helping defend your vessel, you beat the second phase. You figured there was probably a third, as that's how these things go. You quickly lower the Zoltan shield, curse the bastards under your breath for giving their technology to the rebels, take down the primary weapons systems, and... A wave of 10 heavy laser blasts lowers your shields immediately and drops your ship to half health. In a panic you fire everything you have on the flagship's shield systems, bringing them low, and move your men on your ship to repair the damaged oxygen and door systems. Another colossal volley fires off from the flagship's core and the Red-Tail is on 1 hull. If a feather so much as scratches it the wrong way it's over. And then... your laser doesn't miss and the flagship is defeated. It's over. You win. You jump up out of your chair, thumping the air and shouting "Yes! Yes! Suck it!" repeatedly, to the confusion of your family in a nearby room. You sit back down, slightly self-conscious, and watch the credits scroll in peace. You did it. You saved the federation. As they end and you're taken back to the main menu with a new highscore, you can't help but feel satisfied. You did so much to get there; trained so long. You close the game, brag to your friends about it on discord, and leave the room to get a snack.

And just the next day, you return. It's not that you haven't satisfied yourself; you did that when you beat the flagship. But you feel like there's still so much more. Even up until the point where you beat the flagship you were still discovering new items, new dialogue sequences, and new strategies to beat up pirates and rebels alike. Every hour spent on this game - whether ending in glorious success or dismal failure - is an absolute blast that has kept me on the edge of my seat. I play it almost competitively because of how much there is to do with such a simple concept.

If I had to sum up my entire opinion about the game, it would have to be this: If you're looking for a cheap, quick thrill, this is the right game for you. You can pick it up easily, learn it with lightning speed, beat it, and never look at it again. But if you're here for a long, campaigning experience, I would recommend it even more. There is never an end of stuff to do here and the replayability is absolutely immense. I love this game with all my heart, and it has earned a place on the highest levels of the shelves of my steam library. Thanks Subset Games, as you finally made a game whose glory in simplicity is both terrifying and beautiful.

Alright, time to finally do this. Having spent hundreds of hours (which steam won't show because it was across many different computers, only some of which had steam) I have finally managed to unlock every ship, thereby giving me the completionist feeling I needed to justify writing with authority. However, now I can do just that, so let me break down for you exactly how it feels to play FTL. That's right, this review isn't analyzing it from a conventional perspective. This is a dose of the experience. Alright, so you've just purchased the game. Congratulations. You open up your first run in the standard federation vessel, and you're trying to figure out how to play. Eventually you get a hang of the controls enough to know how to move your guys through the ship and how to destroy enemy vessels. Cool. After a few hops, you get a unique situation where spiders are invading a nearby station, and you can either send your crew to help or hang back. "Sure, let's help them!" you say, full of naive confidence. Immediately one of your crewmen evaporates, and you're left with two feelings: regret and dismay. You're down to 2 men on a large ship. "Alright," you say, "I can make this work." So you press on, get to the end of the sector, and prepare to jump to hyperspace. You're given a prompt, however: You can either jump to another civilian sector or a red Mantis Controlled sector. Curious, you choose the mantis sector, and your first encounter there involves being boarded. Confused, you pause the game to analyze the situation. "There's nothing I can do!" you say, unpausing to witness your miniature crew of two men get butchered by four of the creatures from Alien. Your ship is doomed to drift forever or until looters destroy it, the game tells you. You frown and close the game to do something else. The next day, however, you come back to it. Despite the harsh punishment it dealt to you, you felt you could have done better. So you try again. Then you die in sector 2 again. But you don't close it this time; you try again. And this time you make it to sector 5 before perishing. But what's this? You unlocked a new ship! You quickly try out the engi cruiser to find it's a lot easier to mess up than the federation ship, and you immediately return to that one. You play for a solid three hours, determined to beat the game, and eventually you figure out how to optimize your weapons systems to get to sector 8 alive. A miracle! You've done it! And then the message flashes in your face that you need to defeat the Rebel Flagship. "Oh, it can't be too hard," you think to yourself. It promptly hands your rectum to you on a silver platter. In a mix of fury and sadness you alt-f4. A few days later you return. That flagship may be BS, but the game is still fun and there's so much to do. On this run, you get to a situation in the Zoltan Homeworlds where a rebel wants to make peace. You decide to take the idealistic route and tell him that true peace can only be achieved without bloodshed, and just like that, you've unlocked another ship: The Zoltan cruiser! Sure, it's a piece of garbage, but hey, another ship unlock gives you hope! You try again at the flagship, and - while you don't beat it - you put up a fair fight and almost got past the first stage. A few weeks later you have the game completely in the bag. You've memorized the best items to get for the Federation ship, you've unlocked a few more that were ok, you guess, and you're ready to beat the game. You confront the flagship, you stand your ground, you barely survive, and you beat it. A wing falls off and it warps away, the game prompting you to give chase. "What, it's not over?" you ask yourself in silent disbelief. You follow it to the next system and it almost immediately tears you to shreds with newly repaired weapon systems. You get up and walk away right then and there, furious at how deceptive the fight was. Over the next month you continually improve. You unlock more ships, get a few variants, and approach the flagship in the Federation ship model B, the Red-Tail. Starting with four lasers is quite powerful, you decide, and work your way through the game with it. You make it to the flagship surprisingly easily, and you have a few new tricks up your sleeve for this fight. Firstly, you use a teleporter at the start of the fight to take out the flagship's weapons systems. You manage to beat phase one with no damage, sweat dripping from your forehead. The second phase was a lot harder. However, by using a combination of insane laser spam, teleportation disabling the primary weapons, and an drone that shoots other drones helping defend your vessel, you beat the second phase. You figured there was probably a third, as that's how these things go. You quickly lower the Zoltan shield, curse the bastards under your breath for giving their technology to the rebels, take down the primary weapons systems, and... A wave of 10 heavy laser blasts lowers your shields immediately and drops your ship to half health. In a panic you fire everything you have on the flagship's shield systems, bringing them low, and move your men on your ship to repair the damaged oxygen and door systems. Another colossal volley fires off from the flagship's core and the Red-Tail is on 1 hull. If a feather so much as scratches it the wrong way it's over. And then... your laser doesn't miss and the flagship is defeated. It's over. You win. You jump up out of your chair, thumping the air and shouting "Yes! Yes! Suck it!" repeatedly, to the confusion of your family in a nearby room. You sit back down, slightly self-conscious, and watch the credits scroll in peace. You did it. You saved the federation. As they end and you're taken back to the main menu with a new highscore, you can't help but feel satisfied. You did so much to get there; trained so long. You close the game, brag to your friends about it on discord, and leave the room to get a snack. And just the next day, you return. It's not that you haven't satisfied yourself; you did that when you beat the flagship. But you feel like there's still so much more. Even up until the point where you beat the flagship you were still discovering new items, new dialogue sequences, and new strategies to beat up pirates and rebels alike. Every hour spent on this game - whether ending in glorious success or dismal failure - is an absolute blast that has kept me on the edge of my seat. I play it almost competitively because of how much there is to do with such a simple concept. If I had to sum up my entire opinion about the game, it would have to be this: If you're looking for a cheap, quick thrill, this is the right game for you. You can pick it up easily, learn it with lightning speed, beat it, and never look at it again. But if you're here for a long, campaigning experience, I would recommend it even more. There is never an end of stuff to do here and the replayability is absolutely immense. I love this game with all my heart, and it has earned a place on the highest levels of the shelves of my steam library. Thanks Subset Games, as you finally made a game whose glory in simplicity is both terrifying and beautiful.