Reviews - IronStar94

Despite feeling bit repetitive, and AI being bit flaky, it's not a bad game. Environments are nice, and every planet has different one so it doesn't feel generic. Ground physics engine is superb!
Space shooting is good enough, but with artificial difficulty as AI cheats. Doesn't make it much harder, only annoying. Oh, battleships are OP. When attacking space stations, every single one can be destroyed singlehandedly by legal cheating and playing on not too smart AI card if that's your thing. Teleporting back to space station is nice touch as it saves tons of time. Also bounty missions are available, at almost any time. Ground combat is meh, guns sound like toys, and lack punch. Gets much better over time though, but still...
Until you become a leader, faction command has tendency to target most illogical places to attack, but that's not really a complaint as it hardly matters at that point. Once you get to faction leader, management and attacking is in your hands, and if you f-up, you may end up loosing game. Not likely, but still an option. Protip: Colonies are more important than space stations. ;) When you leave base defense to AI, it's pretty much a gamble whether they will win or lose, even if they are much more powerful than enemy. Ground upgrade system is limited, and not too good. Spaceship upgrades, on the other hand are much, much, much better, as you have plenty of upgrades to choose from. Inventory management system is a lie.
Developer is really nice guy, and as I managed to run into game breaking bug he was more than eager to provide me assistance and fix buggered up save. He seems to be happy to get feedback for his game as witnessed by Desura game page. Also he is aware of game's shortcomings, but budget didn't allow it to be better. It seems he is willing to work it up when/if game gets greenlit on Steam and he gets some money to allow him to work on it.
Game leaves a lot to be desired, but it's not too bad by any means.

Voice acting is comical, and on-screen subtitles don't follow speech properly. I didn't notice background music, so I'm not sure if that's good or bad thing. I'm not going to spoil the story (not there is much to be spoiled). but I'll just say it's not too much.
On to the gameplay: There are only 8 missions, prologue included, that IMO were quite easy, and one insanely hard that I cheated through after numerous restarts, even after I reduced difficulty to easy. Rockets get rid of most of things quite efficiently, but it gets boring easily if you only spam rockets. Enemies are easy enough to kill without them, and it's more fun that way. Only time I really, really needed rockets was to shoot down some mining bots and to my disappointment - bots were faster than damn rockets! Seriously? -.- AI poses no threat most of the time, and only hing they seem to be good at is ramming their ship into you. Sadly, ramming takes only 5% of your health (at least on normal difficulty, might be different at easy/hard) and it takes way more from their ship. Also, collision detection just bounces you off anything you hit and that feels quite wrong. Ships were made of metal, not rubber last time I checked. Hacking was a nice idea but realization seriously lacks of imagination. Target node, wait for code to show up, select code, do something to the ship et voila. Also dying is not really an option as you can go back to the mothership for repairs and restocking on those almighty rockets. Even if you manage to get killed, you will be bailed out in evacuation pod and re-spawned on ship. Upgrade system offers 0 customization, and is divided into Weapons, Hull and Afterburner, and next stages gives you bit more of it.
Warning! Spoilers ahead! Last mission is heavily inspired by Star Wars, as it's quite similar to death star destruction. And no I didn't feel like hero.
Summed up in one word: meh.