Recent reviews by Lazaek

Game isn't bad, but has some very rigid mechanics that take away from the experience. The Zelda mechanics are present from the get go, as if they took a mish-macsh from several Zelda games and tried to combine them into one.

Pros:
It may not be Zelda, but Zelda-like is still fun
Price is fair for what you get
The 'Adventurer Level' is a nice inclusion

Cons:
Lots of different mechanics are noticeably rigid, and distracting
No real ocean exploring, you have to learn about locations before they appear on your map
Every boss fight is easy

I pre-ordered Starbound and I've enjoyed it a great deal, especially doing things like plugging in my SSN, birthday, etc. as coordinates and finding fun things that I can't ever share with the greater Starbound community for obvious reasons, or trying to dismantle towns, dungeons, or anything else that I may be able to feed to my 3D printer on my ship so I can make them later so long as I have enough pixils to do it.

Just building a base is tons of fun with all of the furnature/blocks that are in the game already without using any mods whatsoever.

So in terms of recommending Starbound: I do.

I don't normally write game reviews, but after looking at the review page here I felt compelled to. I scrolled down for some time seeing nothing but negative 'reviews' from players (some of whom have hundreds upon hundreds of hours played) blantantly lying about the game, It's developers, or just in general looking for something to nitpick about so they can jump on the bandwagon.

Now It's not always the easiest stance to take, but when I see so many reviews of this nature I'm reminded of this quote:

"Right is right no matter how many people think It's wrong, and wrong is wrong no matter how many people think It's right"

And so I wrote this.

Now, to address some of the more common complaints I've seen in other reviews:

Combat sucks/is the badness Combat could certainly use some work, and has & is being worked on. Currently all bosses can be blocked & chopped, and that's a problem. Normal mobs aren't that bad though surface mobs aren't too varied beyond jumping/charging. Get underground and you're much more likely to have blood/ice/fire/acid/sonic booms etc. shot at you by the monsters. You can also collect baby mobs & have as many out simultaneously as you want, which is fun if you want to run around in a horse head mask and pretend your their great father.

No updates/abandoned game This one is silly. There are small nightly updates to the unstable build, and much more robust posts on playstarbound.com with updates on where the team is with a lot of bigger stuff -or at least updates on how X dev is working on Y mechanic at the moment. In fact I'd say that Starbound has done an excellent job of communicating to the comminity, almost to an extent that I think you'd have to be wearing blinders to not have some idea of what's going on if you're willing to look. Frankly just about anything and everything that people have voiced legitimate concerns over has or is being addressed as the team is able to do so. Also, a lot of the team did move internationally. People seem to hear that one and balk at it as if it's something that is super easy -It wasn't.

Not enough content bro/not worth $15 I'ver personally got going on 600 hours and I still haven't found everything that's out there. Some planets/biomes are pretty rare, and unless you're purposely trying to ruin your own experience by going online and using someone else's coordinates, you're only robbing yourself of the experience.

And even if you are a super consumer there is still a decent amount of stuff to do even in single player:

• Feed your 3D printer. Go blow up some dungeons/towns & feed the stuff to your 3D printer. If you enjoy building this will save you a ton of time later.
  
• Catch 'em all. Go capture pets with different special abilities. There's actually a ton out there, and until they put a limit on the number of pets you can have out at one time, you can become the baby-beast whisperer/destroyer of worlds.
  
• Build things. Building is a big part of the game. Have fun. HAVE FUN I SAID O_O
  
• Collect blueprints/codex entries. This can take some time. As for Codex entries, read em. Some are pretty good.
  
  And more of course, but It's nearly 1am here as I write this now, and I need sleep.

TL;DR:

Buggy, designed for tablets/phones, lacks polish.

I saw this game early on and voted for it on Greenlight, and after actually playing the game regret that decision. Early on you'll notice that much of the game's features (or lack thereof) are clearly designed for tablet/smart phone use, which includes annoying things like clicking drop down menus to select gear for your party, or all spells having the same generic 'caster' icon with different text for what the spell is, but with no details about what they do like their damage ranges or other effects. Using your mouse to look for secret switches will also move your party -much quicker than using the standard WSAD keys at times, which gets very irksome.

The game still has plenty of very low-level bugs which you wouldn't expect for many games even in a beta status, with visual combat glitches being the most obvious even from early on.

Overall I'd say the game just isn't designed for a PC gamer audience, and if you're really looking for a similar game that wont dissapoint, go check out Legend of Grimrock.

Fun game, especially with a controller! The only downside is the overall length of the game for me was a little over 6 hours, and you can do speed runs to finish everything in under 2 & 1/2 hours.

That mentioned, definately worth the price and very well made! I especially love the art :)

Great story-driven Sci-fi platformer :)