Recent reviews by VY Canis Melodis

deserves a sequel tbh its a very fun game with some interesting mechanics - the ship customisation is really neat, by completing songs you can unlock new weapons which you can then upgrade later and then place and rotate 4 of them on your ship. if there was a sequel ever made more weapons would of course be nice!
megablaster is pretty OP though

in what other game can i race a classic stock ford lotus cortina both at its factory level and when i swap in a huge v8 engine with hundreds of horsepower and in both cases it's incredibly fun

ah yes, a card swipe for every door, great idea

thanks to this my trusty wyvern can not only rock the track but the stage also 10/10

i feel like i've played this a lot more than it says i have

There's a lot of things I don't much like about this game, and yet I still recommend it.

Firstly, the story is not very interesting. There's a very simple plotline of 'to destroy big bad thing, you need the thingummies' and then the gameplay related to that is 'look for village, scan things, do mission and bossfight' and repeat. And while there's nothing inherently wrong with this, the way it's done is not the most interesting.

Instead of feeling like you're exploring a vast universe, it feels more like a linear tour - planet types have set difficulties, pretty much. You're not going to find a lush planet that's not a starting world and thus has none of the advanced ores. And around a quiet star you'll only find lush, desert, barren, forest. Around a fiery star you'll only find the top tier lava ones. And so it goes on.

This means that if you want to take the game at a slow pace and engage with the gameplay systems before moving on in tier, you'll be greeted with the same scenery over and over again. And since certain races tend to be very rare on certain planets, you'll be seeing the same villages over and over again. You're being practically invited to seeing the flaws in their village and dungeon generation.

On the other hand, if you take the game at a fast pace to get to the end game where there should be the most options, you're limited only to those high tier planets which again have the same scenery. But you also won't have engaged with systems such as bounty hunting or mechs, so you'll end up having to go back anyway. The system as it was in alpha and beta, as far as I remember, was better (but still not perfect) - you started off in sector alpha, where all stars and planets were of tier 1 - then, after a boss battle, moved on to beta, and so on until the final sector where all stars were high tier but all planets could be there.

You'd end up experiencing a wider variety of the procedural generation at once rather than exhausting one part then moving onto the next. I don't know how much the generation has actually changed since then, but it feels like there's less variety because of this tour approach. Apparently the underground generation is different now, and you'll find many underground biomes under one planet rather than having each planet being undergroundly distinct. All undergrounds will feel the same, unfortunately.

Speaking of the game's systems that you can interact with, there are a lot of them, but most are a little shallow.

There's civilian space stations, civilian ships and also hostile ships. At the moment you can go to them, loot them, and also talk to the people there. At space stations you can buy and sell the specific food, medical, etc. goods for currency, so in principle you could be a trader, but there's not actually much depth to the system when it comes to prices and demand, so it's mostly walking, waiting, and then clicking the sell/buy button.

There are also mechs. You'll need a mech to access the space stations/ships, but you'll only need to engage with the mech upgrading system if you want to go to hostile ships or space anomalies, which contain loot. Great! One might think. A different way to progress through the game! But the majority of loot ties back into the mechs rather than the game - and you can't take the mechs into story missions, so there's not really any incentive to actually engage with the system.

Bounty Hunting is the most recent addition, which was almost cancelled and then dropped on us by surprise. I'll admit I haven't gotten to the end of it. but it does seem pretty good. It does suffer from the tiered star system I mentioned earlier, however - by the end you will be seeing the same fiery star planets over and over. Also, you will need a good mech for it, so it ties back to the mech system now! It's like a career in the ways that the other options were not so much. Not perfect, but better.

You can also be someone that visits villages and helps them. Villagers will have quests for you, be they go to a hostile dungeon, or deliver a package to someone who is standing 5 feet away. On the surface, this is a fun role to play. But then you get a quest where you have to walk to the other side of the planet and back. Multiple quests. Since you can only beam down to one point on the planet unless you invest in a teleporter or flag system, it could involve a lot of walking. Flags and teleporters are expensive, but it's worth it. This is also the issue with the Bounty Hunting path. The game loves to pad the gameplay by making you wait for hyperspace jumps or walk all the way round planets. Occasionally, the quests you complete will lead you to add crewmates to your crew, and they will come along and 'help' you. It's a satisfying gameplay loop, I just wish there was a little less walking.

Finally, you can create colonies. You can build houses, and, depending on what furniture you put inside the houses, different people will move in. It's honestly one of the best parts. Have you ever made a huge city in Terraria and just thought, there aren't enough NPCs to fill every house, so it feels empty? Well, not here! You can also get them to pay you rent, which seems more to be them giving you gifts periodically, which can range from money (nice) to... seeds??? If you don't want to be a landlord you could roleplay it to be a gift giving thing or just not take them at all. Occasionally the tenants will give quests, some of which can involve building more things. If you want better rents, then you have to build your colonies on higher tier, more dangerous planets, where meteors can rain from the sky, for example. It's a system I really recommend engaging with.

Honestly, the game is close to being great, it's just the star tier system, shallowness on some of the systems, and the story that lets it down. The atmosphere Starbound presents is incredible. You really feel like someone on an alien world - and the music just adds to that. The in game music, and, reluctantly I admit, the musical instruments, which are just fun. The reason, it seems, why the game has such a wide variety in quality is that many people working on it were unpaid and (rightly) left - but it meant lots of features were abandoned. Not blaming those who left, the company should have paid them for their work. It's very sad, because the game could have been truly great. I was one of the backers way back in like 2013, and the game is very much a different product to what it was. In some ways better, in some ways worse. It went from being deep but rough around the edges, to very wide but much more shallow. Luckily there's a huge modding scene, eh?

A lot of people don't seem to like the latest update but I've found it really good! The new content is nice and the whole presentation is just that bit better. That said, I think the crashing sounds could be a bit louder and meatier!

ai buses don't take the deathloop though so literally unplayable /s

hoo hoo hee hee fun gam

To be honest, the DLC policy isn't so bad really - the game is great, and they're constantly adding to it. All of that content for like 30 quid a year isn't bad at all, even though I don't have any DLCs past Mare Nostrum. I can't afford them all guilt-free, but that doesn't mean that the price is too high.

My recommendation; get the Empire Founder pack, and then later on start buying the other DLCs slowly. Just the expansions and immersion packs, the content packs and music are not as important, even if the music is really good.

Really really really really really fun. Also stupendously difficult if you're anywhere in the Shadow Operations Unit DLC. I think I ragequit, which is why I haven't played it in a very long time. I still recommend it, though.

I think I also quit because it would give me headaches every time I played on something that wasn't the lowest flashiness setting, and even then I'd get them after a while. My eyes suck.