Between the Stars

Good base, maybe, but the design is poor. It maybe makes sense to have an hour-long tutorial that ends in defeat - but then the main game being the same? Story design is "hurry up, hurry up, do this thing, do this thing" and then the quest you're sent on is extraordinarily difficult, and you can't progress without getting past it. Apparently if you have the "right build" and the "right strat" it might not be hard, but their Normal difficulty play isn't. I don't know what the devs were thinking to but this kind of roadblock so early in the game. In general, storytelling is hard - even in the small amount of main story I've been able to play through you're repeatedly making uncued significant choices.

The writing is good, but not good enough to save everything else. After 5 hours the gameplay gets stale, the game railroads you at every turn ("Our shields are failing!" while your shields are at 99%), and it's not impressive in any area apart from the story.

又臭又长的半成品 我通常不会用如此恶毒的语言形容别人的工作成果，但是这款游戏确实给了我足够多的时间和空闲能够让我在37℃脑子里养蛊一般的想出一些-273.15℃的话 游戏的底子其实很不错，漂亮的战舰，宏伟的空间站，还有不同的行星和太空垃圾，飞船的操作手感很棒，而且飞行姿态也非常自由，不会束缚于某些坐标轴。此外摇骰子的战斗方式也很有意思，队员养成部分也还可以。Bug有一些但是并不致命，大概就是一些插入文本错误或者是触发不了剧情，跳到其他星系再跳回来可以也可以解决，量子驱动有时候莫名其妙掉出来虽然很烦人，但是也影响通关。 制作组完全可以用这游戏的资源做一个纯粹太空战斗的快节奏游戏，主线剧情短一点，4-6小时通关，设置一些关卡，太空战舰对轰爽TMD的就完了。或者增加舰船模型增加再增加几个不同势力的空间站做成一个服务型游戏，网游或者什么联机刷子游戏都完全没问题，这游戏底子在这。 或者用丰富的剧情文本做一个纯粹摇骰子的剧情游戏，多设置一些剧情分丰富一下船员养成，太空战斗作为故事背景，让玩家可以一手拿着零食一手点鼠标轻松的享受游戏跌宕起伏的剧情。 然而制作组在制作一款臭刷子游戏或者制作长剧情游戏中间选择了把游戏做的又臭又长，而且两边都不算太完善。 游戏丰富程度不是加多少次无关痛痒的转折就行了，玩家需要新鲜感，每次转折感觉都是再拖沓剧情——一堆文本砸下来然后再太空里跟人激情对喷一顿然后又是一堆文本，量子驱动还经常踩地雷（半路刷怪），拜托，这都21世纪20年代了，踩地雷已经不流行了！ 做好一款游戏不只是让玩家游戏时间够长就行了，你还得知道什么时候收手——“到这里，可以了，我们的新鲜内容展示完了，玩家可以看到一个盛大而辉煌的结尾，我们的主人公们过上了幸福快乐的生活。”——这就够了，过度重复的内容只会让人厌烦，再美味的东西一次吃太多也只会反胃。 嗯，就写到这里吧。

It starts good but unfortunately falls short and boring. The good: - Ship designs - Combat (not another dog fighting space sim) The bad: Pretty much everything else. - Walls of text, too long and boring, cut the pacing of the gameplay especially during large battles - Predictable story and dialogs - Bad voice acting for certain characters, especially the protagonist - No saving during scripted events which can be lenghty - Inconsistencies and lack of depth (i.e. weapons have firing range but there's no indication of target distances) - No replay value Conclusion: a missed opportunity. The game should have been more focused on side missions, random events, exploration and free roaming rather than going through a scripted story campaign.

Cautious recommendation. Gameplay-wise Between the stars has a number of flaws. The combat is relatively simplistic despite having 6Ds of freedom. Not all systems are well fleshed out - crafting generally fails to be suitable source of gear compared to drops/stores. Ship progression is a tad wonky. Managing AI companions is a bit cumbersome. That said, story is surprisingly decent, the mechanics related to random events and crew interactions are interesting. And there are some decent consequences to certain decisions that do alter the story development meaningfully. Those elements were definitely the highlights that made game enjoyable for me.

Fun game potential ruined by imbalances, a crappy UI, and multiple bugs..

A heavily flawed game, that I still enjoy. I get why it has mixed reviews, it may deserve a negative overall. But this game has soul. I recommend it at 15 bucks or less. Short pro/con lists [b]Pros:[/b] - Fun if easy combat - Quality writing - Good ship designs - Generally good art [b]Cons:[/b] - Poor fight design, specifically in regard to story missions - Poor weapon balance - Technical issues regarding story choices and dialogue - Poor but workable camera - No sense of scale The gameplay is simple, pretty easy if/when you realize what works and run with it. Even if you just go for what looks cool, don't expect a hard game. Weapons are poorly balanced, while they can all work, and even be good, the disparity between the main cannon lines and every other weapon type is staggering. While workable I gave up on running a missile boat because it didn't [b]feel[/b] as good. There are many times in the story where they put you in an unwinnable, or unwinnable until the dialogue play out fight where an invincible enemy monologues at you while eating nuclear missiles for breakfast. Don't turn a cutscene into an unwinnable slog of bad gameplay and exposition, The story was well written, at times it fell into tropes and has one or two intentionally annoying characters whose humor did not make up for their failings, but on the whole, the writing is quite good. The game can forget prior actions and story choices. A man whose life I saved, [spoiler]who stood by my side as we betrayed his nation, and who [b]killed his father in front of me[/b][/spoiler], randomly shows up as an enemy later, as if I had taken one of the other story routes, with no dialogue referencing it, as though we had always been enemies. Crew members would be referred to by He or She inconsistently. I suspect there was a function to call character data and then use he or she respectively, but then some dialogue went through with just a written he or she. I got a girl pregnant. I was playing a female character. The last big flaw is in the sense of scale. Every ship in this game is a capital ship, cruiser or battleship. When all of the ships are operating on roughly the same playing field of size, maneuverability, and firepower they stop feeling like giant monstrous vessels. You could replace every instance of the word cruiser or battleship with corvette, and I don't thing anybody would notice The game needed a wider variety of ship types in the action to set the scale. If I'm flying a big ship, I want to feel like I'm flying a big ship.

I was super excited to try this game out. However within five minutes I hit a show-stopper bug. In the prologue, the contract never shows up in the Commercial district. It doesn't show up in any of the tabs. I read it is supposed to show in the Station tab but it's not there. It's very disappointing to run into such a huge problem right in the introduction.