Underspace

In shorts: good game, feels like freelancer 2, but not better nor worse. In longs: Cons: — Storms. Ill start from worst part of this game. Storm is a core mechanic in the game. They're spawns here and there, lightnings rages, tentacles raises and that's all. Storm, to be honest, doing nothing. You can completely ignore them. The only one and one reason to deal with them - stormeyes, a currency to buy high-tier ships and weapons/modules. How to deal with storm? Just fly to its core, ignoring everything on your path, and shoot in it 2-3 times. And... its gone. Good job, you dealt with storm! And you need to do it many, many times to grind eyes: for one t3 ship you need 10 eyes. Would like to see completely overhaul of storm. For now i'll avoid them as much, as possible. — Ships. There's no difference in stats between ships in one category and tier. For example, all heavy fighters in tier 3 have ~20000 hp, ~27000 shield, same number of hardpoints, energy and etc. The only one difference in one substat: less thruster drain, more money for quests and etc. Why bothering in farm reputation with some rare faction to buy their ship, if it has totally no difference with common ships? And to make it worse: all ships for one race has same one model. Heavy fighter? Light fighter? Same look, same model. — Economy. Why bothering in trade, which takes big amount of time and effort, when you can befriend with Washers, do their mission and grind 10kk+ credits just in 10 mins. You even wouldn't shoot some one: fly there, stay for 5 second and return here. Repeat. Easy money for nothing. — World feels empty. No interaction between NPC's with them, with you, with environment. Yes, you will find some ship flying from point A to point B. Sometimes they will scan you. Sometimes pirates will show up and try to kill you. But thats all. Systems inside are big, yes, but to reach from one jumpgate to another jumpgate can take like 10 minutes of flying in tradelines. And you wont find something interesting during this time. Just total emptyness. Maybe reduce size between POIs, maybe increase flying speed, maybe add something to look at while im trying to reach system on another corner of the galaxy. And would like to have more systems, to be honest. — Combat. Combat is janky. Why bothering in toe-to-toe fight, dodging, maneuvering, if u can press "R", deploy AI turret and it will clear everything for you. T7 AI turret has such huge dps, that it just oneshot everyone! Neutrals: — Campaign. Or it was my bad, or game have luck of guidance, but somehow i managed to skip main quest entirely. Started new game, looked at cinematic, talked with our "brother", got first mission "find the job" and i had lost. Launched in space, headed to first station on my sight, got mission in the bar, then flied to next jumpgate and found myself after 15 hours of game in t3 Washers ship with bunch of credits, best weapons and modules. And only then i remembered that this game has a plot. But i cannot found where i must go now to do it. Its not con, because game provided me totally freedom even from first minute. — Humans. There's no humans in classic meaning. Im sorry, but multi-gender-Apache-attack-helicopter aka Vauldwins are not human. There are sapient rocks, energy crystals, insects, robots, even fungi, but no humans. Kinda sad. — No difference in weapons. Nothing special in them, no passive bonuses, no different stats. Its a weapons. Just plug something in slot and you will be ok. Pros: — Game feels like freelancer. It have same~ UI, same~ visuals, same~ style. To Freelancer big fun its huge. Yes, it is Freelancer 2 that i waited for twengty years. — Gameplay. It is main pro for me. It is simple, easy and understandable. You'll understand how to do this, how to achieve those and etc. — Exploring. Because i've lost main plot, first thing i did is just flying from here to there and trying to find something. And this game can catch your attention for some time. There is hidden wormholes that lead to hidden systems, occasionally bosses, creepy stories and more. You'll spend many time exploring galaxy and sometimes finding something interesting. — Side quests. They are okay. Game has some sides, they are +- interesting, sometimes rewarding. Its nice to have something to do when you dont know what you want for now: do sides. — Us. Join Us. Fly with Us. Be. The. Us. Would i recommend this game for now? Ye, totally. For its cost (less then 5 bucks in RU) it is amazing game. 8\10 for me. And because it is only early access and dev seems to continues his work on the game - someday it will become much, much better. Ill trust in his vision and his cats.

Want Freelancer 2? this [b]is[/b] Freelancer 2. As you can see on my review, only 77 minutes, but as soon as i started to dip my toes in this i realized two things. 1. Its the Freelancer sequel ive been waiting for. 2. its not finished. So, what I am gonna do, is i'm gonna wait until its finished, so that i dont get tired of the game before its full release. Will come back to this review at a later date.

I would hold off if you dont like bugs. within the first couple hours i had to reload saves multiple times cause quests/missions didnt work correctly, or wouldnt progress correctly.

I really want to like this game. The setting is interesting and I want to explore it. I love Freelancer style games. The Solo dev clearly has passion for this project though it clearly falls short of his ambition. Perhaps with more time to cook it will become something worth spending more time in. There are a lot of cool things you can do in theory, but in practice much of it is disappointing or doesn't work well. Quests (main story line) seem to function well, but the missions are extremely buggy and unintuitive. Some of them just don't work, even after completing the objectives and oftentimes you will complete one mission and that auto completes others that you haven't done yet. Bugs abound, the inventory and ship refitting is clunky and the world looks extremely populated but that is merely surface level. Combat is extremely dull and beyond arcadey (you even get a spammable dodge). There is no fighting for position or maneuvering for shots, it's basically dodge and hold down the fire button.

I never write reviews...this is literally my first one ever...but i had to. I remember playing Freelancer when it first came out and to this day it is my favorite space sim. This game is the most faithful successor I've ever played. It has the lanelines, the docking rings and the combat is almost identical. It brings some new things to the table that I personally adore (fighting giant space snakes in the middle of a stormy nebula? sign me up), but more importantly it still feels like the original in all the important ways. Obviously it is still WIP, hence the EA, but I'm having a blast currently and am eagerly awaiting the final version. To the dev: thank you for this. I needed the nostalgia more than I realized. tl;dr If you liked Freelancer and dont mind or enjoy (like me) some Lovecraftian content, don't think twice. Get it.

"im gonna make a game with over 100 star systems and theyre all going to have interesting handcrafted content" except he actually did it. incredible work wiz. a truly ensouled gaming experience

This is Freelancer + more customisation + more things to do. I hope the game is bigger than Freelancer as I plan on putting a lot of hours into it.

This review may sound biased as I am a freelancer fanboy, and still play that game. The start is very much like freelancer, specially the part where you get interupted during hyper ring travel by bandits. Combat and UI are very much like freelancer, which I really adore. The nostalgia is very real. I really love this and look forward to playing the game, however there are Issues. I understand this is still in early access, but the audio is scuffed. Also, even while having special effects off, this game is a VRAM hog, maxing out my 6GB 4050 Mobile. The FPS in space is good, 120+, but on planets for some reason its arround 20. I fear I am hitting the VRAM cap. I have all settings in graphics as "off" or low. Running this on cachyOS with cachyOS proton 408.

Ok, I know my playtime is short in this but Ive also messed with the demo a few times previously and the same problem from back then is still very much apparent and is edging me towards reluctantly refunding - the audio. This is a weird one, I cant thumbs down for an issue not all people will perceive as bad as I do but I'm also not sure if ill keep the game as I don't know if I can actually cope with it. Before I get into that let me say some good stuff. I'm an old Freelancer fanboy and spent way too many hours in the campaign and on the old Jolt multiplayer servers back in the day, this game manages to keep the vibe of the original while adding some more stuff to the mix. I personally didnt think I'd be into the Eldritch elements but what I did see was truly impressive and nails the visual atmosphere so damn well with horror elements that just ooze class. It had me on the edge of the seat the first time I went into the storm! The planetside first person sections are a welcome sight for any old FL head too, its such an experience to walk around! The visuals genuinely get me chubbed up so far. UI is very similar to FL, even the hotkeys for things match FL which was nice, muscle memory kicks in straight away. Some issues here or there with the UI but nothing worth much mention. Controls seem a bit sluggish compared to the OG FL and the mode where you have to click on screen first to turn seems to only engage the turning when the mouse is near the edges of the screen which is a weird change from the OG control scheme. I really want to play more of this and see everything it has to offer but from the minute I started playing I'm repeatedly smashed in the head by the audio. I'm going to state something here which is going to sound harsh (no pun intended) - the audio in this game is among the WORST I've heard in recent times. I'm struggling to think of anything else and I'm not saying that to be mean. Anyway, rather than just make that statement I'll go into detail: The balance is all over the place - the music doesnt sit well in the mix (part of this could be the music choices, a simpler scifi ambient style would literally sit better in a busy audio mix than pirates of the caribean in space stuff), the individual SFX have wildly different volumes and everything just doesnt sound like it's in the game space at all. It all sounds completely disconnected from the experience. Its an absolute experience killer for me. The SFX are dry, uninspired and some are outright questionable choices especially considering the strange volume issues compounding the issue. The ship engine either sounds ear splittingly loud or is whispering quiet depending on flight mode - there is a weird audio pan on the engine sound when you move your ship side to side and it just sounds odd. The mission chime is both obnoxiously loud in the mix and almost designed to annoy a player - a super tinny high pitched transient blended into a chime sound. The explosions in the intro have no weight, the gun sounds seem totally meh and the hit sounds seem even meh-er. This is all present in the first few minutes of the game, and I find it impossible to ignore. The start sequence of the user playing the game after the intro is like a checklist of how to show off your bad audio design - loud elevator sounds with no background musical ambience, super loud low end drones while on landing pads (non looping, enjoy that sample ending and repeating over and over again if you stand there longer than a short while), followed by a HUGE difference in volume level when you go to the office (almost silent besides the sounds of the trains passing outside) and then while in the silent office that obnoxious mission chime kicks in giving your ears a jumpscare mixed with nails on a chalkboard. Then you embark and get slammed with a hodgepodge mix of audio once you leave the planet rings...at which point i assume most players just turn the speakers volume right down - if they hadnt already from the mission chime lol. I mean this from a good place - please for the love of Gaben do an extra audio pass! I understand that its essentially a solo dev's passion project and as a Freelancer fan I almost, almost LOVE this game, damn, I WANT to love this game. But if it takes someone with better ears to help out then I would really suggest you get someone involved to help. It would make a huge difference to the players experience - at bare minimum they should not have to ride the volume to play a game without getting ear-raped.