izigame.me

Spoilers: This will be lengthy.
I've played stellaris and now I have played Infinite. There is definitely a lot of differences.
One: there is a glaring difference in playability, you are always bound by a pre-set game design that limits a lot verses stellaris. I get that they want to keep this almost like true trek, but adding a random universe setup will do the basics a wonder. Further, there isn't any settings to change for this game. You can't set the crisis difficulties or the amount how things are set up.
So if you just want a conquest game, or an ethics game, you cannot change the settings to give you that option. I was winning as the klingons, and then out of the blue within like...40 years, the federation pulled a win of ethics out from under me when I had looked and everyone had 3 ethics like me. I was completely surprised.
Two: Computer systems in the game messed up my designs pretty horribly upon getting to the Vorcha class (Tier 4 ships). In stellaris, it tells you the effective ranges that the computer will stay at for longest ranges of shooting. (like artillery, line, and point blank.) Another issue with the computer for tier four ships, You only get "Stay at longest ranges" as an option. Which made my ships sit outside their own weapon ranges and be useless upon fighting stations. (so tier 3, 2, and 1 ships were the ones fighting the stations effectively where the tier 4 just.... sat there... Very Frustrating.)
Three: They hinted that the Nebula ship was in with artwork at somepoint, sadly they don't have that ship in the game. They did say they might put in the option to making the ships have optional skins, but really... I feel they are leaving this to modders. Which is highly frustrating to me. On top of that, while claiming to be going canon, they muddled up the order of ships. Further, they are using I believe the avenger style miranda looks instead of the classic miranda that we usually see.
Four: Star bases are different in this game verses stellaris. You can build any number of them and it seems to be ok, verses stellaris having you research more starbase amounts. This is probably because of how the warp works for ships being able to attack any system within the FTL limit.
Five: It feels like the same missions go across the factions, so it doesn't feel unique like the stellaris beginning story arcs. Maybe it is located in certain areas, because I played the federation, and then klingons, and conquered Sol... But I got a few missions from the federation playthrough.
Six: There is not much variation with the ship builds. You don't get to pick different hulls that make different builds per say. Birds of Prey have 1 small weapons slot and 2 medium weapon slots. Mirandas have 3 small weapon slots and 1 medium. (Tier 1 ships) It felt like there was classes of ships in stellaris with the hull picks (where one is a picket class, one a torpedo class, one is a basic class, etc.) It would be nice if they used different ships for this design. (but using such minimal ship designs makes this currently impossible at this time.)
Seven: Some of the race missions requires you to be a friend of X empire, like the klingons, in order to progress down its mission ark, you must be friendly with either the federation OR the Romulans. Which if you weren't paying attention before, and went to war with both, it is a pain in the ASS to get to be allowed to complete this missions. Literally ANY war you do, drops both the empire's views of you and you have to wait FREAKING FOREVER to complete missions. Making the game kind of stale.
Eight: I have YET to see the end game crisis. Which is supposed to be something to worry about. (Which I doubt seeing how I completely dominated in the game.(
Nine: (and probably my last point.) I think I missed the research tree for the exquisite minerals, so it seems like you cannot buy them? Someone correct me if I am wrong, but on my playthrough, I could not buy any dilithium for my better buildings. Very frustrating.
Now, on to my actual review on the game.
Graphics are pretty standard and they look nice. Very stellaris. Many of the icons is stellaris. If you want to play a sandbox game, definitely play stellaris over this game. There are so many things that could be improved with this game that they are indeed going to let the modders do the work for them. It is unfortunate that this will eventually be just abandonware.
Core issues with the game:
There is no true flexibility, if something happens, too many of the quest lines get broken. If a character dies, dead quest line. Everything seems to be super interconnected where If you go to war, all of the major empires will have extremely long lasting negative views of it...making say the klingon mission tree fail completely or take far to long to go through.
There is no way to change the win outcome, so if an empire beats you on civic wins, you have lost. (yes, you may continue to play through, but its still considered a loss.)
There are far too many bugs right now. Infact, as of this day, there's an advice bug that will not remove the tutorial advice, removing the whole U.I. on the right hand side. VERY FRUSTRATING.
Concerning ships, the most iconic ships are in (arguably) especially on the federation side, but only has Galaxy, Excelsior, Miranda, Intrepid, and Sovereign class ships are actually in the game. In a latest statement, they pretty much said they are going to let modders fill in the gap. This screams Abandonware to me, and that they are not invested in giving their player base exactly what they want...and want the modders to do the work for free. I am highly disappointed in this outcome.
At this time, I cannot endorse this game.
I may update this review at a future time, but as it is, I think the most polished game is stellaris with the mod new horizon for a star trek themed Stellaris. I do not normally want to give a game a negative review, but today is the day I was super agitated by the U.I. bug that was caused by the latest update, and last friday's dev report.