Starpoint Gemini 2 Review (minWanabe)
Starpoint Gemini 2 is an RPG game set in space.
Starpoint Gemini 2 (SPG2) has two primary campaigns: The Origins campaign which is a remake of their first games storyline and the newer SPG2 main campaign storyline. Origins is more difficult than the SPG2 storyline and also in general a bit rougher and buggier. I'll be generous and say that the voice acting for that particular campaign is B-Grade. I had fun with that campaign but there are times when there are broken scripts and can stop progression in the story, requiring annoying workarounds to get it progressing. With that said I definitely appreciate the existence of that campaign and it does effectively increase the available content for SPG2.
The main campaign for SPG2 is better overall than Origins. It introduces concepts better and also includes some game-play features that weren't suitable for the Origins campaign. Better voice actors and slightly improved writing.
The progression of SPG2 is mostly about gaining reputation and credits so you can get a bigger badder and better equipped ship. It is not about fleet building or building stations etc. You can have 2 hired mercenaries to accompany you though. When you start a game you choose 4 different captain types, each of those having their own set of 4 active skills/abilities which when used will boost the ability of your ship in certain ways. There is a skill tree of sorts which is the same for each class, leveling the skills increases various passive bonuses.
There is a basic trading/commodity system which I did not delve into much. I'm fairly sure prices are static so I didn't have a lot of interest doing trade runs and stuck purely with combat and missions for progression.
Battles in SPG2 can be rather tactical. You have the ability to change power distribution between engines/weapons and shields. Shields have 4 areas of protection, so as one side gets weaker you can rotate your ship to another stronger side while the weak side recovers.
There is a reasonable enough amount of variety of weapon types, from various types of pulse lasers to railguns, missiles and fighters. As expected specific weapons are better or worse in different circumstances.
Asides from story-line missions there are also lots of side missions that will crop up throughout gameplay. Such as escort, repair station, defend station from attack, rescue, capture etc. The available pool of side-missions early on is more limited but over time becomes expanded with newer and possibly more difficult types.
Visually I think the game holds up nicely. It still looks good to my eyes. I mostly like the sound design except for the engine sound that really obviously loops when going into boosted engine mode. They really needed to tone that one down or make it less obvious that it loops.
The game is mostly bug-free but there are at least a couple of them. One issue I had was the game would stutter/freeze when generating new side missions and would sometimes intermittently freeze when travelling around which really takes you out of the game a bit. Another one that I can recall was that sometimes when trying to accept a mission the button wouldn't register a click at all. I eventually learned to fix that one when it happens by dragging the mission accept window around slightly and then suddenly the game knows where the accept button is.
All in all I would recommend this game, definitely not for the non-sale price though which is priced a bit high for what's on offer. Certainly worth while on a sale though.