1. Lapidarius

   10

   My opinion is that Starpoint Gemini is definitely worth playing. It is somewhat slow at the start, but later picks up just fine. It is not one of those new school games that you play without brain and using two controls. It is more demanding, but if you give it enough time, you will be rewarded. Aside from questionable voiceovers and some smaller glitches (most are already fixed in patches), this is a true gamers game. There is no multiplayer, but singleplay is very well composed. Interesting plot, unique characters in the story, vast designed space and a sense of a real living universe. Also, if you dislike the story, you can avoid it completely and enjoy all the space sectors on your own. Possibilities are numerous, roaming around. fighting pirates or members of the official military, trading, mining. Once you earn some credits and experience, you can purchase larger and more powerful ships, and then further customize them using many different ship's and weapon's systems. You also develop your own statistics as a captain (and your crews statistics) as you level up through experience.
   As for the interface system, I think there was room for improvements here. Sometimes it gets confusing because there are so many slots, buttons and ways to combine them. The best way is to check the game's manual if you get stuck.
   Graphics is, in my opinion very solid. Not AA class, but designed with some old fashion charm. Battle effects are awesome, and once you get yourself in the middle of the fight against dozen of ships, all the weapons flying around, special abilities going off and stuff...a real eye candy.
   The bottom line is, I think this is the game for more demanding players. It requires you do some effort to master it, but when you succeed, it will reward you with gameplay rarely seen today. Too bad the developers obviously lacked the logistics to produce the AA class title, but they are on the right road with Starpoint Gemini, and I do hope we will see the sequel. This genre hybrid of the "Starfleet Command meets Freelancer" definiotely has my vote.… Expand

   • Helpful? 6 of 6 users said Yes.
2. Scorio

   10

   Reminiscent of the old Starfleet Command. The controls are basically the same. In my book that's a good thing. SG expands on that and offers free-roaming and RPG! The campaign is quest based, but here you're also given the freedom of choosing exactly when you'll continue the story. If you want to explore or gather more XP or get a stronger ship, you can halt the storyline and return to it later.If you want to avoid the campaign story altogether, then its easier to simply start the second scenario; a free roam scenario.
   The campaign is very good. Maybe a bit too much text, but overall very enjoyable and refreshing. The great thing about the main quests is that you never feel like you're doing the same thing. Even when you're transporting your troopers onto a station for the third time, you still feel the mission is unique. Developer has done a great job of camouflaging it.
   Freeroaming is another treat. There's something for everybody: mining, freelancing, trading, looting. Great variety.
   Combat is very good. You have to watch out from which angle your enemy is approaching to minimize incoming damage with your shields. Orientation is also important for your weapons as well. Each weapon has its firing arc and using weapons at the right time is essential. In that whole mixture, there are also skills (which the developer called maneuvers). Around thirty of them in total. Some great, some not so much.
   On top of that there are also passive bonuses (perks) that you can choose when getting a new rank. Then there are also ship abilities: unique actions linked to a specific ship. .. There's so much in this game that a short review cannot do it justice. I recommend downloading the demo and trying it out yourself.
   HIGH POINTS: tactical combat, RPG, ship upgrading (a lot of variety), many different ships with unique abilities, SFX, freeroam
   I definitely recommend it! Especially for fans of Starfleet Command.… Expand

   • Helpful? 5 of 6 users said Yes.
3. technophebe

   8

   It's a solid game, definitely one to get for fans of the space combat/trading genre. It takes a more managerial approach to piloting a ship than a lot of other games - rather than being a fighter jock you're a large ship's captain, and you have an at first bewildering array of ways to customize your ship's performance. As well as your captain's skills and perks, you can hire crew with various abilities, the ships themselves have special abilities, and each ship has a generous complement of misc. slots for adding equipment with specific bonuses, as well as the usual weapons/shield/generator etc.
   
   Movement and combat are similar in style to the Starfleet Command series or even a sea ship game - it's about moving so that damage is coming into your strongest shield, while managing your own weapon arcs, reload times and power.
   
   Graphics and sound are pretty, though certainly not cutting edge. Weapon blasts sound and feel substantial as the screen rocks with incoming attacks, though you are bombarded throughout with inane chat from passing ships which quickly gets tiresome (when will they make a space game without this issue, I ask you?).
   
   The UI is a little awkward in places and tricky to get used to at first (though it's been improved in patches several times now), but these few minor quirks don't stop it from being a solid and enjoyable new space sim with plenty of replay value.… Expand

   • Helpful? 3 of 3 users said Yes.
4. Pandarve

   4

   Starpoint Gemini is a real-time strategy role-playing space-simulator which may seem like a great idea based on what's written and what's being shown on the screenshots but in reality, falls completely short of the mark set by games such as Eve and X. In Starpoint Gemini, you control a single ship where you execute orders on a 2D-plane in real-time with both the mouse and keyboard. You can move left and right, the ship always goes forward unless you lower the speed to zero. You can attack by either clicking the designated icon on the hud or by pressing space. First you have to try and mark a target by right clicking on them. This is more difficult than it sounds because the camera won't move with your ship and you constantly have to readjust to face the enemy that you are trying to track. There does not seem to be a list of objects that are in radar range either, leaving you to look around a lot as if though you're flying a WW2 fighter despite it being a space ship. Weapons have a very narrow line of sight and the enemy likes to circle a lot so you will be flying in circles a lot as well until you get the hang of things and by then, you'll probably have given up on this horrible title. If the simplistic combat doesn't drive you away, the dreadful voice-acting and horrendous writing will completely destroy the immersion for you. Although Russian developers have some great ideas, they are seemingly completely unaware of the fact that if a great story is told bad, it'll be a bad story period. They also seem to believe that the apex of user interfaces was reached somewhere in the mid 00's and they've been stuck there ever since. Starpoint Gemini is a good example of this. Although it aims to explain the user what they're looking at by displaying a pop-up when a player right clicks on the GUI, this behaviour is sporadic and doesn't work on all your ship configuration unless you are docked. So if you forget what a weapon or item does or if you would like to know what kind of equipment the enemy has, you'll have to wait until you're docked again. Docking and travelling anywhere also seems to take an eternity. For some reason, the developers decided to make the map not click-able so finding your bearings is done by watching a little green arrow on the map and clicking somewhere in the direction of where you think the stargate/objective/base might be.The storyline seems promising but it ends after a few missions in the demo and from what I've seen, I'm not impressed enough to consider spending money on the digital equivalent of a drunken sailor's ramblings. Whatever your feelings towards indy developers, try the demo first. Oh, to make matters worse: they disabled the tutorial in the demo. Perhaps the developer should change its name to little grieving men?… Expand

   • Helpful? 5 of 7 users said Yes.

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