Starpoint Gemini Warlords is a fine title with the occasional rough edge. Solid gameplay, with smooth controls, is hampered by a frustrating camera, but an interesting mix of single-ship combat and 4X civilization management, and great graphics, seal the deal.
So, I am probably the most obsessed person I know when it comes to space games.
From Elite, Descent, X, EvE, Homeworld, SPG 1 & 2, Void Destroyer, Istrolid, Cosmoteer, Elite Dangerous etc etc I have played a LOT of space games. So SPGW was a nice find for me to find considering I found Starpoint gemini 2, mechanically to need a bit of improvement but overall a fun game.
I have to say. Wow.
This game is fantastic! First of all we have some gorgeous art work, universes popping with colour and vibrancy, space dust and asteroids, nebula's and beautiful stars all rendered in 3d spectacuarly. Each ships race have common themes but are unique enough to be identified on sight.
The movement is smooth and the Sub light drive is much faster than SPG 2, with the missions being more interesting and varied. The strategy element of the map mode is intuitive, easy to understand and effective, and finally being able to control large fleets makes this game overshadow its predecessor.
The campaign, of which I am only half way through (That freeroam is just so appealing!) has been great so far, a bit of pacing could be improved but overall a definitive improvement from the last game.
Excluding a quickly fixed memory leak on initial download, the game has been relatively bug free from what I've seen, no crashes or restarts needed as of yet.
Performance is fairly good, it is a bit of a memory eater though so I recommend 16 gig Ram if possible. It's worth it though for those exquisite light shows in the big battles.
Capital ships like Carriers, Dreadnoughts and the newly added Titans are fantastic, with their own unique challenges and skills that make the game more fun.
Over all, a seriously good space game and probably one under-rated by initial main stream critics.
Starpoint Gemini Warlords by LGM
(That title alone if you have heard of LGM says buy me now due to the quality of the Dev Team and their games.)
What a game, What a Dev Team.....
Space gaming RPG/4x/Strategy in space, what's not to like. Little Green Men Games took all the feedback from their past games and moulded this information into what Warlords is today.
And Warlords is one hell ****, You can play for 5 minutes or 5 hours and get somewhere, your not locked into spending 100's of hours to get one thing done, but even a quick play before work/bed or walking the dog you can achieve something in game.
I have been playing the SPG series now since the very first incarnation and LGM have better themselves every time, The game has grown from a core RPG space game to now incorporate 4X elements and quite a lot more strategy to get the job done in game. Kicking off on the campaign you will progress along improving your Headquarters (HQ) and your personal ship(s) along with your civilian and military fleets which can be used to acquire materials for your HQ (Civilian ships) and taking territory to expand your influence on the galaxy with your military fleets.
The game world galaxy is around 10 times bigger then SPG 2, traversing the galaxy you will find AI attempting to conquer other parts of the galaxy and or your regions as well, your able to make alliances with factions, trade negotiations, peace treaties, declare war and so on. There is plenty to keep you busy til rapture.
The difficulty is as easy as you want (Easy Difficulty + Easy Conquest Difficulty) to the complete opposite end of the scale with Extreme (Extreme Difficulty + Extreme Conquest - Makes for a very intense game indeed, My personal favorite tier to play on). So the game can cater for every type of player of every age.
So if you are from the Freelancer days of space gaming, or a single player Eve lite, then Warlords is what you looking for, some even say its a Mount and Blade in space. I can say to you this game you will enjoy, and its backed up by the Developers being on the Steam forums daily answering posts and so on.
I look forward to seeing the DLC in the future for Warlords, cause it will only get better still.
Buy this game today!
There are some pretty serious issues with Warlords that really cannot be overlooked. That is not to say there is not a wonderful experience to be had because there is, but it is a case of fully understanding what you are getting into. This will not be a walk in the park, it’s a serious time investment that will become frustrating at some point along the way. Once you get past the obvious issues, underneath the ugly cover is a game that gives you the freedom and space to do what you want. It’s a title that can be engrossing and fun that will literally eat hours of your life away instantly. Hopefully in time some of the smaller issues, like the bugs and UI issues can be patched but I would really like to see a rework of the controls.
Starpoint Gemini Warlords is fun but also looks "incomplete" when we face combat. A good 4X experience full of details and options, and with a very positive technical aspect.
Ambitious, but unfortunately falls under the weight of those ambitions. Trying to juggle too many things, there’s a decent game here, it’s just hidden under awkward controls, a restrictive camera and the need to vomit. Also the names kind of dumb.
To be honest, in overall quality I'd give this 9/10, but I'll go with 10 because of fanatical dev team. Steam forums are full of them, they answer ALL threads within minutes and try to get feedback from every single player. That is nothing less than admirable for todays standards. And you can recognize what players asked for in many updates.
I was already lured to this series by previous Starpoint Gemini 2, and then noticed they actually gave that game for free for 48 hrs before Warlords were released.
Now, on to real review: this is freaking huge game. Open world is crazy big, there are dozens of factions, dozens of ship types, dozens of stations and planets. And gameplay is best part of everything. You get to use big capital ship in real time simulation combat, like Star Destroyers from SW, but when you achieve government of your state and borders, you get access to more deep gameplay - almost strategical. YOu can make many fleets, send them to conquer, attack, pillage, conquer. But at any time you can take your own ship and join every fleet in direct combat. Freaking awesome!
Highlight of combat - mega weapon platform Proxima used to punch holes in rebelious planet. Very nice touch!
Overall, in simple categories I would say:
Gameplay - fantastic and very unique combination. Like few games in one
Graphics - very good, atmosphere is much better than anything else. Reminds of Freelancer
Sound - Sound is pretty good, soundtrack is brilliant
Difficulty - if you advance carefully in skills, ship class and global movements, not a problem. Don't rush or you will be sorry
Technical quality of product - Except smaller bugs haven't encountered anything serious. Patches are coming frequently
Verdict - whoever likes space games, trust me, you gotta try this! So many stuff, so many variety in gameplay, so much everything in a game so little known
According to the media, this dev team apparently invaded my town. I actually hoped that was true because they would bring an awesome game along with them! Warlords is pretty much a Freelancer focused on capital ships with a Mount&Blade layer on top, all of which plays out on a giant, seamless and beautiful game world. Of course it has it's teething problems but the dev is so active in taking in feedback and refining it more. My only negative would be the short view distance, which kinda kills immersion. The biggest significance this game bear is that it not only brings innovation to the space sim genre but, it also brings the dormant offline space sim genre back to life.
I really tried to like this game. It took a while to get used to certain design decisions and see them as part of the challenge, and on Normal the gameplay was so simple, I see why some said it requires no tactics whatsoever.
It starts off with a decent intro. You control a frigate (medium-small ship) in the prologue. Has a good tutorial that guides you through things. The voice-over and character headshots are pretty nice. It lacks any 3D rendered characters, which is a tiny bit of a letdown.
It is truly 3D - which is something many space games simplify one way or another.
After a short prologue you get to create your character. The number of classes (3) and perks each of them gets is very manageable yet meaningful. Leaves a hope that all 3 classes are reasonably balanced.
Then you get your first simple gunship. Getting better ships requires a grind of "freelance" missions, although one can get pretty far on very basic ships - storyline missions are very simple. The storyline introduces you to major game mechanics from basic ship controls, to upgrading ships, to deploying troops, to eventually building space stations and fleets.
Now, the combat - it is very micro-heavy. Even on larger ships you'll be dogfighting with pew-pew lazerzzz shooting out of every turret of which there is up to like a two dozen, and spamming missiles like every 4-5 sec - from each side! Then rotate ship, and spam missiles from other side.
There are 7 different combat ship classes, several models in each class, but they are a linear progression from small to large, without any meaningful differences in tactics. I.e. a Corvette is about 1.5 - 2 times more powerful than a Gunship, while 2-2.5 times more expensive. A Frigate is to a Corvette as a Corvette to Gunship. Ditto for Destroyer vs. Frigate (well OK Destroyers gain a drone bay and as such - rudimentary carrier capabilities), or Cruiser vs Destroyer. They all use the exact same turrets, just bigger ships have more of them! Holds true in fleetbuilding - you can build one Frigate or 2 Corvettes or 4 Gunships - they all are generic combat ships.
The UI makes it a bit tricky to estimate incoming DPS or notice when your ship starts to take hull damage. Most of the times I get killed because I didn't notice that shields were done.
The "freelance" missions are rather repetitive. On "Extreme" difficulty - the basic ones take on average about 3 minutes to complete. After a while you can choose the advanced versions which pay about 3x more, and do pose a challenge to your micro skills and ship upgrades - meaning you will get killed if you screw up or use a severely under-equipped ship. But these missions are the most efficient way to make money in this game, so you'll be inclined to grind them.
Does it matter whether you spend 100k or 25 million credits on equipment you put on your ship? Only for the side missions and random pirate encounters. The main story quests are so darn simple that I can't even... Maybe they will get more complex eventually. But so far the main story is just that - a story! It's OK so far (I'm about 12 hours in). There are various characters (represented by a headshot pic and dialogue trees). It's linearly scripted, and sort of disconnected from what you do in all the randomly generated side/freelance missions, as if it happens in a "parallel world".
There is no way to "lose" in the campaign / story.
Basically, you can screw the RPG / ship progression / empire building part and play the storyline, in a scrappy Corvette w/o any upgrades - OR ignore the story missions, research/build supercapital ships, and build your empire.
The space itself seems like a crowded junkyard where you can't fly for 10 seconds - without bumping into - sometimes literally - some anomaly, cargo container, random spawn enemies, allies, neutrals, gas cloud, asteroids, nebulae, shipwrecks, hazard zone, perk container or something else.
To give it some credit - the amount of random things you can bump into is impressive, so is the tech, research trees. The devs didn't even bother to put any 2D icon on research items or equipment so it's just a line of text saying i.e. "Artemis III - a 50% damage bonus to Light Turrets". Quite easy to churn out ~200 of such items and keep the mouse spinning the wheel for a while to buy them all. Given the lack of variety in combat, all of these upgrades boil down to a straightforward "+X% on damage, range, shield capacity, speed, maneuverability", etc. Ok there's a "Blink" device to research who's description says "It's creator swears it works". I will surely test that! :-D
If you "free roam" you can find enemies who whoop your ass quickly - and give a reason to upgrade your ship, actually learn some dogfight tactics and/or gather a support fleet.
I'll stick around because the storyline has some intrigue, ships are pretty. And because Tara Higgs :-
Very well polished game. I only had two crash to desktops in my over a dozen hours of playing this game and I suspect it was something on my end. It's good, but I hesitate to call it great for the simple reason that it lacks difficulty entirely. The AI is so stupid that there is no point in playing conquest whatsoever, it's just a slog.
The best comparison I can think of is when you're playing a turn based strategy game like Civilization and have reached the point where you know you're going to win - but it's going to take another hundred turns. I reached that point in Warlords approximately one hour into conquest mode.
It's a well made, well thought out game that I simply didn't find very fun at all. A simple change where the AI figures out you're a warmongering jerk and bands against you would have made this game ten times better.
I'll be brief since you got **** to do today.
- The gameplay is weak and there are no real tactical options. It feels like any of the other thousands of games out there where you don't get the feeling of flying a ship or an actual entity, but a brown cube shooting other brown cubes on auto-attack.
- Camera control is needlessly complex with over-lapping toggling systems leading to a frustrating experience even moving and looking around. Firing is also hampered by having missed the use of 'soft' targeting..
- The art direction is poor, not having solved the conundrum which is having dark ships/items on a black space background. Some ship designs look need and it has a gorgeous ship customisation system, but you will rarely get to see it actually looking beautiful. All the screenshots on their website are bullshotted.
- The missions ended up feeling repetitive within the first two hours, and the encounters ranged from silly-easy to extraordinarily hard with no real midground to them.
- There are 4X elements but they generally come in too late in the game to actually matter and at that point you still need to fly your ship which i mentioned before is not really a pleasant experience.
End all, it's not a horrid mess, it works well as a technical product, it just doesn't play well.
SummaryA blend of space sim, RPG and 4X games. Conduct research and construction in your own gigantic space station, command your war fleets and heroic companions to invade enemy territory, build up your stronghold, trade, mine, salvage and remind your enemies why they fear you.