I've played it for a while. It's a very different game from SPAZ1, and Starsector for that matter. The best way I can think of to explain it is that SPAZ1 and Starsector are like WW2 battleships in space, but SPAZ2 is like the Age of Sail in space. The biggest change piloting-wise is that you can't turn into a direction without starting to move in that direction, or at least I haven't found a way to do so. So you can't fly backwards while shooting, etc. It feels a lot like you're steering a wooden boat propelled by sails and oarmen. The way the ships bank into turns instead of just spinning in place also sells the Ye Olde Timeye Boates feel. The old top-down view still exists, but I never found it very helpful. The ships control totally differently, and the third-person viewpoint makes steering a lot more intuitive. The only thing I used the top-down view for was snapping blown-off ship bits back on mid-combat. Oh, your ship parts can get blown off in-combat, and you can knock ship parts off other ships in combat, either by shooting them off or by ramming the other ship with your ship.
The ship system has also been totally changed. Instead of having standardized hulls with turret slots, like Starsector, you basically build a ship out of snap-together legos. The legos are randomized sort of like ARPG loot. Weapons are built into the legos and cannot be swapped out, so if you've got a lego with really good stats but it's got a weapon you hate you can't replace the weapon. The skill tree elements have been almost entirely minimized; you choose one of three random perks on level up, e.g. +20% weapon damage, + 20% shield strength, +10% trading efficiency. The randomization really doesn't matter in the long term, because there's a limited pool of perks and it just pulls 3 perks from that pool, and the one you choose doesn't get put back in the pool. Sort of like a bag of numbered chips from 1 to 45; you pick 3 random ones from the bag, put 1 on your character, put the 2 others back in the bag. Next level, draw 3 chips from the 44 left in the bag, pick 1, put 2 back. Every level 45 character will be exactly the same, you just get the perks at different times. You can still level up beyond 45, you just start over with a fresh bag of perk chips. I understand why they did that, the old skill tree where you specialize in certain weapon types would have been completely at odds with the randomized lego bits, because it would mean you were completely unable to use most of the loot. But it's just another departure from the RPG style of space game towards an ARPG style space game, sort of like Diablo or Borderlands.
There's a sector map, which is the most important part of the game and also gives context to the combat. The sector map is how you get the resources you need to buy the legos, which are what you need to kill the enemy ships. There's a faction system, which is how you get a lot of resources, which is how you get the really good legos, which is how you kill the really strong enemy ships. It's not very complicated; you get more stuff, which lets you kill more ships, which gets you more levels, which lets you kill more ships, which gives you more stuff. Later on you can start your own faction and tax other people, which gets you more stuff, which lets you kill more ships, etc. The combat is solid and the sector map does a good job of getting you back into the combat while also giving you short breaks between fights.
It's a good game and I've enjoyed the dozen hours or so I've spent with it. But it's very different from both SPAZ1 and Starsector.
Author
Topic: SPAZ 2 single player hitting May 19th, 2016. At last. (Read 18592 times)