izigame.me

TL;DR: Do you play eve online? X3/X4? Starsector? Rogue Squadron? Ace Combat? War Thunder? Do you like space operas like star wars or mass effect? Then, get this game. Simple as, lads.
-here comes the walls of text-
I don't know if I can properly encapsulate everything I love about this game concisely, but the ability to craft a railgun that can hit targets 4.5 Kilometers away is priceless. I prefer fighting my enemies from a distance. Y'know why? If you're 3-4 kilometers away, next to no enemies have the ability to hit back. I'm playing with keyboard and mouse, and aside from a slightly too twitchy mouse that makes railgun sniping a little difficult at times, space combat is pretty enjoyable. The game is kind enough to compensate and say if the crosshairs were near enough, that it'll be considered a hit.... but sometimes, this is inconsistent, and the game will demand pixel perfect aiming. That's fine, I like a challenge.
Sometimes, the game throws you into ambushes where the bad guys are practically on top of you, and you'll have 4-5 enemies trying to dump damage on you. Pick a direction and use your boost to GTFO. You'll learn very quickly to avoid dog fights in which you're outnumbered, because once your shields get popped, 5-10 seconds of sustained fire will have you reloading a checkpoint. but occasionally you're forced into close combat with some enemies -- outlaw tormentors, scouts, and proto-scouts are a prime example. If you're a twitchy aimer like me, I recommend finding or crafting a Thermal gun to use when you're forced into close combat. The heat seeking rounds let you focus on evading enemies while piling on damage. Just wait until later in the game when you start to get percent chance to debuff on hit items. The thermal gun might not do a ton of damage, but you fire fast enough to where the debuffs are going to stick a lot quicker.
Also, thermal guns make fights against Guardians much easier. Oh, teleporting around are ye? Look at how many fucks I give as my thermal gun melts you.
Wait until you hit level 20+ and you start getting access to rare and star-forged weapons and ship enhancements. I'm still flying the base fighter from the start of the game, and I have the ability to temporarily break enemy shields, occasionally web the target (rooting them in place for 3 seconds) and the possibility to disable their weapons on hit.
The star map items you can use to fight enemies in 'dangerous territories' offers a degree of challenge to your fights, and offers increased rewards based on the difficulty. All of these fights have you fight against waves of enemy ships until eventually an enemy flagship spawns in (along with a few elite fighters 6-8 kilometers away, that will occasionally hound you). The only thing that sucks about these events is that none of the enemy kills drop loot. You get your loot from the flagship at the end of the raid, so if you die, or you manage to get a raid with nearly impossible survival parameters, you're kinda out of luck. One time at level 19, I got a raid to face off against level 21-23 enemies. Oh, and they all had health regen. Including the flagship. Not fun.
The crew members you meet will offer you a lot of interesting perks, provided you have the materials to craft for them. Yes, this game is a bit of a collect-a-thon. You need mainframe parts for ship specialization, you need to disassemble weapons to get parts to build your own, you need resources from raiding enemy pirate bases as well as resources from mining to create components for upgrades, you need blueprints from fighting elites and doing raids to build new equipment and catalysts (special items you can use to modify your ship equipment) and you need money to get things from traders -- including new ships. The low-tier ships are relatively cheap and let you try out alternate playstyles...
- Even lighter fighters that trade armor and shields for speed
- Bombers that let you use energy as a resource for secondary weapons (rockets, etc), as well as using boost energy for weapons
- Heavy gunners that have four weapon mountpoints for double the fire (and energy draw)
- one of the ship classes can resurrect enemy ships and use them as drone fighters for an interesting twist
- And then there are fighter-style craft that are kind of multi-role. Not terribly heavy, not very light. Similar to the default ship.
So... your choices amount to go fast and avoid fire, hit really hard, and move like a donkey, or the middle ground. However, all ships have special abilities, ultimate attacks, and passive bonuses. I'm still in the process of saving up for the pink/rare-tier ships that range anywhere from 280,000 to over 400,000 credits (the heavy duty bomber with quad weapon hardpoints is insanely expensive.)
Once you hit your low to mid 20s and make it to the Khait nebula, if you have the will to sell Rare-tier weapons along with everything else the enemies out there drop, you can make really good money. The zealots spawn in constantly. You can't ever "clear" a map, they keep coming back. Which... can be annoying if you're trying to 100% clear a zone and solve all the puzzles. But those enemies have a good chance to drop rare resources, or pretty decent weapons and ship tech that can sell pretty decently.
There are plenty of side missions that range from: destroy a , , . These are all in addition to the main questline. and the "dangerous area" raids I mentioned earlier. On top of all that, occasionally when flying between locations, you'll get "strange signals" or "distress beacons" you can navigate to on your way to a place. These will spawn random events where you can , , , , , , etc. Oh, and then there is the 'citizens of velocity' race challenges. I'm absolutely terrible at controlling my ship, so I've avoided the races entirely. I find them to be extremely challenging. The repeatable quests from certain places and factions earn you money, experience and reputation. As you level up rep, you just get more money, experience, reputation, and items from doing missions, as well as a one-time level up bonus set of items to claim.
Finally, let's jump back to ship customization. The way this game handles custimization is... unique. You have to fight enemies to unlock paint colors. These paint colors unlock for tinting the cockpit glass, the emissive lights on the ship, as well as primary, secondary and tertiary ship body colors. You can choose between matte and metallic paint, and even adjust the paint glass, and add unlockable, customizable ship decals. You can also unlock alternate appearances/parts of the space craft, such as the wings, the thrusters, the nose, etc.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention: This game features a basic starsector-like economy system. Buy low from one place, sell high to another place.
There's no shortage for things to do. I bought this game about a week ago, and I've been playing it every night for hours ever since, and from what I can tell, there are at least two more companions to get on my team, and at least one more galaxy left to unlock.
Still on the fence? There is zero DLC or in-game purchases for this game. All of the unlockables are available in-game. There is no money store. Not to mention, the game is still being actively supported by its devs. They posted a new patch update about a week before I purchased the game. The game launched in 2021, and they're still supporting it. Its refreshing to see.