Starpoint Gemini Warlords

Starpoint Gemini Warlords

Big fan of space opera, I grew up with games like Tie Fighter, X-Wing Alliance, and especially the great and now almost impossible to find Freelancer. I love games in space with dynamic and epic battles, games that offer furious dogfights where the slightest slackening means death, and I'm still looking for a worthy successor to Freelancer. When Toupilitou offered to put our hands on Starpoint Gemini Warlords, my blood was just a trick and I volunteered.

In Starpoint Gemini Warlords, you are the officer in charge of Concordia Station. You escort the first exit of the Icarus, the largest ship ever built. Unfortunately, the Black Oath group decides to attack and destroy the Icarus. So you're downgraded to the rank of captain of a ridiculous little Gunship, the perfect opportunity to learn flying. After a pair of successful missions, your successor at the Concordia station completely shit and the station is almost destroyed. Here you are restored to your function, in its place, and it will explain how to improve the station and start your takeover of all the known space.

This succession of events, which allows you to have a tutorial on the piloting, the management of the base and your fleets, then the management of your space domain, seems a little forced although it has the merit to give you the keys of the game clearly. This learning phase takes still within three to four hours, and clearly announces you the color: Starpoint Gemini Warlords is a game with a huge lifespan. At the time of writing, I have about thirty hours to my credit, and I have just finished the campaign. Of course, the game does not stop there; I still have 3/4 of the game area to conquer! The fifty hours of play, however, seems to me to be the norm to complete a game.

As for the controls of the ship, the handling is quite difficult at first. I had gone in the direction of driving, aiming, and shooting myself. Honestly, forget. The standard camera angle is quite odd, since the viewing angle at the front of the ship is at the very top of the screen, the other viewing angles (close-up view or FPS) being unplayable. Put your turrets in automatic; they will do the job much better than you. What will make the difference is your placement: orientation of your main shooting batteries, orientation of the ship to present the good shields to enemy fire (those still active), as well as the right activation at the right time of your skills. All of this turns the fighting into something much less nervous and active than one might think at first, for something slower and much more tactical.

There are skills will you tell me? Well yes, the game offers a very nice and classic type RPG system: gain experience to unlock points to spend in skills and talents. You will have the choice between three classes based, as you wish, on short-range attacks, long-range attacks, or the stealth associated with exploiting the weaknesses of enemies. The skills are few (four active, and one passive class). However, many talents exist that, beyond having statistical effects on the development of your empire or in combat, will allow to have additional dialogue options, and therefore peaceful solutions to certain situations. Among the talents are some boarding skills that can only be achieved by capturing and looting enemy ships; practice to improve!

These boarding stages are strongly recommended, because they report, in the choice, resources or money in important quantity, or a vessel for yourself or your fleet. They are played by successions of pieces taken, bunker, infirmary, zone of shield or weapon, then deck of the ship. Just click on retreat (to flee), loot (to steal goods or disable / steal weapons or shields), or advance to continue to the bridge to capture it. These phases are unfortunately located on the lower left of the screen, the same which also serves as radar, and when we move the mouse over, for the distribution of energy between weapons, engine, and shields. This area of the screen becomes totally inaccessible during a collision, and if you have made the choice to put little or no energy in the shields, it will be impossible for you to rebuild your defense.

Your different ships, the size of which can increase as you gain experience (from the rotten Gunship to the Cuirassier, Freelance, and other Titan) must be equipped with light and heavy weapons. You can choose between different turrets (laser, plasma, railgun) and projectiles (missiles, torpedoes) according to your desires: optimize the damage against the shield or the hull. Added to this are various accessories: tractor beam, shield, crew, and even hangar for larger vessels (can take with you up to thirty hunters if the right options are chosen).

Absolutely all these weapons and equipment can receive different improvements to maximize the stats that interest you: rate of fire, accuracy, damage inflicted, chance of criticism, effectiveness of the crew or on-board hunters, addition of radiation or EMP . Really many different possibilities that, combined with the skills, allow to create a custom ship. You will also have the opportunity to build a huge ship, the Proxima, unfortunately not flyable. This big baby will give the opportunity to do planet capture missions. For this, it will clear the area where to bring the Proxima, then protect it while charging its super laser.

When comparing Starpoint Gemini Warlords to its predecessor, Starpoint Gemini 2, there are several improvements: a clearer, clearer interface, a more intuitive circular menu, and more beautiful overall graphics. The game engine and gameplay are still quite similar. Nevertheless, the real big news compared to Starpoint Gemini 2 comes from the strategic aspect; there or in the 2 you only manage your ship, here you will have a base to develop, an area to expand, fleets of ships to build and manage, a search tree to improve both your ship and your abilities, but also the management of your domain.

There are four resources: Credits, Ore, Gas and Building Materials. You will need to exploit them in your environment in several ways: installation for a regular income, extraction by yourself (long and tedious), the sending of civilian fleets (your small workers) on specific missions. These civilian fleets also allow exchanges of resources with your neighbors (if you are on good terms). All this aspect brings the game closer to a 4X without pushing the management too far, and leaving many phases of action. The compromise is fairly well balanced, since you can organize your management phases between your trips.

The difficulty dosage is not always happy. For example, the object destruction missions take you to areas containing fleets to destroy, the latter being particularly strong. To succeed certain missions, you will need a powerful vessel, associated with a consequent fleet. All this will require credits and resources, and win them will be long, especially on the end where the money gain does not track the gain levels, and therefore the vessels that are allowed to buy. A regret also about the meetings (fortunately punctual) of enemies assimilated to heroes who will heal themselves, again, and again, and again, transforming the fights into an endurance event, that you will win by having a larger fleet or a reserve of repair consumables more provided

Graphically the game is quite pretty, offers lots of cool visual effects in the form of laser beams, missiles, explosions, trajectories, asteroid fields or gas. The game engine is very efficient, absolutely no bug to complain in more than thirty hours of games; no slowdowns, even when the screen displays dozens of ships, bases, and asteroids. The physics of the displacements is rather not bad, with progressive acceleration, inertia, maneuverability inversely proportional to the mass of the ship. Only collisions seem a little weird; your ship can hit a base without scratching at full speed, with just a little bounce on the side.

But, fortunately, because the IA of the fleets that accompanies you is stupid, stupid, stupid ... She collides with our ship frequently (but kind really frequently, every ten seconds or so), to the point that to force me back in the vicinity of a planet, I happened to be rushed into its atmosphere with the result of an instant game over. These fleets are still lagging when a threat appears. Strangely, there, they stop getting into you and always arrive late (unlike the cavalry), and sometimes even after the battle or your death.

The music is really nice. The game features twenty fairly ethereal songs, which mix sounds typified synthesizers and sometimes a little rock. The game has a French translation Moreover, the publisher informed us that the French translation had to be improved. There are, however, some shells in this translation; use words that are not necessarily good, some spelling mistakes or typing, but everything is perfectly understandable. We are far from Google trad, and I have seen really worse elsewhere. The French translation is largely good enough to enjoy the game, while the announced improvement will probably lead to a good quality translation.

To answer my question in the introduction, Starpoint Gemini Warlords can not be compared to Freelancer. The game shares a few things in common, especially on controls, but its objectives are quite different: piloting capital ships and not small hunters, crucial strategic aspect, RPG component very present are all differences that make Starpoint Gemini Warlords a unique game of its kind. The game already offers DLCs adding Titans (huge ships), scenarios, factions, including one with an alien race that has come to eradicate humanity (I like the idea well, maybe for a next test).

Starpoint Gemini Warlords offers a unique experience. Once you get started, if you like to grow your empire and conquer neighboring empires, then the game is for you. It presents the defect of its qualities: to conquer a whole space system is long, requires time, money (as well as a good estimate of the risks). You will spend a lot of time there. But the combination of 4X, RPG, and driving is well dosed, making the experience rich and really enjoyable, especially at the price offered which is quite reasonable.