Exciting journeys across the universe from planet to planet, memorable battles with various enemies, an exciting search for various artifacts… This is how I imagined Starbound when I saw that the game had moved to version 1.0, were my expectations met??
Storyline
The plot of the game is extremely simple, and it can be described like this: An ancient evil has awakened and threatens the universe -> We are the only chosen ones who can resist it -> We come running and win. There won’t be any unexpected turns, and one can exclaim that the plot is worn out and primitive in the 21st century, but is this bad for Starbound?? In the same Terraria there is no plot at all, and this does not prevent it from being a good game; for example, you can also cite Minecraft, it also has no plot line. In such sandboxes, we explore the world and find ourselves in various situations, improve the character and fight enemies, and this is more than enough to enjoy the game, for this genre the plot, oddly enough, is secondary, and this is normal in this situation, so any storyline can in any case be considered a plus for the game, it does not harm it.
About the villain – At the beginning of the game, he (Next: the Destroyer) awakens and destroys the entire planet and we are the only ones who were able to escape from the dying Earth. The Destroyer himself is a bunch of tentacles/eyes the size of a planet, like an ancient god from WoW for example. Later, having learned about our purpose, I was perplexed as to how to defeat him? This is the whole planet! But when I reached it and won, I was at a loss – And that’s all? The God-like Overseer (Oh yes, this is the one who ruled everything in the universe and opposed the Destroyer, later imprisoning him and dying after that) lost to him? Overall, the final battle didn’t live up to expectations.
About partners – As we progress through the adventure, we will be joined by various representatives of races who, while in the camp, can treat us, sell things and give us tasks. And here I have a small complaint – These characters are not revealed in any way, because.To. after short missions where we intersect with them, they no longer show themselves, you can’t even talk to your newly made “friends”, they mostly give out only 1 phrase, and in subsequent tasks they do not take any part and we do not learn anything new about them. As I understand it, they were added for show.
The lore of the rest of the world is presented only in the form of books that we can find in various corners of the vast universe. You can’t really talk to NPCs on planets, so you can’t learn anything from them about the situation around them.
Overall, don’t expect anything special from Starbound’s https://rubyslotscasino.co.uk/games/ plot.
Visual component
Preferences in graphics are a personal matter for everyone, but as for me, here it is at a good pixel level. The landscapes in the game are varied and very beautiful: Dense jungles, deserts, icy expanses, lifeless satellites of planets, post-apocalypse (I was most impressed by this), trees with huge eyes instead of leaves and much more. There are also various buildings in the game, such as Kluex temples or abandoned Apex laboratories, each of them has its own atmosphere and surroundings. But there are very few memorable monsters in the game; they are all drawn quite simply. In my opinion, there are also not enough objects in space itself, abandoned starships, some bases (Like in Space Rangers), black holes, etc.d.
I think I have nothing more to add, the graphics are nice, there are no particular complaints about it.
So we got to the main block itself. I’ll start with the fact that the game has huge potential, but… it doesn’t really develop at all. I consider the main feature of the game, its heart, to be the procedural generation of planets, which in theory would provide high replayability and always new interesting adventures. But what’s really going on? The planets are varied in appearance, but their content suffers greatly. Quite quickly, the exploration of new lands ceases to please, since it does not bring anything new, for example: So we descend to the surface from our spaceship and begin to slowly run and look for something, at the top we can find someone’s settlement, but there will be nothing interesting from the loot, almost nothing falls from the monsters either, and we begin to study the bowels of the earth, we can dig up minerals in the form of iron or gold, sometimes we find chests, but you can hardly expect anything impressive in them; for example, I was able to find only a couple of more or less cool swords and one grenade launcher during the entire passage. And so from planet to planet – You run and rob settlements (the residents here don’t care), replenishing the supply of modules, then you can find some bunker and hope that there will be something cool in the chests. There is nothing interesting in the center of the planet either, just magma and fragments of the core… What I want to say is that there is very little content for the planets, there are many of them different in appearance, but they are all the same inside.
As a result, digging in the ground does not bring anything interesting, but we managed to dig up useful resources, we go to the ship and do cool things ourselves! Let’s make armor, t.To. she is not loot in the game, and that’s what we see? All armor is of the same type and gives only a bonus to the main parameters, there are no additional effects, and the final armor, which supposedly has a division into classes, is no different from each other, their effectiveness is the same, there is nothing that separates one type of armor from another, as was the case in Terraria for example.
Apart from the armor and the back module, we can’t wear anything else, I mean that in the game there is no semblance of artifacts, like in Terraria, it was fun to search and create various arts, you could put on your unique combination of artifacts and further diversify the gameplay for your hero and improve your playing style. As a result, we can only wear uninteresting armor without effects and a dorsal module, variety.
Now let’s talk about the types of planets, an interesting idea, but not implemented in any way. The planets are divided into radioactive/ice/fire, there are also moderate/calm ones, but they are without any special features. When you get to such a planet, you get a debuff in the form of damage per second, and that’s all that happens. This debuff disappears when wearing a back module, which completely kills possible planet highlights. Pumped the module to the maximum and you don’t care what planet is in front of you. Here it is necessary to mention that in the early versions there was a temperature scale on the ice planet, you were constantly freezing and you had to often light fires so as not to freeze, and this was interesting, it added hardcore, it became not so easy to explore the planet, because you no longer run headlong. At the moment this whole concept is meaningless and uninteresting, the difference between the planets is only visual.
Enough about research, time to fight! What do we have here? Various weapons, from daggers to rocket launchers, and I have no complaints about them, unlike armor. We can be a warrior with a two-handed weapon, or with a sword and shield, or with two swords at once, or we can be a shooter with a machine gun, a pistol, a sniper rifle or a rocket launcher, or maybe you want to be a magician? (Yes, there is magic here). Weapons have alternative attacks and this brings significant variety to the gameplay, for example, with a hammer you can powerfully hit the ground from the air and create a shock wave, with a spear you can rotate around yourself and fight off all flanks at once, a sniper rifle can home in on the enemy, and these are just some examples.
Such weapons need to be tested on someone, and for this we have monsters, they are divided into peaceful, neutral and aggressive. And again I’m somehow disappointed, t.To. There are only a few types of enemies and they do not have impressive abilities. The first type of enemy is a ground-based long-range one, stands and spits something at us, the second type is a ground-based close-range one, usually trying to ram, and the last type is a flying one, the same short-range one but can move through the air. And as I already said, they have no abilities, so fights with them are very boring. The situation with the bosses is better, they have different attacks and even battle phases, but it seems to me that there is still no “challenge”, because.To. they are completed quite simply and mostly on the first try. All available bosses are plot-based and there are few of them; outside the plot, when traveling around the universe, we will no longer meet any big and evil monsters.
Now let’s put our “wunderwaffle” on a beautiful shelf and talk about more peaceful things. As in any similar sandbox, we can build and craft, and also make vegetable gardens, but first things first. There are enough different interior items and blocks in Starbound, so you can build any house to suit every taste, fortunately there are a lot of different decorations. But building a house in the game is not necessary, as it seems to me, because.To. we always have our spaceship at hand, where we can live. There is nothing to say about the crafting system, we have seen this in other games. There is also one element of survival in the game – hunger. It would seem good, it should bring a little hardcore to the gameplay, but… you can get pockets full of this food by running around the planet and forget about hunger for a long time, and in the middle of the game you can buy canned food and not worry at all, so the hunger system here is questionable and a variety of food is only needed for small buffs. And the gardens here are essentially just for beauty, but if you are interested in growing various overseas fruits/vegetables, go for it.
We explored, fought, grew potatoes, went through the storyline in the end, what else can you do in this universe??…Nothing else really. By the end of the game we will have better armor, good weapons, enough resources and a personal poptop, but after the death of the Destroyer there is nowhere to develop further. All that remains is to read the codes and put the game aside until better times.
Last word
The game has interesting ideas, but they are not implemented at all. There is little content, the feeling that the developers are not busy with the game but with “features” for the game. It’s interesting to play only until you complete the storyline, after that there’s nothing to do. Like I said, the game has a lot of potential to be a great game, but while I liked the game, it’s fair to call it mediocre. And stopgame is a bunch of fagots.