Recent reviews by TheSting

IM DOING MY PART

SW: Squadrons is one of the few games I have ever pre-ordered on steam. The trailer's and PR posts showed this game off perfectly well, and the game lives up well to my expectations. Its fun, its graphically impressive and it really brings a unique experience to the Star Wars gaming scene. There will be spoilers in this review (not in the TL;DR Section).

Pros
-Environment and Ship graphics are incredible and beautiful
-Sound design is pretty much perfect, both for ambience and competitive play. Music is obviously amazing
-Ships feel well weighted in terms of mobility and speed
-Customization is extensive for each ship class
-Story is a great bridger between Return of the Jedi and the Aftermath book trilogy
-Fleet battles is one of the most fun modes i have ever played in a Star Wars game
-An Excellent sandbox "Practise" mode for training maneuvers against squadrons and capital ships alike
-Player customization offers a great amount of possible diversity
-LGBT+ Representation (to some degree)
Cons
-Controls for flight feel off for me personally. I'm more used to Ace Combat 7's "Expert" control method, where the mouse acts more as a joystick than a cursor, but this is more down to my personal preference
-Character models feel like a downgrade from EA's SWBF2
-Customization of the player's face feels incredibly lack luster. There are only 10 preset faces for each character and 2 body types
-Lack of option to change crosshair/cursor colour combinations.
-Lots of technical issues involving locked framerates, matchmaking not working
-Not a lot of content in Multiplayer, 2 modes and 6 maps for Player vs Player
-NO PRIVATE MATCHES?!??!?!?!?!!?

OVERALL SCORE: 7/10
This game in its current state is fun and somewhat polished, but needs more content and customization (player and controls) for it to truly become a good all around game

SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT

Story & Campaign

The Campaign for SW:S is centred around "Project: Starhawk", a New Republic superweapon of sorts. You follow 1 squadron from each faction, Vangaurd and Titan squadrons for the NR and Empire respectively. This in itself is a positive. Having a campaign that allows you to see both sides of a story is something that should be done more in Campaigns, especially Star Wars games (take notes DICE).

The missions are well written, designed and executed without exception. However, the voice acting in the "Hanger" sections before each mission (excluding breifings) seems incredibly tacked on and low effort compared to the rest of the dialogue. Nonetheless, there are some neat references to other pieces of Star Wars lore in these sections of optional dialogue, such as Alphabet Squadron in the NR hanger and the 181st Wing in the Empire hanger.

The Campaign also helps you with getting better as a player. It gives you opportunities to fly all the classes of ship, and makes it clear what each class is best at. You are also able to use some modules that would require playtime in Multiplayer to use otherwise, presenting you with unlocks to aim at obtaining for when you eventually try Multiplayer.

There is also a neat bit of LGBT+ Representation in a bit of side dialogue, where Grey, the leader of Titan Squadron, gives a casual mention of his Husband to one of your wingmen and wanting to retire "by the water" after the war is over.

The "Commanders" of your squadrons have very likeable and well written characteristics, however the members of your squadron feel a bit shallow. The 2 characters i feel stand out the most in terms of being well presented and with actually interesting stories to tell are Shen and Grace Seinar, Imperial and NR respectively.
For the sake of your sanity, avoid talking to the Imperial character Sol, i had my fill of talking about Senates after Episode 1.

Also the sounds are just incredible, both in gameplay and in cutscenes.

Graphics

SW:S is a beautiful game to play. The skyboxes look realistic and yet, have that unique Star Wars touch to them that makes you feel like you're in the movies. The cockpit interiors are incredibly well designed, nearly everything that you see has some form of practical use and looks like it could have been 3D scanned from a real life prop.

The characters, however, are a different story. Skin looks downright awful and the hair on humans just looks... wrong.

Basic Gameplay Principles

SW:S certainly falls into the MOBA style of games based off of its ship class system alone. Each class has its own purpose and is very easily identifiable even to new players. Fighters are jack of all trades, meaning they can fill most roles, but not to the same extent as the more specialised classes. Interceptors are purpose built hunters meant for speedily destroying key enemy strikecraft. Bombers are devastating to slow moving or stationary targets and Support ships are the only class that can equip modules to heal teammates. The distinctions between classes feel well defined and balanced.

Another key gameplay element of SW:S is the power management system. This allows players to direct power to mobility, weapons or shields for ships that have them. This is an incredibly well designed system, and offers so many possibilities for the meta of the competitive side of the Multiplayer.

A more advanced element is the movement method of "Drifting". It is incredibly fun to pull off, especially in interceptors when an enemy is behind you.

All in all, the gameplay at its core is fun and engaging, while also offering a substantial challenge at high difficulties in the Campaign and in high level Multiplayer

Multiplayer

SW:S Multiplayer is a well balanced mix of lore friendly features mixed with game balance focused features. For example, all Shielded ship types have the ability to redirect shields to full front, full back or balanced, while all non-shielded ship types are capable of giving emergency power to one of their 2 weapon systems. It makes Tie fighters feel somewhat equal to their X-wing counterparts for example.

There are only 2 modes and 6 maps for player vs player content, which feels really underwhelming. However, the content we do have feels polished and for the most part, balanced. Dogfight mode is your bog standard 5v5 team deathmatch mode. Nothing of note, but the raw gameplay is fun, so this is forgiveable. Fleet Battles is an incredibly fun MOBA style mode. It plays out like a tug of war and is 100% a way to get adrenaline pumping. The possibilities when it comes to high level player really excite me.

The class based balancing of the different ships certainly adds to this. The different combinations of classes a team could come up that would be viable, combined with the depth of ship module customization means there are probably no limits as to what strategies a team could employ. Word of advice, always have 1 support player. it helps. a lot

Tech Issues

I personally have not encountered many bugs, but i cant ignore what my friends have told me, and what i've seen on forums.

There are crashes. There are matchmaking issues. But these are expected on the release of a new game that is as high profile as SW:S. It happens with every game but more so in big releases such as this. Give it a month, and i expect most of these issues will be fixed

I did encounter a bug in the Fleet Battles Tutorial. If you destroy the Shield Generator before the Power System on the enemy capital ship (which isnt what the tutorial tells you to do but screw it i hate shields), the power system objective bugs out and keeps the star destroyer at 1% health forever

SEE TOP FOR OVERALL RATING

Fortnite but its actually good

Mods are the only thing keeping this game alive

This game is really fun. the population count has plumetted but event against bots this game is fun.
The Graphics are a middle ground between potato and ultra PC but thats all you need. the focus of this game right now is to improve the gameplay

The gameplay is ur typical flight arena shooter, much like War Thunder or Star Conflict but on a far superior engine and with a lot more potential graphically and gameplay speaking

This for me right now is a 6.5/10

I recommend u pick this up and help the developer out with feedback, thats the only way this can become a good game

To this day, SOASE:R is one of if not the best Sci Fi RTS games on the market. its scale is only rivalled by that of Stellaris, but that game lacks the polish and combat depth of SOASE:R. I'll just call it Sins from here on.

PROS:
-Graphics are excellent, the textures on planets and vessels are not poor quality at all, and the particle effects look amazing
-Runs really well, even on max settings. on my 840M GTX card, i can very easily get 60 fps with fully maxed settings, something i cant say for a few other strategy titles.
-Combat is totally under your control. Every ship and every planetary defence cannon is at your command. this definitely adds a steep learning curve, as you will take time to master certain strategies and fleet compositions. Strategy also applies to the economy of your empire, managing that properly is paramount to victory.
-Decent AI Opponents. The AI in this game isnt flawless, but by all means its excellent for what it does. even on normal, you will find yourself challenged for control of your home system.
CONS:
-DLC. although the content of the DLCs are fun, locking content behind a paywall is something im fundementally against. for a game such as this though, the DLCs are worth it, but only on sale
-Late Game Performance. as with every large scale RTS, Sins suffers from late game performance issues. this means that the longer the game goes on for the slower the game will run. the effect of this can be reduced by playing against less AI or playing on a multiplayer game hosted by another player with a more powerful machine than your own. it is somewhat unavoidable in the modern age of gaming, but this is a pretty old game on a pretty old engine, i wouldnt be surprised if its already been pushed to its limits performance speaking

TL;DR great game if you like RTS, worth it even at full price (not including DLCs)

An excelent game, similar to the old battlefield games, 1942, 2142 and 2. its cartoony appearance shouldnt push u away, it actually fits believe it or not, and with mods it doesnt look half bad.

The base game is rather bland in terms of weapon variety, but the workshop is full of fun and realistic weapons. the base maps are very well made, but there arent many of them.

keep in mind this game is made by a single human being, so development is going to be slow. but in its current state the game is rather bug free, at least from what i've seen.

one problem lower end gamers will face is large numbers of bots. because the game runs of of ur PC and not a server, ur PC WILL lag if u dont have powerful enough specs. i recommend starting off with 16 bots in 1 game, and seeing how far u can go up before ur FPS starts to become unplayable (or noticibly lower)

over all a 9/10 super fun, great pass time and great shooting mechanics

EDIT:

the recent spree of updates have rly improved the flow and gameplay of the game. totally worth its price

A good pass time. quite simple once u understand the basics. decent graphics. consistant frame rates on a medicore laptop. great modding community.

WATCH OUT FOR THOSE WRIST ROCKETS

Let me start of by saying this, Stellaris is the first of this style of RTS that i have played, so this i coming from a new player's perspective.

Lets start with the good things

First off, the art style is beautiful. The game has a very realistic and yet diverse colour palet for ships, planets and stars. The graphics (who cares) are very nice too, and are very well optimized so in large space battles you will not lag so much.

Secondly, the ship design mechanic is... well to put it simply, the best of its kind ever implemented into an RTS. It allows for FULL customization to YOUR style of play, which for me is hit hard and fast, and dodge the big shots. Though more experienced players may disagree with me, i think the weapons are very well balanced, each type of weapon serving a very specific role on a ship, and that ship serving a role in an entire fleet.

Also, the more advanced mechanics like diplomacy, genetics, population ethics and empire creation, are f***ing glorious. The new mechanics introduced with the most recent patch and DLC have added SO much to the games total content. i won't go more in depth cos it would spoil a few things ;)

No game is perfect however

First off, the AI. I find myself looking at planets i took from the AI in a war that have about 5 or 6 populations unemployed. this is so stupid. sometimes populations may even be starving in AI empires.

Secondly, the early game is rather dull. its essentially, "Go survey there, research this and that, oh maybe i should colonise". I sometimes lose interest in games that start off VERY dull, such as games i start in a system where there is not any minerals... by far the biggest troll ever. The early-mid to mid-late game periods are very fun. you get interesting techs, fight wars and make other empires your subjects. Such tyranny, Much fun

overall, Stellaris is a very fun RTS that has a noticable learning curve. If you ask me, the price tag is a little high, considering most of the interesting content is locked behind DLC, but it is very much worth it when you start using mods. the workshop opens up entirely new ways to play. These can be Total Conversions, bug fixs made by independant modders or even mini expansions (Alpha Mod is the prime example of an excelent expansion-style mod)

Per Ardva Ad Astra