Nylige anmeldelser av Mustache Samurai

It looks like Star Control, but it falls flat in a few very important ways:
First is the combat. With the ships of your allies as well as the crashed ones scattered around, the best tactic will always be: run away and leave traps. The first two races you are likely to ally with both have this tactic and it doesn't get much better. This can cause the battles to drag on, which the developers seemed to know because there's a built in deathwall that shrinks the battle area until you're forced into close quarters with the other ship. The original Star Control II also started you out with weak ships like the Zotfotpik one, but as you progressed in the story you gained access to better ships. In Origins, there was never anything that made me shy away from the first few ships with the run-away-set-traps tactics. I tried to let the AI take over as I assumed it could at least aim better than me, but that takes a slot up in your flagship, doesn't allow you to pick which ship is headed into combat (really frustrating when the AI tosses in the flagship), and uses downright stupid tactics (fly right in front of the giant death ray, and make a second run at the same spot if you survive the first time). So combat felt like a chore either way. And there was no way to escape without losing a ship.
Story: they got the first part right, which is "make allies to fight against an evil force." But then they really dropped the ball when it comes to the eponymous Origin. **Spoilers** You open the origin. You close the origin. Nothing really happens between. You never feel like what you did had any weight. And then it's over in a very anticlimactic way. **End Spoilers**
Navigation: Fuel is used within a star system, which is annoying when you're pointed in the wrong direction for where you want to go next. You have to make a big swinging turn and hope you don't overshoot. Hyperspace isn't any better. Autopilot is the only way to travel and also the quickest way to turn. There is never a point at which your ship feels agile. If you ever press a button during autopilot, your ship immediately loses all momentum and you have to accelarate again, which is very annoying when you're trying to avoid other ships.
Resource gathering: having automatic deaths on landers was annoying. At least in 2, you could take your chances against getting zapped/burned/etc., but in Origins you just either have protection and can survive or your crew starts dropping dead alarmingly fast. As time goes on, resource gathering becomes tedious. Having the planet scanner be able to list minerals from the star system screen could have cut down on the late game tedium. And the controls on the lander are tank-like, which seems a bit odd for the age of FPS. Resources themselves screwed me several times when there were some that I didn't know I would need later. There was no difference between biological samples, rainbow world locations, etc., everything was just the same generic RU, so there was never a reason to try and stun creatures because it took way longer than gathering minerals but provided the same reward.
Music: I don't remember any tracks. I still get tracks from SC2 running through my head occasionally years later and they added so much personality to the races in place of audible dialog.

It did do some things right, though.
Dialog: wonderful. All the races have their distinct personalities. The humor is great, too. Merchants and items were less amusing, though.
Fast travel: having fixed points to warp to were so much better that green space in 2. I didn't have to memorize or have a print out to get from here to there. However, it did mean you had to manually find the warp points, which meant hand navigation, so you could never fling yourself across the galaxy and just start exploring another part that you'd never been to before.
Quest log/Captain's log: I didn't have to write down coordinates. But it also didn't keep known items anywhere useful, e.g. "Go to the Menkmack homeworld" but you have to scroll through the Captain's log until you find the entry from two months prior where you learned where that is.

Fun at first, but then turns into a grindfest with a severely disappointing ending.

Never know a city management game could have a final boss.

Controls were frustrating. Wanted the challenge to be gameplay, but the challenge was making the character land where I wanted it to.

Great snack-sized game. Charming characters and dialog.

Just one more day.

Nostalgia can't make up for lack of fun.

This is the first time I've requested a refund for a game. Simply, it's not fun to play. Drawing the rope up the well was tedious, the first time your game gets saved it's so that the game can kill you 50% of the time (yes, death was a part of a lot of the earlier Sierra games, but this felt especially cheap since there was no way to think ones way out of it), and running from the dragon across the bridge while not being able to see where you're going finally made me quit. Also ran into game breaking bug while trying to ride the steaks, twice.

It's like Metroid, except your weapons are useless and bosses are grindy instead of fun. The exploration and items are fine, but having to worry about every single enemy is not, especially when you have to pour bullets into anything to kill it.

One can't avoid comparisons to Super Metroid. It's got everything you like from Super Metroid except the flow.