In my opinion, this is one of the greatest hidden gems in the Steam store. Its cheap, yet there's plenty of replayability and gameplay options, lots of interesting mechanics, and the game in general captures the climate of the end of the Cold War very well, especially as a minor WarPac power rather than the great and mighty Soviet Union. To me, its clear that the developers put a lot of love into this game - even better, they're still pushing out updates and additional content, all for free. If you're into this period of world history and international politics, I highly recommend you get it.

Of course, no discussion of this game can be complete without discussing the mind-blowing soundtracks in-game. You get to select from which of the playable countries your music comes from, with default being East German. Its incredibly fitting, and the music is so great, I'm not ashamed to say that I've opened up the game just so I can listen to the music (even if I don't understand any of the lyrics).

So, thank you Kremlingames for your hard work, and I can't wait to see what comes next.

We burried Half-Life yesterday, August 25th, but Freeman and his crowbar will forever live on in our hearts. Do yourself a favor, and buy this and the rest of the series. Let us raise one last toast, one last glass of Dr. Breen's Private Reserve, for one of the best franchises in all of gaming history, and all the great times we had with it.

Cheers!

Spent the better part of an hour flash-mobbing with dance moves and talking with randoms about starting up an international dance revolution in Somalia (AY NOLOSHA).

If only the rest of this game was remotely as fun.

This game is crappier than the city sewers. Not even naming my character Saddam and replacing the BGM with Ardulfurataini Watan, or getting it for $2 as part of a bundle helped.

Do yourself a favor and spend those $10 on something more worthwhile.

This game is terribly uninteresting; its very generic and, well, devoid of anything that stands out. There's also a ton of bugs, funny Engrish, and wait times (I spent half my play time waiting for it to patch), though, so if playing bad games is your thing, by all means enjoy.

In the end, I'd recommend you get Yandere Sim instead. At least that has entertainment value.

The fact that you're joining the crew of a military ship that doesn't have any military-oriented equipment should be warning enough about the quality of this game. But, in the tradition of Billy Mays, there's more!

The "chain of command" in this game is less of a chain and more of a pot of Campbell's Chunky soup. Bonus points go to the creator for confusing army and naval ranks, and/or simply not caring how ranks work.

There's a ship named after a noble gas for no apparent reason.

The creator seemingly tried to be punny and/or unique with the character and racial names, but they fell flat.

The characters themselves are flat like an unfolded box.

In short, its a very, VERY poor otome game disguised as a space epic.

Ah, man.

This is tied with Swords of the Stars (original one, of course) for my favorite 4X, if not my favorite game. When people say that Distant Worlds is one of the best games made, they aren't exaggerating or lying - it truly is. The features are truly extensive, and the AI is actually intelligent - I've been outfoxed by it twice - even if it does have its failings.

I personally think that the greatest feature about DW are the automation settings. It relieves some pressure on you by taking care of the small bits that you might not care for - for example, taxes and improvements - and there's also the potential for alternative game play, such for example playing as a starship captain. There's even apparently the possibility to automate literally everything, though I wouldn't recommend doing that unless you are really bored, haha!

Now, for downsides...this game, as I said, is extensive, and even with automation its still a lot to take in. The resulting learning curve is pretty high, especially if you aren't used to 4Xs, and it'll take a playthrough or two to get a hang of all of the features. Its not for everyone, particularly if you don't have a decent amount of time to sink into this game, because believe me it does eat up time like no other game.

If you do want to get it, I recommend getting exclusively the DW:U package, which has all of the expansions - its worth it, and there is a significant difference between expansions. I then would recommend getting the Expanded Universe mod, which further dramatically changes the game for the better.

>Killed 4 planes
>Engine rekt after getting 20 mm straight through it
>Head back to base
>Survive attempts by 3 people to shoot me down
>Arrive at base
>Accidentally land at too high of a speed
>Break leg gears and crash
>mfw darthvaderNO.mp3

10/10

Oh, Sunrider...

I want to like you. I truly do - you've got a semi-decent battle section, and I'm a sucker for sci-fi settings. But I can't. Why?

Its too cliche.

Now, I know, this is a free game, and I'm not expecting Mass Effect; plus, pretty much everything has one or more cliches in it. The whole attacked-on-the-first-day thing, for example, I can ignore. What I'm talking about are the anime cliches - they're simply too much.

First off, we've got the situation that Shields' childhood friend is the first mate. Yeah, okay, we can be flexible with our disbelief and let that pass, but its still pretty contrived.

Next, tying sort of into the above, there's girls everywhere yet no man in sight beyond the captain himself, like a harem show or game. Nothing can justify this; even games like Tokimeki have the "male best friend" character.

Adding to that, the uniforms. First Mate Aya wears a uniform that's believably military, and so does Captain Shields, even if his has buckles all over the place. Virtually all the other characters? High school uniforms. Yes, folks, you heard that right - a stereotypical anime high school uniform on board of a starship.

Do I even need to go over mecha in this game? There's literally no reason for it to exist; even their combat weaponry are pretty much replacable by the in-game enemy missile frigate and bomber!

Last but not least, I've got a major complaint about the characters overall; they're incredibly one dimensional, to the point where you can explain their entire personality in a few words. Such as, "childhood friend," "not!Rei Ayanami," etc. You can't connect at all to the characters, because they have nothing unique to connect to.

Honestly, these anime cliches and the space opera setting mix together about as well as oil and water, which is a shame because it would be excellent otherwise, especially for a freeware VN. Something I'd like to point out here though, is that visual novels are just another form of gaming/entertainment - you don't have to use cliches from the animus or mangos to make it, or even do it in an animesque style! This was probably designed to attract a certain group of people, and considering the amount of positive reviews, it did it well, but in the end there is a ton of wasted potential, which could have opened it up to a larger audience.

I had fun playing this game, though there were some unintended side effects:

1. Every one of my muscles suddenly grew their own muscles.
2. My beard grew one inch for every half hour that I spent playing this game.
3. My voice became about 20% deeper.

If used properly, I believe this game could replace testosterone supplements, just by how manly it is.