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Space Rangers 2: Dominators; multi-genre space sim - image heavy
Topic Started: Jul 17 2008, 12:14 AM (340 Views)
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Sexy Commando
Just got this game and played a few hours in it. It's a lot of fun; came out in 2004 by Russian house Elemental Games. Like the title says, it's a space sim, but it's way reminiscent of Sid Meier's Pirates!. There is an astounding amount of stuff to do, really something for everyone in this game. It's part RPG, part shmup, part RTS, part text adventure, part trading game, part TBS - even part third-person action game. You wouldn't think such a disparate group of influences would work so well, but it does. As I said above, I've only played a few hours, but I had a total blast and wanted to share it with you guys (because I am magnanimous, right?). I also went a little nuts taking screenshots, so you get those too :P

The story goes that you're a Ranger, an independent pilot in the galaxy. The galaxy happens to be the subject of aggression by this terrible machine race called the Dominators, which you are supposed to be stopping (whether through diplomatic, military, or economic means). The galaxy, however, is very open-ended, which may be its downfall.

The game starts at character creation, where you choose one of five races, one of five starting professions, bonus skills, and bonus items for your ship. I ended up with a human fighter that had bonuses to accuracy and maneuverability, with a bonus engine and fuel tank. Every image in this thread will be clickable to embiggen.

Posted Image I chose the mask portrait because the others looked kind of lame to me.

One cool thing about the game is the difficulty tab, which allows you to adjust every detail - if you're bad at economics, you could turn up the profit margins while leaving everything else the same, or if you want challenging fights you can crank them up to max. If more games did this instead of a flat "easy/medium/hard" switch I wouldn't complain.

Posted Image I stuck with Normal difficulty because I'm a 100% kinda guy.

Since the galaxy can be overwhelming with a huge amount of systems to visit and missions to take, the game helps you out with galactic news at each station and the ability to save hints to your command bar - another really cool feature which might not seem useful now, but its real use shows up pretty soon.

Posted Image That greyed out 'i' button on the news and the 'i' button on my command bar are the same item. It's cool.

Movement in space takes place on a 2D plane, and is a lot like Heroes of Might and Magic in its execution with one quirk. Like Heroes, you can plot a prospective course and it'll show how many turns to complete. Unlike Heroes, once you've set your course, you can't stop unless an external force acts upon you (like being hailed, attacked, asked to attack someone else, etc), whether it's a 1 day course or 10 days. This adds some thinking before flying around randomly, since whatever you plan to do you're stuck with until it's done.

Posted Image What the game doesn't have is proper scale - my ship is way too big!

You can't run around or anything on planets and stations - they serve as refuel, repair, and trading spots. You can pick up quests from the Government if you want. Each station has a special purpose - Science station can upgrade your ship parts, Medical station does... something, and so on. I haven't been to a whole lot of them because I've been doing interplanetary trading mostly (although not with much profit, as you can see through these screens :P).

Posted Image The graphics are nothing mindblowing, but very solid and charming.

So, back to saving information to your command bar. This is where it really shines: you can save trade notes for any station or planet at that time - how much of item X they have, how much they are selling it for, how much they are buying it for, whether it's illegal or not. Before I started up the game for the first time, I actually got a pad and pen to write down this stuff. Being able to view it in-game is way way cool, and allows me to actually (try to) maximize my profits rather than remembering genera like "stations buy machinery for lots".

Posted Image When I found out about this my eyes were like :wub: no lie.

Interstellar relations play a part in the game too - all the races have default good/bad relations with each other, and if you jump into a system where you're disliked (or managed to make the inhabitants hate you, which isn't very hard to do) you might find yourself a little preoccupied with running away or fighting off (or paying off!) the inevitable posse come to get you. Luckily, the galaxy map used for inter-system jumps is color coded to tell you which race is dominant in which system. Blue is human, red are some orc-looking guys, and I haven't bothered to learn the rest.

Posted Image The green circle indicates how far I can jump out. Better engines, better jumping.

When you do get into combat, you'll find it's kind of like a TBS. You have the same day-based movement, but you can mouseover your target (or aggressor) and see their flight plan, so you can change your route accordingly. While in combat, you can still do everything else as normal - talk to your partner if you have one, trade, hail other ships and ask them to help you out, even land, refuel, and launch again to continue the fight (which can be really annoying when your opponent decides to circle the planet and land every day until you leave him alone). If you don't want to micromanage your fights, there's an auto-battle option.

Posted Image I'm the white and blue ship, the red ship is a spectator, and the last thing is my target.

Posted Image This image is very bad. Do not look at it.

You better believe the NPC pilots don't want to die, too. If you're superior in a fight, they might even try to buy you off, like this poor guy below. I chased someone through a system once, and I noticed a bunch of ships following him and then peeling away. After he bought me off, I checked the notes on my command bar and noticed - the guy who asked me to take him down asked a bunch of other ships, and then the target bought them all off - for more than he paid me, even, which sort of upset me.

Posted Image The translation is kind of bad, but the game is enjoyable regardless.

I said up top that it's part RTS and third-person shooter, and you are probably like, "what". Some of the quests put you in charge of planetary ground battles with robots, and you can take control of one of those robots if you wish and run around shooting in it, and that's in the screens below. There are also text adventure type quests which can be very easy or very hard; the only time it's mandatory is when you get thrown in jail, however. Those range from math problems to economic puzzles, so they're a nice break in the game.

Posted Image It's kind of primitive, but hey, it's totally optional and adds variety to the game.

Posted Image Isn't the new Tom Clancy game supposed to have a feature like this?

That's not even all of it. There's a minigame I didn't get a screenshot of, which is basically a Star Control-style shmup when you fly into black holes. When you defeat all of your opponents, you're thrown out into the galaxy at random with whatever your enemies dropped. A lot of times you get rare equipment only findable in the holes. The RPG part comes in upgrading your stats (accuracy, maneuverability, etc) with experience you get through completing quests and wasting enemies.

It's a very solid game, and I'll reiterate that although it doesn't seem like all of the elements work well together, they are streamlined and well integrated. The game is rock-solid stable (when my game was interrupted by an IM or something, it'd tab out nicely and the entry in the taskbar changed to say 'Click me'. When I clicked on it, it sent me right back to where I was, no muss no fuss), a genuine relief considering how PC gaming seems to shifting toward releasing betas of games instead of the final product (Gothic 3's 0-day patch, anyone?). It's old school and just plain fun.
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Pervan
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Genetic Failure
That's so cool looking. That abysmal translation does look like it'd get a little irritating, though. I always like when people make these topics about weird games I've never heard of.
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Exalted
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Ziggy had a ray gun.
That actually seems like a lot of fun. For some reason it makes me think of the Guild in space. The game actually reminds me of a lot of things at once; most likely due to the wide variety of games bundled into one thematically consistent package. I'm especially curious about the character progression: How does it work and does it drastically alter the paths available to victory?
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televised
Sexy Commando
Quote:
 
That abysmal translation does look like it'd get a little irritating, though.
Sometimes it has the effect of weirding you out like you're talking to real aliens who might not have the best grasp of your chosen race's language, but other times it's just wonky and awkward.
Quote:
 
I'm especially curious about the character progression: How does it work and does it drastically alter the paths available to victory?
It's not really that much to write home about; you have six stats you can upgrade independently of each other, and a bunch of slots on your ship you can customize. There is a tradeoff in that if you're an excellent fighter you probably won't be much of a trader, but if you really put your mind to it you could still pull off an economic victory (by trading and funding key stations next to Dominator-occupied systems). One of the really cool things about this game is every other pilot gets upgrades and trades and fights like you do, so if you're lax about it you can easily find yourself massively outclassed by everyone in the endgame.
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Killer Kitty
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Wizardry 9
I remember I was going to check this game out when it was released but it was plagued with Starforce at the time. Looks awesome.
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Exalted
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Ziggy had a ray gun.
I purchased this game today. Hurrah for digital distribution and discretionary funds! Lots of fun. It reminds me a lot of the Star Control series and the Escape Velocity series. Right now I'm messing around with a Human mercenary; it will be a while before I have the experience points to upgrade anything. One thing I really appreciate is that there are no levels and instead you upgrade the pilot's statistics with experience points.
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Killer Kitty
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Wizardry 9
Check out this large codex thread on the game:

http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=11646

It sounds really awesome, me want.
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