Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander

Has anybody played this? It's getting great reviews.

I bought it just based on steam reviews. It's the "directed by Tarantino" of video games. Not a single unique thought in the entire game, but in a good way. It cribs a lot of the best things from a number of games and succeeds in blending them together: Civilization style 4x overworld, X-com style base building, Final Fantasy style JRPG combat, and a Stardew Valley level ability to suck your hours away are the big ones but there are more influences from all kinds of games. Decent on the humor without being a comedy and each of the alien factions have great style and dialogue to go with them. I was in love from the beginning of playing it but the luster has certainly worn down. The combat mechanics aren't as deep as they seem at first and there's only 3 classes with 2 variants each. There aren't many ways to build a 3 man party out of these 6 because the debuff/boost mechanic generally leads to "play with this set of 3 or this set of 3." The resource acquisition and base building is fun for awhile but eventually becomes repetitive, although it eventually automates the resource bit. There isn't a lot of story and it's mostly sandbox with slowly creeping enemy stats to force you to stay on top of your own linear advancement of mostly just higher stats. They say it's "infinitely replayable" but many online disagree. I haven't beaten it yet but I would guess 15-20 hours is about average for each run through. I don't see much that makes me want to jump back into a new game after I beat this one but I probably will in 3-6 months to play through the other combat group. It is 15% off right now and I'd say it was well worth the 17 bucks I spent on it. I can picture this going viral based on the strength and addictiveness of the first few hours. Then a week later everybody finishes it and reactions will stay strong but more mixed.

The biggest tip I have for anyone starting is to play smart and aggressive from the beginning. I haven't run into it but people online are finding their games unwinnable because they didn't keep their economy cranking correctly from the early game. Then 10 hours later the difficulty has crept on them and mid-late game they hit a wall. Four things to combat this:

1) Explore early to find all the outposts in your space
2) Keep outposts inventories from maxing out by making Planet Express pickups on the reg
3) Keep an eye on timers in your quest logs for attacks on your outposts. If you don't defend them in time you lose that outpost forever. I think this is where people screw themselves the most
4) Don't spend resources unnecessarily. Think carefully about what to build and try not to experiment too much in a single game as it will draw you thin.

Final thoughts: 9/10 for the first 5 hours or so, slowly dropping down over the next 5 to settle on a solid 7/10. Great ambition. Great execution. Just needed some more variety to carry it through to the end. I would recommend it to anyone that likes the games I compared it to above.

Got to play it on some extended flights I took over the last week and it's tons of fun. Basically "lite" versions of Master of Orion, Xcom, and FF all mixed together. 9/10 with the fact that it's a retro Indie work kept in mind.