montdidier

As I was a such a fan of SC2 I was super excited when Star Control 3 was released and went out and purchased it immediately. Unfortunately while it is a relatively solid game in itself it fails to reach the heights of it's predecessors. Where it really falls down is the ship combat and melee mode. It was topdown in the originals and it was finely tuned, razor sharp and balanced. In SC3 the 2.5D was quite distracting, the ships were less fine to fight with and it just seemed poorly balanced in comparison. The SC3 story line was still relatively solid but lacked a lot of the subtle punchy humour and intrigue of in-particular SC2. The sound track was also much less memorable (in SC2 it was a highlight).

Being a long term fan of turn based strategy I was pretty happy to have picked this game up. It is in fact a nice mix of real time and turn based with lots of depth for those who like to micro-manage. There are some nice ship designs (esp. the human factions) and weapons effects. My only complaint is the relatively generic space opera story line. I've sunk a day on this already.

I bought this game on steam and after finding it initially quite tricky I started getting really into it. It's an unusual blend of real time strategy, resource management and 2D shooter. It's got amazing physics, a unique pixel art style and loads of depth.