Starpoint Gemini: Warlords Preview

So, in case you didn’t know, space is big. It’s really big. Just ask any scientist you know and they’ll tell you that space is indeed quite a large and expansive… thing. So, if you’re designing a game set in that vast, soulless void surrounding our home planet then you need to go some way to demonstrating just how big space can be.

So step forward, Little Green Men Games and Iceberg Interactive, returning to Steam with a successor to their well-received title Starpoint Gemini 2. Starpoint Gemini: Warlords aims to blend together the genres of space sim, RPG and 4X. It’s a tall order but once the initial prologue of the game’s Early Access version has been completed and the Gemini system opens up, you begin to see just how grand a scope Little Green Men Games have aimed for.

The game promises two game modes upon release: Campaign and Conquest. In Campaign you follow on from the events of the last game in the series, in which a great conflict has left this space system sparsely populated and war-torn. The game promises choices that can be made that will affect the outcome for the entire galaxy, the alpha version teases this with its branching dialogue trees and multiple choices. Conquest mode will be a game mode where the narrative of Campaign is stripped away and players are allowed to do what they please (it’s this version that I’m presented with after completing the tutorial).

Little Green Men Games say directly in their description for the game that pretty much every community idea that they couldn’t implement in Starpoint Gemini 2 has gone into Warlords. Not least in the new ability to build and maintain a giant space station as your home base to ‘park’ your best spacecraft in.

Gameplay in this alpha comes in a form familiar to players of most open-ended exploration games. You’re dropped straight into the galaxy without much direction and nothing much to go on except a job board and a lot of needy NPCs ready to give you missions. Through search and destroy, salvage, maintenance, convoy raids and trading, players will be able to increase the cash in their virtual bank account and pay for upgrades to their station or for new ships.

Unlike games like Rebel Galaxy, movement in Starpoint Gemini: Warlords is multidirectional. This is both a help and a hinderance, as it can sometimes be a struggle to line your spaceship up with objectives or to properly track enemies in a dogfight. The game does include a useful targeting tool that tries to alleviate these problems, as well as a surprisingly expansive context wheel that, when activated, allows numerous actions from communication to tailgating to boarding.

Graphically, Starpoint is no Star Citizen or Elite: Dangerous, yet it’s not without its charm. Ships will reflect the light of nearby suns, their angles stark against the vast expanse of space in the background. During combat, streaks of laser and gunfire will flash across the screen, while impacts on shields and hulls look impressive and believable. There are a few popped textures and muddy-looking areas here and there that remind you that the game is in its early stages but nothing that breaks the immersion too much.

Sound-wise, your usual science fiction staples are there - fizzing laser, chattering autocannons and the whooshing of spacecraft. Most jarring, however, is the voice acting in the game. Admittedly it’s admirable that the developers have tried to implement as much voice work into the title but many lines fall flat and a lot of the voice work seems to be phoned in or unenthusiastic. Since a majority of the dialogue is tree-based and solely in text, however, this doesn’t crop up as much of a problem too often.

Starpoint Gemini: Warlords is still in a very early stage and Little Green Men Games have a reputation for seeing the job done, so fans of the series should know they’re in safe hands jumping into this game in Early Access. With continual input, improvement and expansion on the campaign features this title will be a great entry into what is already a series growing in reputation.