Games with sci-fi space themes have always attracted those who want an out-of-this-world experience (pun intended). There are a few categories for such games, and one of them is the space combat simulator, which places the player in control of a single space-faring vessel.
The Independence War franchise is of this category. It does not have the advantages of hype and established status that more well-known franchises like the Wing Commander and Privateer series have, but some of its gameplay mechanics are beyond the usual trope found in space combat sims and are the ones that would help it stand out of the shadows of its more-famous competitors – for better or worse.
The first game had the player commanding the crew of a space vessel, sending crewmen to sections of the ship where they are needed. This led to some micro-management gameplay that did not exactly fit the definition of a space combat sim. The sequel addressed such complaints by utilizing advancements in the canon to introduce an excuse to have each ship in the Independence War universe being controlled by only one pilot.
(In the Independence War universe, even the smallest attack craft is the size of a soccer field.)
As expected of a space combat sim, the player flies a craft around in space, interacting with other space-bound objects. These range from other space-craft and goods containers to massive space stations and capital ships. As for interaction options, the player can approach and hail friendly/neutral ships (which usually results in nothing more than a casual reply), chase and shoot up hostile craft (or run away from them), ambush cargo ships (to steal whatever goods that they have) and some other activities that veterans of the Privateer and similar series would be familiar with. In other words, the core game designs of Independence War 2 does not veer far from the formulae that earlier, famous space combat sims have established.
Yet, they are certainly very different from those in its predecessor, which was much more linear.
The story of the game takes place 100 years after the first game and is set in the 24th. century for the convenience of its sci-fi themes. Much of the game is set in an outback region of known space, where the governance of Earth cannot reach. Instead, the rule of this region is in the hands of the usual suspects, who are huge space-based corporations that typically impose their will with an iron fist in the absence of any government regulation.
In actuality, the story in the sequel is quite removed from that in the predecessor. The only tie that the sequel has is in the form of one character, which is from the previous game and appears to have been conveniently placed in this game just to show that it is a sequel in the least sense.
Anyway, the protagonist is the son of a miner who had hit on hard times, falling afoul of a cold-hearted industrial magnate. After said miner has been treacherously eliminated by said wealthy bully, the game makes use of a curiously expedient plot twist that has the son learning of a family secret that would conveniently provide him with the means to survive in this harsh region of space, as well as to exact vengeance.
He is then inducted into his family's secret, learning how to pilot combat-capable ships and coping with the life as a vagabond with the help of the aforementioned character from the previous game. He also happens to inherit a secret base with advanced storage and manufacturing capabilities.
These early parts of the game obviously serve as tutorials. After completing these tutorials, the player is rewarded with another calamity for the protagonist to suffer; he ended up in prison despite being a very young boy (albeit a kid with apparently murderous intent).
From here, the game makes use of another convenient plot twist that has the boy growing up into a hardened young adult, complete with his team of specialists whom he has recruited during his long time in prison. A timely prison break has the protagonists escaping their incarceration and leaving for said secret base.
Throughout the single-player campaign, the game makes use of a lot of convenient/expedient plot twists like these to introduce new overarching scenarios. The transition can be a bit jarring for some of these plot twists, but most of them are handled in a plausible manner.
Anyway, the acquaintances of the main protagonist also represent the game mechanics of Edge of Chaos.
Clay Johnson, whom veterans of the first game may (somewhat) recognize, serves as an ensign of sorts, informing the player of any happenings that may be important through pre-recorded voiced lines and text messages. Smith, who is technologically-inclined, serves as chief mechanic and runs the facilities in said secret base. Jafs, who is a very experienced transport pilot, will handle most of the cargo retrieval and deliverance duties (conveniently enough). The remaining two friends serve as wingmen of sorts.
The base serves as the home of the player character and his friends. It also serves as a visual indicator of the player's progress through the game, showing whatever spoils and new assets that the player has obtained. The activities that the player may perform while back at base also benefit from graphical representations of the facilities that enable these facilities.
Unfortunately, the base is also the visual embodiment of one of the worst flaws of this game.
For some unfathomable reason, the player is not allowed to save the game whenever he/she likes; he/she has to return the protagonist's space-craft to the secret base to save the game. Considering that Edge of Chaos has some open-ended gameplay (more on this later) and some very hard and long missions, this restriction on game-saving comes at the expense of the enjoyment of this game.
Edge of Chaos is not for those who prefer to have a game-saving and -reloading feature to compensate for mistakes.
However, if the player can persevere, he/she will be able to savour the rest of the game, which should be entertaining enough to make up for the frustrating game-saving mechanic.
As a space combat sim, Edge of Chaos has a selection of ships for the player to control. Initially, the protagonist only has access to the Command Section, which is a curiously small ship that is later revealed to be able to merge with the prows of bigger ships, effectively taking over the latter. The player has to fly around in a Command Section at certain points in the game, and at these segments, the game conveniently renders the very small ship invisible to all but the most powerful radar.
The Storm Petrel is a ship that the player gets to pilot early in the game, but any enjoyment from this would be cut short because it only serves as a tutorial ship.
When the game starts proper, the protagonists gain access to a Tug, which is a terrible and ungainly ship. Considering how many convenient plot twists that the game uses, the player would be left wondering about the reason for the game designers not having provided a better ship to truly start the game with. Some of the protagonists even criticized the vessel's lacking capabilities. Furthermore, there will be a frustratingly long while before the player gets a better vessel.
However, after the player has obtained the next couple of ships, the experience of piloting ships would take a turn for the better. On the other hand, the player will have access to only up to three ships, and there is no reason to use the earlier ones in lieu of the later ones, which are straight-upgrades overall.
Speaking of upgrades, the ships, as limited as they are in variety, can still be kitted out with many kinds of upgrades that alter the characteristics of the ship. Most of them offer benefits in return for some drawbacks. A notable example of upgrades is side-thrusters, which improve turning of the ship, at the expense of adding more mass to it that may affect acceleration.
There are also upgrades that enable some functionality that is not related to the piloting of the ship, such as Imaging Modules that give the player the equivalent of space binoculars.
Every ship has hardpoints that can have weapons mounted on them; the bigger ships have more hardpoints, naturally. Weapons are in turn categorized into three types: primary, secondary and special. Primary weapons are essentially forward-firing weapons and secondary weapons are mainly missiles.
Primary weapons comprise of energy-based and munitions-based weapons. Primary weapons can track enemies in a cone in front of the player's ship, so the player does not need to resort to too much manual aiming.
Energy-based weapons do not require any ammunition, but they do not have as much firepower as other kinds of weapons.
Munitions-based weapons have more firepower than energy-based ones, but they require ammunition, which has to be obtained in the form of goods. Of course, this amounts to a drawback of economic drain.
Secondary weapons consist of missiles of various types. The most common one is the "Dogfighting" missile, which will chase the target quite persistently. Rockets, which can be mounted in greater quantities than other secondary weapons, are a solution to large, slow-moving targets. Disruptors are homing missiles that disable the target instead of harming them. Remote missiles can be manually guided by the player to a target, at the expense of leaving the ship stationary and vulnerable, but they have tremendous damage potential and blast radii. Finally, there are mines, which are handy if the player wishes to set up traps at locations that are frequented by ships.
The selection of primary and secondary weapons is actually quite narrow. Most of the primary weapons in particular would not impress players that have seen more diverse selections in other space combat sims.
Furthermore, munitions-based weapons and missiles have limited ammunition that can only be reloaded back at the secret base. This is a terrible game design, despite the large ammo bins that the player gets for such weapons. Considering that the player may have to undertake missions or some other activity far away from the base, returning to the base can be a huge hassle.
However, bigger ships have multiple hardpoints for both primary and secondary weapons, which means that the player can mount multiples of the same weapons for increased firepower. The player can also mount different weapons, and, thanks to flexible weapon-grouping options, can switch from a battery of weapons to another battery of different weapons quickly to adapt to changing situations. (On the other hand, this game design further reinforces the impression that playing the smaller ships is a less exciting experience.)
Certain hardpoints on ships even allow either primary or secondary weapons to be mounted on them, further adding to the customization options that the player has for these ships.
Special weapons take up different hardpoints on ships. These include turrets that either add to the ship's total firepower or shoot down incoming missiles in return for being completely automated, a ramming shield that reduces damage from collisions with other space objects and so-called "Turret Fighters".
Turret Fighters, if still attached to the ship, will act as autonomous turrets, but which will fire on the current target that the player has. The player can detach them with a button press, effectively giving the player up to two wing-men (or more precisely, wing-women) that pilot astonishingly fast, small and tough attack craft, which can really harry a target.
With their completely 3D environments and six axes of direction, the action in space combat sims can be difficult to make heads or tails of. HUDs are essential for helping the player do so, and this game luckily has a satisfactory HUD.
The HUD has the usual features, such as visual indicators for the ship's hull integrity, munitions or charge levels for weapons and a compass for directing the player towards location of interest in space.
A feature that returns from the first game is the spherical radar, which shows a sphere in isometric view with the player's ship in the center. Other objects in the radar's detection range have icons in the sphere as well, with appropriate color-coding and shape to denote different kinds of objects. Their icons are also placed at distances from the sphere's center, which represent their actual distance from the player's ship.
The spherical radar takes up a significant amount of space on-screen, which may obscure on-screen objects that may be in that part of the screen. However, the extra size makes the radar more effective as a visual indicator. If the radar has icons obscuring each other, the player can press some buttons to rotate it around to get a better view. (There is also a button for resetting the orientation of the radar sphere.)
Next, the HUD also has the "targeting ladder" feature that generates visual indicators of the predicted paths of ships that the player has targeted. This can be very handy when chasing enemy ships.
Another gameplay aid is how the game handles the hull integrity of the player's ship. When the ship takes damage, its repair systems kick in to restore its health rapidly. Coupled with repair system upgrades, the player's ship can be quite difficult to kill without sustained fire from multiple enemies. That is not saying that the player's ship is practically unbeatable; mistakes on the part of the player can ruin it quickly and there are very powerful enemies that can take out ships with just a few shots.
On the other hand, this self-repair ability is not seen in other ships, namely those of enemies. Considering that the canon of the game mentions that the self-repair technology is a new one that has been introduced to ships, it is odd that no other ships in the game have it. This gives the impression that this feature was a last-minute inclusion to make the game easier and less frustrating.
The dark void of space is vast, and Edge of Chaos emphasizes this through its game mechanic of ship travel.
The default method of ship movement makes use of the ship's thrusters to cruise and speed around actual space. Of course, propulsion via thrusters isn't going to cover distances of light years quickly, so the other two methods of travel will displace ships out of physical space for much quicker traversing of the void.
Linear Displacement has the ship accelerating to light speeds, negating the hold of physical laws on them. This also means that the ship cannot be harmed in any way, except by weapons that can knock ships back into physical space, such as Disruptor missiles, and field generators that can suppress such method of travel. Nonetheless, this makes Linear Displacement a handy technique at escaping from battles.
In addition to its contribution to gameplay, Linear Displacement also has interesting graphical effects. When the player's ship enters Linear Displacement and zooms through space, celestial bodies like planets and moons pass by in an exhilaratingly surreal manner. The transition between fast-as-light and normal movement is also seamless. The game also smoothly loads objects into the screen as the player's ship comes closer to them.
However, as vast as space is supposed to be, the game engine supports a region of space that can only be so wide before the player eventually hits barriers that restrict travel. This region of space makes up a sector of space, and there are multiple sectors in this game that are linked together using peculiar spots in space known as "LaGrange Points" (which is also known in other sci-fi space IPs as "wormholes").
In-game, they practically function as triggers for loading scripts for other regions of space if the player passes his/her ship through one. Otherwise, they serve as points of entry for ships being inserted into the current region of space around the player's ship. (Another method for ships to be inserted into said region of space is for them to appear at the borders of the region, as if they have just exited Linear Displacement.)
Much like the previous game, Edge of Chaos faithfully applies Newtonian physics to ships. Every ship has inertial properties that depend on their size and mass, as well as the location of thrusters on their models. This is where the limited number of ships that the player has access to would be of benefit, because getting used to how a new ship moves about can be a daunting experience.
With this game mechanic of ship physics in mind, the player will be able to estimate how agile a targeted ship may be from a glance at its shape, size and mass from its list of details.
To obtain the gear that the player will need to advance in the story campaign, the player will have to participate in the economic system of the game.
There is no currency to be hoarded in Edge of Chaos. Instead, there is a barter system that makes use of crates of goods. To obtain goods, the protagonist will have to hire himself out as a mercenary for missions and complete them (more on these later). The payment comes in the form of shipment of goods, which Jafs will handle automatically. Certain missions will also offer rewards in the form of new ship equipment and schematics for the base's manufacturing facilities to use to produce items.
The player may choose to obtain more goods by way-laying trade ships, deliberately damaging them to the point of capitulation. On the other hand, the player may choose to threaten them instead, possibly spooking them into yielding without putting up a fight. (This is especially effective once the player has established a fearsome reputation.)
When cargo ships release their cargo, the player can summon Jafs, who will start collecting cargo that the player has tagged. Jafs' transport ship has low capacity, so waiting for him to collect dozens of crates is as boring as watching grass grow. Fortunately, after the player has tagged the crates that he/she wants collected, he/she can leave the area and they will all be collected automatically. (Unfortunately, the game does not make this clear to the player when Jafs' role is introduced.)
Goods are stored back in the secret base, which has a vast but ultimately still limited storage capacity. These goods can be exchanged for ship equipment, supplies or even other kinds of goods through black market deals, or consumed by the base's manufacturing facilities to produce certain items, if the player has already obtained the schematics for these.
The barter system appears to be an innovation of sorts as it has never been seen in space sims before, but in actuality, it is less effective and convenient in getting what the player wants than the conventional currency-based system in other games, namely Privateer.
Speaking of missions, there are two sorts that the player can partake in: main and side missions.
The main missions are the ones that will advance the game's storyline. The player has no time limit to undertake them, despite the urgency that the story may suggest at the time. These main missions will also be the ones that introduce new ships for the player's use.
Side missions are optional, but performing them unlocks juicy rewards such as schematics and new, yet-to-obtained equipment for ships. Side missions can be completed in any order, which is good, because some of them can be terrifically difficult without having obtained greater firepower.
Yet, the seemingly open-ended gameplay can lead to some narrative incongruence. For example, the player can choose to treat cargo ships in a bloodthirsty manner that contrasts with the canonical personality of the main protagonist, who is otherwise a good-natured person.
The graphical designs of this game are not ground-breaking, but they are still pretty good enough for a space combat sim.
Being a space combat sim, the game designers can get away with largely static models for space-based objects: all space stations are practically motionless edifices with the only animated parts being lights dotted all over them, drifting asteroids swirl lazily on their axes, nebulae never move and other celestial phenomena don't move an inch because they are not supposed to for thousands of years.
However, space combat sims typically compensate by having great textures and many polygons for models; Edge of Chaos is no different. Every model in this game has hundreds, if not thousands of polygons (many of them static), with the surface ones being particularly prominent because these benefit from the great lighting in the game.
Speaking of lighting, every region of space usually has one primary light source, usually a small sun or an infant star, which also has its own model and properties (typically of the sort that instantly kills any ships that fly too close into it). This primary light source is the prime variable for shadow generation, while smaller light sources like lights on ships will create secondary shadows, resulting in impressive highlights of the surfaces of ships.
For music, the game has some soundtracks that are decent, but are otherwise not memorable if compared to those in famous space combat sims or even other space-based games.
The voice-acting in the game has varying levels of quality. Disappointingly enough, the main protagonist possesses the nadir of these levels; he cannot exert enough exhilaration for supposedly exciting parts of the game and delivers lines in other parts in a bland manner. On the other hand, he does deliver cheery lines quite well, but these are very few.
As for the other voice-actors and voice-actresses, they are decent, but like the rest of the game's sound designs, they are not memorable.
The game has a multiplayer component which allows the player to set up and join matches, but the match types consist of the usual archetypes of competitive multiplayer at the time: Deathmatch, Team-Deathmatch and Capture-the-Flag. There is a hilarious mode called The Bomb, but this is at best a very explosive game of Tag.
In conclusion, Independence War 2 is not the game that its predecessor was, having apparently been made in the mould of games like Privateer and Wing Commander. While it does not have the brilliant presentation of either of the two famous series, the game does make for a great reminder of how far the space combat sim genre has come.