I was looking for an updated "Freelancer-type" game that would look great and play well on a modern gaming machine. Unfortunately, I have to keep looking because "Parkan II" is NOT that game. I asked around and Parkan II was mentioned on some forums I frequent, so I bought a copy.
Sure it looks OK, but it was obviously made for 4:3 ratio, and doesn't scale properly at high resolutions so everything looks stretched, and the text is tiny at 1920x1080. The sound effects are flat, and boring, and it seems that one guy provided ALL of the game's voices with the exception of your friendly A.I. The translation is TERRIBLE! It's very difficult to understand just what your mission parameters are. There have been several instances where I was just bumbling around hopping from planet-to-planet trying to figure out what to do when suddenly "Mission Complete" would show up on my screen. (?) And if you're ever warned that one of your bases is being attacked, you can just write it off as lost because you've only got a few seconds from the first warning until the "Colony Lost" message appears. There's no time to find it on your map and travel there before it's overtaken. And the ONLY way to regain a base after losing it is if you find a "Renegade Planet" mission for THAT particular base among your vendors and buy it. If you just go there and kill everything and get the hardware key in an attempt to take it back you'll get the dreaded "Access Denied" message when you get to the main console! Even with the mouse speed set to its lowest setting ingame, targeting is still squirrely, and the ship control has no fine tuning. Planets, bases, space stations, and mines each have the same layout, the only thing that changes are the textures.
After more than a week of playing I'm already bored with this game and don't see myself finishing it.
I hear that "The Precursors" is supposed to be pretty good, so I've ordered that one as well.
-Slaughter