Addictive, Charming, Unpolished and at Times, Very Difficult; Like Your Very First Girlfriend.
Like Elite, and many other similar games, it starts out difficult, and gets easier over time. That, combined with the myriad activities available for young spacefarers, can equal a lot of frustration up front.
Eventually you will collect enough minerals or survey enough planets, to upgrade your ship. This is where it starts to get really interesting. Upgrade wisely or you will be ill equipped for the game you want to play. In the early stages, your ship can't be a jack of all trades, there's not enough room on your hull. You have to specialize for the task you want to perform. Want to do courier missions, get a big engine. Enjoy being a pirate, better bring the guns. You spend most of your time flying around turn-based space, so pick a ship you like,
There is much to do in the game, especially if you like text adventures. Each one is different, and re-playable, due to random parameters around the goal. However, in the end, they are just text adventures and after a few of them, you will probably want a break from the eye strain. Outside of the ASCII adventures, you have another common mission type that is a separate minigame. Thats the ground combat missions. You can play both as an unbalanced RTS game, or as an unbalanced mech-combat game by hopping into the controls of one of you troops. There appears at first to be a lot of complexity as you can configure each vehicle with different weapons, equipment, chassis and the like. Unfortunately, missiles are so overpowered that you will never build anything but quad missile bots and rain fiery death on enemies before they get in range. Its really a shame, because outside of that single balance issue, it could have been a really fun diversion.
Space Rangers 2 is a fun little diversion that will suck your life away in the same "just one more turn" way that Civilization or Diablo does. However, it has its obvious flaws. Its those flaws that help make it unique though. In today's world of copycat FPS and treadmill MMORPGs, Space Rangers 2 provides something you can't get anywhere else. You can tell from its lighthearted presentation, its goal is to be fun and in this regard it succeeds. If you buy this game, and put a couple hours into it, I guarantee you will find something you enjoy.