StarDrive Review

War is pretty much inevitable in StarDrive, unless you are a master diplomat backed by a giant fleet. For the most part, ship combat plays like in a typical RTS game, complete with control groups. However, you can assume direct control of any ship and guide its movement, which is useful for concentrating the maximum amount of firepower against an enemy ship. You'll probably be too busy controlling large fleets to micromanage a single ship, but it is a cool option.

You can never have enough Samurai Bears.

The ground combat part of StarDrive is unsatisfying. By default, the AI controls your units, and this is probably for the best given that one wrong click can make your infantry attack one another. More problematic is that the ships transporting ground units are hard to intercept if other enemy craft are present. Thankfully, ground units don't require upkeep and automatically become troop transports when ordered to leave a planet, so you can just spam tons of units and send them off to defend threatened systems. Unfortunately, you have to be extremely precise when ordering space marines to exit a planet, because you have to right click on a ground unit to send it into orbit, and by default, right clicking anywhere else exits the colony view screen.

Besides the ground combat and problems derived from imprecise mouse clicks, there are various additional issues. First off, the tutorial is a woefully inadequate collection of 23 noninteractive slides. Furthermore, you might suffer through crashes and ludicrously low frame rates during massive wars. The most disappointing aspect, however, is that StarDrive is obviously incomplete. The only game type available is a single-player sandbox, though the manual mentions an ascension mode where the goal is to "ascend to godhood." Also, the manual promises that you can watch tutorial videos by pressing the tutorial button, but there are no videos--just the aforementioned slideshow.

Additionally, there are some in-game events that go nowhere. You encounter a race that has not yet achieved spaceflight, and depending on your actions, there is a promise that they will meet with you again. However, these people never reappear. Furthermore, there are events related to the remnants of an ancient alien race. Defeating enough of their units opens up a secret tech tree (consisting of only two techs), and further events send you looking for a portal hidden away on a random planet. If you find it, you fight a powerful remnant mothership, but no additional techs or events occur after that, despite indications to the contrary.

Orbital bombardments: when you absolutely, positively have to kill everything on a planet. Accept no substitutes.

The character designs and animations of the foreign emissaries are very well done. For example, the hologram used by the emissary of the Drylocks occasionally malfunctions, revealing the purple-skinned humanoid to be a skeletal monster; meanwhile you can watch the robot that controls the Cordazine Collective pump mind-altering chemicals into its anthropomorphic owl slaves. However, the ships and land units are fairly ugly, but that isn't much of an issue since you'll probably spend most of your time zoomed out to a god's-eye view of the galaxy.

StarDrive's problems make it difficult to recommend without reservation. The ability to design your own ships, the unique diplomacy system, and the colorful factions make StarDrive an entertaining strategy game, and the mod support bodes well for its future. However, StarDrive promises more than it delivers, making it feel more like a beta than a finished game. It has great potential, but at this time, it's best to wait until the game is feature-complete.