A clumsy but nevertheless fun take of the Heroes of Might & Magic series in outer space
If the fantasy strategy game series Heroes of Might and Magic ever had a sci-fi counterpart, it'd be SFC. If you took HOM&M 5 and replaced all of the graphics with spaceships and spells with technologies, SFC is what you get.
You have 6 races with 10 unit types (5 basic units, each upgradeable to another unit), with your typical humans and weird ensemble of aliens. And then you have 'technologies' (which is basically spells). Each technology in SFC probably have its Heroes counterpart, since they are so similiar. Teleport, damage spells, buff spells, they're all here.
The gameplay is rather solid, since it's lifted straight from the Heroes series. You move your Captains around the map, fight space-creeps, plunder space-loot and capture space-buildings just like in Heroes. The interface however, leaves a lot to be desired. It's clunky, and unless you've played Heroes before, you'll be quite lost. (I accidentally closed the bar that displayed my captains, and found no way to bring it back, so I had finish the mission without it).
Combat takes place in a square grid (ala HOM&M 5) and you move space-ships around instead of elves and ogres and cast technologies/spells and duke it out. The battle screen was quite confusing at first, as it was hard to tell which unit was up and how far it could move, since the option for that was off by default. The battle effects are quite cool however, and the laser and missile effects are spot on. Ships explode fantastically, but it's a shame that all ships share the same explosion. Would have been better if the biological ships burst out slime or something, not explode in a electrical shockwave.
The game comes with a weak tutorial, and a campaign that's slightly uncomprehendable, due to the poor translation of the game. Granted, there are no grammatical errors, but the language used is rather weird. It tries to inject some space-themed flavour, but instead makes the whole outcome a bit goofy.
Voice acting is present, and is delivered well, despite the weirdness of the in-game text. Cutscenes are lame, and looked like they belong in a game from 5 years ago. Sound effects are nothing to shout about, but how many different sounds can lasers make? I'm just grateful they don't suck. The background music is notably good though, and while it won't match up to the likes of Mass Effect, it won't make your ears bleed.
There is still much to say about SFC, but unfortunately only about half of it would be positive. It's either a hit or miss, but it's worth a shot. Hopefully a patch will be released soon to address the GUI issues.
Originality: 5
Gameplay: 7
Graphics: 6
Sound: 8
Average: 6.5