As Blaze said, this is a decent game that doesn´t excel or lack for much either way. But it´s fun for a bit.
This game bears an uncanny resemblance to this particular old-school browser game called Space Pirate. Did anyone ever play that? It ran on a Shockwave plugin from this website:
http://www.gameport.com/online/spacepirate.html and you could play the demo (to no end) for free. I mean, this was
years ago.
The gameplay was almost identical to ST, except for a few gleaming additions that are missing from this game. The game universe was not randomly generated, there was just the one, however it was huge and full of nebulas and untapped planets that one could mine for raw resources (after purchasing mining or harvesting equipment in a certain bazaar). Lots of ships to purchase, cargo ships and military corvettes or whatever, and a bunch of upgrades you could have the grease monkeys fix up for you when planetside.
There was constantly a rat race against the Intergalactic Revenue Service who were always on your case about the taxes you owed on your planetary transactions, which you could pay or not pay depending on your whims. Choosing to stiff the authorities made you an outlaw in the eyes of the law, and that had a noticeable impact on your privateering lifestyle. If feeling so inclined, a player weary of the outlaw´s life and fresh out of a lucrative deal, could always go to the office and pay hand over fist in imperial credits to clear their name. When smuggling goods, you could get held up by pirates, cops, the IRS, or the military and fight, flee, surrender, or even bribe your way out of a bad situation.
Combat was pretty simple, but the ability to approach, grapple, and board your opponent was pretty exhilarating. You and your crewmen would then shoot it out with small arms inside the cabin of the ship, the tide of battle often turning back and forth, and the loser sometimes fighting to the last man.
Another cool little feature was the option of snooping around the dockyards, where if lucky, one could steal a hoard of unwatched cargo before splitting town. If you failed, your crewmembers could be arrested or shot!
Of course there were missions of all colors, some sort of long-term storyline involving the empire and the rebellion, etc which I never really followed.
There was also some quirky hand-drawn artwork that livened up the various screens (market, bar, docks, etc) to add to the immersion.
Anyway, I´m not trying to steal the thunder of ST. But, does
anyone know where I could track this game down? The website went defunct a couple years ago (I used to check in once in awhile) but maybe it exists somewhere for download...
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Topic: Stellar Trader - Space Sandbox RPG (Read 7298 times)