Checked out SPAZ 2. No bugs and crashes found in 2-3 hours of play. Pretty fun, but I can see it getting grindy/repetitive.
Game has some features of different complexities that reminds me of games like Space Rangers (lots of independent pilots flying around doing stuff, that may or may not join factions), TerraTech (assembling your mothership using tractor beams to put or remove parts) and even Majesty (put bounties on things you want done / want to bring trouble to).
I guess the first chunk of the game is Combat, which is pretty straightforward. Some info:
- You get Energy / Ballistic / Kinetic weapons which are useful against Shields / Hull (health) / Armor respectively. Like TerraTech, individual parts (noses, wings and engines) of a ship can drop out of it if destroy its armor, and dealing actual Hull (health) damage requires you to hit Core/Sub-Core parts.
- You can boost your shields, taking half damage when boosting, but it consumes more power. Firing and Boosting Shields takes power from your capactior, which must be 'reloaded' once depleted - it's a vulnerable state in which you can't fire or boost/recharge shields - think Flux from Starsector.
- You can engage afterburners, which uses its own energy pool.
- You can take some "Strike Ships" to combat, which seem to be the ships from SPAZ 1.
- Weapons are attached on their parts. So Left-Wing-X has a Laser and Left-Wing-Y has a Cannon. Not sure if you can change weapons from a part.
- Some weapons have interesting properties. Like an Ion Missile that seriously eats shields and some sort of acid missile that drops a cloud which eats armor away, disassembling whole ships.
- If you want to have some interesting battles, each station offers an Arena mode which allows you to do an 1v1 fight and win resources (there are 5 difficulty levels and the rewards are one-time only)
- You can use your tractor beam to pull objects like debris and asteroids (of varying sizes), explosive barrels and the like, and throw it on your enemies..which is both amuzing and confusing. The enemy doesn't use his tractor beam, so it feels like a significant advantage at times.
I almost got to the part where you build your first Starbase, which I think is the second chunk of the game, so all I know is it uses transport ships to automatically gather the resources of your starbase's province.
You can also join an NPC faction and help them expand and upgrade. You can raid/plunder other faction provinces' resource generators, and much like Space Rangers you can get a pilot list (from factions, or not) if you want to systematically hunt them down or befriend.
Trading involves Ship Parts (Noses, Cores, Wings, Engines, Strike Ships) and resources (Rez, Scrap, Goons), Scrap being the currency.
Data is still your exp, and there's Lore lying around.
Well.. for an EA release version, I think it gives out a good clue to where the game's headed, and it felt polished.
I doubt it will be everyone's cup of tea, as it feels very arcadey (never thought I'd see spaceships with waving flags on top of them..), and I don't feel it excels in superficial-fun-stuff™ or deep-stuff™ at the moment. I'm not sure if everyone who enjoyed SPAZ 1 will enjoy it, either..you CAN fly the Strike Ships and change your camera to Top-Down, I guess.
I'm probably missing things, but if anyone is interested in it, make sure you watch some videos first.