Hello, here is the Zap. In this Spacebourne 2 Review you get a little insight
into the new space action game with a mix of spaceship combat, 3D shooter and RPG
elements as well as some 4X strategy. I'll tell you how it plays, what's in it and
at the end there's a rating from me. But most of all I want to give you all the information
so that you can decide for yourself whether the game could be fun for you.
Spacebourne 2 is developed and self-published by DBK Games. So far there are
already two games from this studio, Mesel and the predecessor Spacebourne, but neither of them
are available on Steam. I got a free trial key, thanks for that. This should
n't affect my rating though, as I always
review all games with how I would feel if I had paid full price.
► Background - Early Access Spacebourne 2 entered
Early Access on February 17, 2023 on Steam. It is neither bug-free nor completely finished. So if you
want to have "perfect" games, you've come to the wrong place. But for a small development team,
it's quite amazing what they've accomplished so far. And they are busy
updating, so that more content comes almost weekly and the errors should be fewer.
► Game Type - Space RPG with 4X Strategy
To put it in broad terms, Spacebourne 2 is very similar to Freelancer,
or the early Wing Commander parts. I also see similarities to games like
Star Citizen, Elite, StarTrek Online or a bit like the upcoming Starfield.
It is a space role-playing game, both with 3D combat in the spaceship
and as a first person shooter on the ground or in a space suit in zero gravity.
Thousands of planets and space stations in hundreds of systems are available as travel destinations
and we move from one planet to another with warp jumps and stargates.
We can dock at space stations, but we can also land on planets. We fight wild
space battles with dozens of ships. From time to time we explore cities and caves on foot,
and sometimes we disembark in space suits in the middle of space
to board foreign ships or wrecks.
We can take different co-pilots that improve different bonus values.
When the game has developed a bit further, we will eventually become a squad leader
and get wingmen who accompany us in battle, either with our own controls
or, if desired, with precise control through our commands to the team. And these soldiers
can level with us, and we can also recruit new fighters if necessary.
► Gameplay - Story and RPG In a distant future,
humanity is way down in the hierarchy of the universe and many are enslaved. We
are the son of a former leader of humans. Our father himself tried
to free mankind, but he failed and was
killed. Right at the beginning we rescue an old robot, which
turns out to be our father's former personal adviser and is now at our side.
We start with a tiny spaceship and find new equipment for us and our spaceships
in defeated opponents or in the numerous shops of the space stations and planets.
So we are gradually upgrading and getting to know new contacts,
some of whom we can recruit into our ranks.
There is a full RPG system for both the character and the spaceship,
or later even multiple spaceships. We can raise our hero in the three categories of soldier,
pilot and adventurer, improve his nine basic values
​​and learn 45 skills that we can also increase in several levels.
Our character, but also the spaceship, both have all kinds of equipment slots that
we can equip with different weapons and equipment. We often get the items required for this
from defeated opponents as loot. There's the usual white, green, blue, purple "normal to
epic" item system. We can sell bad stuff on space stations and
buy new high-end equipment or even completely new ships from different ship classes.
Spacebourne 2 offers 7 guilds in which we
can climb the ranks and thereby get more and more tasks and better equipment in their shops. These have very
different orientations and not all guilds may be suitable for every play style.
There are also 5 factions with a total of 36 houses
that rule the universe. And the aim of the game is
to free oppressed humanity from the bondage of these factions and make our own faction prosper.
Exactly how we do this is up to us,
we can create an absolute democracy, become a just ruler
like a wise space king, or even become a nasty oppressor
who throws space into chaos and mercilessly all non-humans tracked.
► Gameplay - factions and strategic warfare
In addition to our space hero and the flyable vehicle, we are also building
our own faction. Our goal will be to lead humanity out of bondage
and war against the alien races that oppress us and killed our father.
In the course of the game we build our own bases and recruit an army. This has to
be organized and trained, we need certain resources
to carry out expansions and we have to
send our units on aid missions and raids against enemy stations and other bases. And there are
hundreds of them. There are more than 30 other houses and most of them are hostile.
Such raids are planned in advance in a complex way, with a battlefield simulation, where we
can deploy all units of the troops to the targets of the attack and plan precise movement sequences in the individual
phases of the battle. It's very impressive what Spacebourne 2 delivers here.
And the actual battles don't need to hide behind them either, absolutely not.
This is where the game combines its space shooter focus with a lot of
strategy elements and it's a wonderful combination. Politics,
diplomacy, negotiations, governance and many other details are added later and combine everything into a
wonderful "space conquest simulation". So this is going to be a kind of 4X space strategy
where we as actual characters are right in the middle of it at all times.
► Technology, graphics, sound, engine, translation Spacebourne 2 is developed with the Unreal Engine 4
, this mature basis is also noticeable in the game, because it did
n't crash once in my test in more than 25 hours. It provides detailed 3D models
for both the spaceships and the interiors of the space stations
to walk around in. Unfortunately not as detailed as one would like,
but already a fantastic achievement for a small studio.
The game mechanics are also very stable. There are sometimes errors,
such as getting stuck in models or, in rare cases, missing controls if you
tab out of the game in between. But thanks to a convenient savegame system that
always creates autosaves even when there are system changes, this is not a particularly serious problem. I had
quests that didn't work a few times, more on that in a moment.
The soundtrack of the fights, space stations and also on other occasions is at least
so far that there are noises. They're not always great or impressive,
but at least you never feel like it's way too quiet. So a good
start for an Early Access game, but definitely still room for improvement.
The music is lower middle class, although I'm not the expert
and mostly play without music, just for copyright reasons for my YouTube recordings.
A minimum level is also definitely reached in the voice output. All important texts are
told in English, even if they are artificial voices from the generator. But here
one has at least made sure to include as many different voice variants as possible and
to use them consistently for the important characters. And since it's often about androids or
alien races, the voices are sometimes quite appropriate as they are.
The game is built entirely in English, although there are still a few language ones
carver has. Spelling mistakes as well as sometimes somewhat unclear language samples are still present,
but that only rarely bothered me. There is the possibility of
switching the user interface to a few other languages,
including German, but the quality of these texts is still very, very poor.
You could always grasp the tutorials, the story and everything around it,
even if the language isn't perfect. Some texts don't have voice samples yet,
but that's surprisingly rare, at least in the first 25 hours of gameplay.
► How well is Spacebourne 2 doing on the Steamdeck?
Spacebourne 2 is reasonably playable on the Steamdeck, but still a bit uncomfortable
to use at times. It therefore currently has an official rating of "playable", i.e. yellow.
Some texts are difficult to read, and since it often happens that you have to do keyboard input,
it is necessary to take out the virtual keyboard
to type. Overall, it's not optimized for the Steamdeck,
but if you can make a few compromises, it's at least halfway usable.
► Spacebourne 2 test - opinion and conclusion
Let's start with the negative things. The game isn't fully developed yet,
but the Early Access label already gives it away. Even if it is already a complete game from the basic structure
and you can play it as long as possible,
you still get into construction sites from time to time. Then either the level design is somewhere between
not pretty at all and completely unfinished. Or you get quests that don't work
because quest goals weren't spawned, or the scripts weren't quite finished yet.
But at least in the first 25 hours of play, that only ever affected side quests
that weren't necessary for the overall story and development of the game. So
you could just quit and accept another quest and continue playing.
Overall, the graphics could be a bit prettier,
in some places. But for a small team, DBK Games already
offers good middle class and sometimes even really nice views.
But at the latest when it goes down to the planetary soil,
you have to lower your expectations a lot, because the
graphics there often look more like the year 2000. And the level design usually seems
very unfinished there. But there are outliers here too, but unfortunately very rarely.
What bothered me was that the warp jumps are a bit long. There are skills and
ship upgrades that reduce these travel times,
but especially in the beginning you spend a few minutes of the game looking at the warp tunnel.
The graphics are still a bit dreary in parts, but then again very detailed.
This sometimes results in a somewhat uneven feeling,
so that the world does not always appear to be made of one piece.
On the plus side is the surprisingly easy controls. The interface
is also easier to grasp than almost any space shooter I've played
. Here there is no excessive focus on artificial simulation complexity,
but rather the combat action is brought to the fore. I enjoyed that.
Some space sims are rather daunting because you first have to memorize dozens of keys
before you can get the spaceship to move halfway. Here Spacebourne is quite
exemplary and rather easy to use. And since that's the core of the game,
that's an extremely important plus point.
A really standout feature that most space games can't match is
that you can land directly on the stations and planets and also walk around. And it goes
seamlessly from space to station or planet, with no loading screens. Oh yes,
the camera can be switched between first person and third person at any time,
whether as a character or in the spaceship.
We use the option of walking around as a person to act and also for mission talks.
But there are even combat missions in which we, as soldiers, have to storm stations,
explore caves, hack computers and do many other tasks.
This is where Spacebourne 2 reminded me a lot of StarTrek Online. Unfortunately, the feeling of combat in these
missions is not yet 100% as one would wish. Invisible obstacles, enemies
stuck on objects, or trajectories blocked by building elements when
they shouldn't can sometimes feel a bit unfinished. But it's great that this
is in the game. It's also fun, original, and overall a real addition to the
game. But there is still some fine-tuning to be done in terms of controls and shooter feeling.
After some time, a completely different section of the game opens up next to the space shooter,
which expands the game enormously. The faction and world conquest setting is
overwhelming at the beginning. What the developers have come up with here
is extremely extensive and simply excellent for long-term motivation.
The universe is huge, hundreds of systems and thousands of planets and stations are in play. I
'm not exactly sure, but it could be that Spacebourne 2
can even generate infinite new systems in the end. And you can take this whole universe bit by bit, space station
by planet by battleship,
turning it into either a mean and bloody dictatorship, or an ideal world wonderland, or whatever is in between.
You have to keep making decisions in conversations and you can precisely adjust the politics
of the new human kingdom with all sorts of switches and sliders in a
kind of head of state interface. And that also has a massive impact on
how happy the residents are and how quickly new people
join you. To do this, you have to carry out missions again and again, which, in addition to money,
reputation and experience, also bring new soldiers for your own army.
I could go on and on about this complex area of ​​the game.
But I hope this gives you a rough idea of ​​what DBK Games has created here.
And I suspect that this part of the game will be expanded even further. There are
many ways to do this, and the path taken so far is already very promising.
I have to repeat, it's not all ready yet, just Early Access. Some
corners are still in the game, some textures are still muddy and the voice output is
artificially generated. But what it
offers as an overall construct in a playful way has already inspired me very much, even in its early form.
With an enormous number of role-playing elements, which are also well implemented, Spacebourne
2 already offers a high replay value and excellent long-term motivation.
So you can also do a lap in the Spacebourne universe later.
I'm very excited to see where Spacebourne 2's journey through space
will go. The current Early Access Version 1.7 is already a great game
and if the developers continue to build on it for a while, it could
become a real classic. An insider tip for space fans who
mourn the days of Freelancer, Elite or Wing Commander. Here it is worth getting back into the cockpit.
For the absolutely fair price of €19.50 or dollars, you get an almost complete game
here, despite the early access status, that can easily tie you up for dozens of hours.
It already offers an extensive and varied feature list and is constantly being
further developed. All in all, it's a great game at a great price. I was very
positively surprised and very excited about what the small indie studio is delivering here.
► Spacebourne 2 Review - Rating Putting all this together
gives me a very positive picture of Spacebourne 2. Extensive features,
lots of fun in the space battles and a complex strategy simulation game in the
background offer a surprising depth of play that very motivated. And all of this is cheap.
For this I would like
to give Spacebourne 2 in the Early Access Version 1.7 a base rating of 80%. For an early access game it runs amazingly reliable,
which I would like to reward with a 2% bonus, and for the really more than good price
you are offered a lot of play, which earns you an additional 5% bonus points.
This brings me to a current rating for Spacebourne 2 of 87%. A great game
that every space fan should check out. And with the zeal the developers have behind
the game, I'm very, very excited to see what
new features will come to the game over the next few months and if Spacebourne 2 will get even better.
Do you like dogfights in space and strategy of conquest across the
universe? Or are spaceship shooting orgies and artificial voices just not your thing?
Let me know what you think in the comments or on the community discord.
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