Starpoint Gemini 2 is a bit shallow and a bit pricey for what it offers, but it is still enjoyable. Overall the story was okay enough to keep me going, and the combat was fun enough to make my stay in Gemini enjoyable. If you are itching for a space sim that is pretty easy to get into and doesn't require a large time commitment to win (around 24 in-game hours for me), this will scratch that itch pretty well. Otherwise, you may want to think carefully on buying this game unless it's on sale.

However, the developers appear to be actively working on improvements to the game as time goes on. Some concerns raised in this article may be addressed as time goes on. Keep an eye on the updates page if you're interested in this product!
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The good:

Visuals are nice, music is nice, starship aesthetics are good too, and the combat is solid. The universe feels big, and provides a pretty immersive experience of traveling through space. Said universe is also populated by various starships as well, usually around space stations and various other miscellaneous space structures. There are many different factions that like to use certain types of ships and lay claim to different areas of space, and you can easily see heated space battles taking place at faction borders. The HUD takes a little getting used to, but is pretty nice once you learn it.

The game itself is a bit grindy as it uses RPG levelling mechanics to determine what ship you can pilot, but I personally didn't mind it that much since the combat was pretty fun.

The not-so-good:

The story is okay. The Voice Acting for the story dialogue ranges from terrible to okay.

Side-story missions boil down to "repair structure there for $$$ and XP" or "kill enemies here for $$$ and XP" or "ferry person over there for $$$ and XP" with little fanfare. After you finish the main story, all you can do are the missions described earlier.

During the main story, certain factions and places will be purportedly destroyed or crippled, but what this actually means is that you will just pretend that the story happened while in practice the universe remains largely intact and unchanged.

Certain mechanics are a bit shallow (i.e. hiring crew = looking up which dude/gal has which bonuses, click hire button). Also, while you *can* be a merchant or asteroid miner in this game, it seems to be much eaiser just to capture enemy ships and tow them back to a planet/station where you can sell them.

Character progression is RPG-like, yet character skills/perks can pretty much be ignored. Your character's power is MUCH more dependent on what type of ship you are piloting and how well it is outfitted. The RPG mechanics are more akin to a gating system, where your level determines the type of ship you can pilot.

For me, the entire game was a bit grindy. This was how it went down: capture/sell ships until I can afford the next weight class of ship, do missions (sometimes main storyline) so I can meet the level requirement of said ship. Repeat until I have achieved highest class of ship.



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Multiple plotlines in the game.

The "Escape Velocity" series of games (plot-heavy 2D shooter space-sim) implemented this rather well; there were multiple plotlines for each main faction AND there were also a lot of side plotlines too.

Examples of side-plots: testing prototype weapons for a starship arms company, or ferrying vacationing CEOs to a jungle planet for big game hunting, or helping a rockstar go on tour throughout the galaxy only to discover that he's a robot! Or picking up a random stranger and ferrying him to a planet only to discover that he's a leader of a small sect of colonists who are trying to resist pirate incursions, and he implores you to help them with their plight since the Powers That Be in the universe are far too busy (or corrupt) to deal with the pirates.

I didn't just do these missions for cash, but to see the story unfolded; to see how these characters reacted to these sometimes tragic events in their lives, and how they would deal with it.

I think it's good to have a big Main Storyline as the main attraction, but there's plenty of room in Gemini for smaller guys with fascinating struggles and dramas in their own lives that an aspiring starship captain can be a part of.

Being able to hail and talk to other ships and planets.

You don't need to have dialogue trees for every one. But it'd be nice to be able to beg for mercy from a pirate and buy him off with credits, or just say hi to random ships and planets. In this vein, they'd also have a message for when you greet them, with each faction having a different way of talking to you. Perhaps even with a random pool of different types of responses from each faction that vary in tone depending on your standing with them? This is a bit small, but I think it would help with game immersion.

The ships, planets, and space stations could use more flavor text.

Though it might seem like a huge hassle to write up descriptions for every space station/planet/starship, you can build an EXTREMELY immersive narrative with these and make the game feel alive. Again, the "Escape Velocity" game series (mostly Escape Velocity Override and Escape Velocity Nova) used flavor texts/descriptions to great effect.

Why is this station in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by hostile space? Are they revolutionaries or sympathizers with another faction, or are they just badasses? Why is this Frigate cheaper than this other one? Oh, the company that manufactures this one wanted to push out a model to get an edge over their hated rival company who was taking their sweet time with their own model. Hey, this Corvette saved an entire company from the brink of bankruptcy! This Carrier design looks like a UFO because of a revolutionary new frame that allows for rapid fighter launching while providing overlapping fields of fire from all of its turret batteries? Cool. This Dreadnought looks like a eldritch abomination because their designers desperately welded a lot of spare parts together and accidentally created a ship that could challenge all previous starship design conventions? Neat!

Planets and some space stations presently have short descriptions with a little flavor text. But it doesn't help that these blurbs are only accessible via starmap. When a player is on the starmap, their first instinct is not to click "info" and read; they want to get somewhere quick. I think it would have been better if you saw the write-up in an unobtrusive static text box on the bottom of the screen. This provides incentive for an exploration-oriented player to land/dock on every planet/station that they find so they can see the little blurb there. These descriptions can really flesh out the factions and gives you an idea of why they exist and how they conduct themselves (i.e. how they treat citizens, local planetary economic problems, policy problems, military actions, natural disasters, etc.).

Overall, more flavor text would be nice so that the universe that the player travels in would feel more alive.

Also, it would be nice to have an in-game chart of which ranks correspond to player level.

Overall the game is pretty awesome, but it could use some polish.


PROS:

Nice variety of skills and perks available.

Great variety of factions and areas of control.

Good selection of ships.

Can capture enemy ships.

Like the blueprints idea.

Like the compare weapons and ships.


CONS:

Traveling over 10 units takes a couple minutes.

There are four equipment slots to use and only about four that I found were actually useful, ie. shield recharge, strengthen attack, scavenger bots, hull repairs. Even then, I rarely ever use them.

Crew members do not have special abilities, but rather only bonuses. A single slot for a special crew member. Assuming only one special member exists in the game and is almost impossible to gain because the blueprint takes 20.

Blueprints are super difficult to find, but very rewarding IF you ever complete them before becoming near god strength already. I completed one for a nice fighter hangar jet, but the rest remain far out of reach while I am practically invincible with all the best enhancements and warship.

The only truly useful weapons in the game are rail guns and maybe missiles. I say maybe missiles because they are only really useful if the shields are already down and rail guns can usually take care of it anyway. Lasers are useless. Plasma is too slow to be useful except for mining.

Level 70 bounties are easy kills for a level 50 that has a good battleship with maximum upgrades. I think I may have beaten one with the next class down at a lower level too because you can stay behind them and they cannot fire back.

Travelling outside the known universe area leads to infinite enemies and loss of whereabouts on the map. Travelling too close to the sun does the same thing except enemies will start to randomly die from heat damage.

Cannot see what is on a captured ship until it is transferred to the garage and crew is transferred as well. Crew losses will occur if the captured ship has less.

There are three kinds of heavy weapons, but I failed to see any real difference in shockwave damage.

Exploding ships nearby do no damage.

Has lag and slowdowns most of the time.


SUGGESTIONS:

Make traveling without gates a little faster when in full engine mode.

Make some artifacts that last indefinitely / bonuses or useables that fit in equipment slots.

Change the decimal enhancement descriptions, eg. 0.5, with percentage values, eg. 50%.

Please fix weapon range. Bonuses are not being counted.

Add a barrier on the edge of the map to prevent getting lost in the void.

Give a warning for pending heat damage when getting close to stars.

Show radiation areas on the map.

Show map sections that are partially visible on the edges of the map.

Allow transfer of weapons and cargo from ships in the garage without transferring crew.

Make plasma weapons hurt shields more, but damage hull less.

Make lasers damage both shields and hull with shield punchthrough for damaging systems.

Make railguns work best on hull, and less on shields.

Do a similar rock paper scissors with heavy weapons.

Fix the pathfinding.

Improve AI for wanted bounties.

I recommend this game because of the following

• The minor bugs are actively being fixed
  
• The devs are responding on the forums
  
  Exploration
• Space feels large, but it's only one solar system
  
• Plenty of travel shortcuts
  
• The map has to be uncovered by visiting each sector
  
• There is, sort of, an autopilot for easy travel to a waypoint
  
  Combat
• Combat is fun
  
• Auto-fire if you don't feel like aiming
  
• The controls work well, controller support
  
  Graphics
• The visuals look good (DirectX 11)
  
• All of the screenshots are from the in-game engine, not works of art.
  
• The planet-side artwork is nice
  
• The space stations and ships are varied and have style
  
• The game is well polished
  
• Simple user interface
  
  Equipment and Loot
• The ship fitting is pretty simple
  
• There are multiple types of ships, weapons, and multiple styles to choose from
  
• There is a collect all button to make looting quick
  
• There is a quick way to sell everything in your cargo hold
  
  Other
• You can do more than just shoot other ships
  
• You can choose free-roam instead of doing a campaign
  
• You can crash into a planet
  
• Achievements with in-game bonuses
  
• It's able to be modded
  
• Easy to learn
  
• Music and sound is good
  
• It's not complicated, but I am also a fan of complicated games

What's bad about it? Not much, just things I personally prefer. Others might consider some of these to be Pros

• No multi-player options
  
• No empire to build
  
• Freelance missions do not have much variety.
  
• The officer system is a little strange. You can only hire them in their original location, they go home when you fire them, then you have to fly back there to hire them again.
  
• You can't equip ships unless you are piloting them. This can cause you to lose crew or be forced to sell cargo.

You might like Starpoint Gemini 2 if you like these games. Freelancer, X3-series, Eve Online, and space based games in general

Loved this game. Felt like Privateer 2 without the cutscenes and sadly missing Clive Owen with Christopher Walkins :-( Freelancer should've been more like this. SG2 is a lot more open world than Freelancer which has its advantages and disadvantages. Personally, I found it purely an advantage. Unlike Privateer 2 and Freelancer you can truly just be a merchant if you want and switch effortlessly to being a badass kill everything murder ship at any space station/planet. Sometimes it's just the little things that make you happy... The graphics are great, the music not annoying, the abundance/ease of quickly accepting missions is a serious plus, and most importantly the flexibility of the game to allow someone the ability to play the game how they want w/out the need of trainers, cheat codes, or cheat engine.
Just like in the real world there are easy ways to make a quick buck with minimal returns or riskier methods that garnish heavy monetary rewards. I love that this game isn't afraid to make the playing field drastically uneven when it comes to rewards. Harder, almost always (there are times you get lucky/learn to exploit advantageous situations), means greater rewards! Learning the in game market is very beneficial. But it gets better, should you disagree w/me all you have to do is download any of the many mods and change how the game mechanics work. This game is a literal win-win. Small minor bonus pluses that I think are worth mentioning are; 1.) Achievements actually give you in game bonuses 2.) Blueprints that give better stuff that can't be bought 3.) Bounty hunting ( this is a mixed bag. this system could better implemented but I'll be damned if i didn't end up hunting everyone down!) 4.) Buying of certificates/licenses (w/game money and not real money) that give-in game bonuses for no other reason but to make the game fun (personally, I think it could have been better implemented but I sure as ♥♥♥♥ was excited to find a new one!). 5.) A good array of ships to pick from (potentially unlimited if you count mods... Just saying...) 6.) Personally, I found the system upgrade gimmick confusing at 1st but once understood, it opens the door to a lot of options that becomes unlimited if you include modding (just saying...).
No game is perfect and this one isn't either. This is the disadvantage section of SG2. SG2 has some pretty poor optimization problems. 4-5 years ago my PC was a champ so it's aged a bit meow. Still, w/the level of graphics/visuals/objects it should run better. Especially since the video/graphics adjustment is bugged/non-functional. It's only a moderate complaint because the game allows mods and several are designed to reduce the toll taken on your PC. The rest of the comaplaints are mild at best because all are easily adjusted w/mods or are drastically overshadowed by the game's massive, bulging, make you scream in your pillow as you take it awesomeness so here goes- 1.) The voicovers are almost all a joke. They're done w/the stalest emotion possible. 2.) The story is kinda flat. Open ended games are prone to this a lot so it obviousley shouldn't be a huge unseen problem here. The game brings up interesting things here and there so kudos for the Devs for trying but it is still kinda... ummm... blah most of the time (kudos for the DEVs for doing such a good job to make the game so fun I really didn't care!)

In short, my complaints are minimal at best and I had countless hours of fun playing it. I found it quick and easy to learn and SG2 left a lot of options for me to explore for future play throughs. I can't ask a game to do more than that but w/mods this game could be literally different everytime I played. I got it on sale and felt like I stole something. I would have happily paid full price and been more than content. This game is awesome, WOOF!

I really enjoy this game for the sense of freedom/exploration it gives.

Here's something that happened to me a couple days ago.


I got a mission to deliver some porno mags to a sector that I had not explored yet, everything was going fine... just another day in the Space Delivery bussiness, full speed, power diverted to my propulsion system... everything was going smooth.

When I finally was able to spot my destination (long trip), I got a warning on my bridge control about hostile/uncloaking ships nearby, not even a second after the warning BAM, my Power gets disrupted and my Engines no longer work at full speed, I am now being chased by ~6ships with MUCH better Offensive/Defensive systems, I had no chance.

Im taking a lot of hits, and my shields are long gone, my HULL is down to ~30% and my ship is about to be blown to pieces... THEN I spotted it, one of those small wormholes that take you to about ~3 sector away if you keep "riding" its gravitational pull.

I had no time, my ship was burning, my guns didn't even scratch the enemy ships and all I had left was the items that give you a small speed boost. Without thinking much I pointed my ship to the worm hole and put it on the max speed possible. It was freaking amazing to avoid the enemy ships by riding the Worm hole.

I ended up riding it for about half a sector and then used my PowerToEngines to get out of it and back to my delivery destination, this time fully cloaked!

Can't help but think what kind of sick Space Porno that was.



I recommend this game to everyone, the various things that happen make it very interesting for those who thrill to be a Space Captain.

I wish I hadn't bought this game. I loved Freelancer and thought it would be something similar but boy was I wrong.
This game lacks any atmosphere and feeling of a space-traveling universe. Docking at stations and visiting stations is one of the most disappointing events I ever encountered in a space game. There is no radio chatter, no clearance for docking; you never hear anybody over radio nor do you see more than one or two ships (even near well populated planets!). This game feels so incredibly dead and empty, that travelling and exploring just simply isn't any fun at all. It all feels so static. Add to that that planets and stations you visit are not animated but all just have a static, bland screensaver in the background of dull buying menues. There are no bars or other places that give you the feeling of really setting a foot on a place. Rather it all feels so incredibly generic and it doesn't get better if you add the boring "go there and kill pirate x"-missions that we all have seen way too often now.

This game is nowhere near Freelancer and if you look for something like that, you will most likely be as disappointed as I am. This is a sad and empty game and I would be careful to get carried away by the positive albeit misleading reviews here.

Starpoint Gemini 2 is a great space rpg.

usually a statement like that needs clarification, so here we go.

this game is basically if you took the most complicated parts out of games like x, opened up the game world like evochron mercenary and throw in a control system not unlike eve online. what im getting at is that its not as complicated to play as the aforementioned games but leaves the best parts of each and marries them into a system thats fresh and familiar.

one of the things that irritated me about the x series and evochron for that matter is that missions had to be acquired at a station. my question has always been, why? no long range communications in either universe? in SPG2 that is a thing of the past, when you enter an area, you will be notified when missions are available and you can accept missions directly from the starmap

which brings me to the next point. the starmap is one contigious area, like in evochron, there are no load screeens and while the actual area is smaller than evochron, its a lot more detailed visually. so yes its probably not 100% true to life because there are very few areas that just look like a black void in space, but the visuals are well done and give you more to look at than just black with white dots everywhere.

controls are reminicent of eve online though i havent played it in years, it reminds me of that. not necessarily a terrible thing, but if you are looking to find yourself in the cockpit of the ship, these ships dont feature cockpits. if anything even the smallest class available would have a bridge. so in comparison to the ships in X or EM, youre piloting a capital ship right off the bat. in fact to give some comparison, the M5 through M3 classes of ships in X are basically bought as commodities to place in the hangar of carriers. you wont be flying anything that small and if you were, youd have reason to be very very afraid. it would seem that the gemini system doesnt build much of anything in small scale :)

As of this writing there are a few technical issues that arent game breaking but considering the devlopment team is very active and even communicates with the players regularly i feel that this game will evolve into something even better. if you like rpgs and space games, this will be right up your alley. LGM has done a great job keeping the game fun and challenging without making it a nightmare to learn how to play.

This is a good game for space adventurers. However, there should be an emphasis on the word "adventure" more than action on this one.

There is story here, but I find the game play is slightly lacking. The idea of controlling a modify-able ship is awesome, especially with the ability to turn auto-firing and auto-pilot on and off - but I just find this game lacks a bit in depth. There is a lot to do, a lot of side missions, main missions are intriguing enough, but SG2 just fails to deliver amazing game play. Maybe it's because I'm playing with a controller, but I find from the stuff you can do in game to scanning or teleporting is not quite there. You cannot walk around space ports or your own ship which is really disappointing because what captain doesn't want to see what's going on - on his/her ship. I find myself always chasing new nav points and flying in circles and turning on auto-firing.

I like the game, but enough to pass time or keep me busy. I do not think it's worth the stated price and recommended to buy on sale.

7/10 as it is simply an average game.

It took nearly 20 hours to finally come to a conclusion on this game.

Despite all efforts made to make the combat complex - energy management, 4 different active abilities (with a kinda silly feeling levelups with them), and up to 4 consumable items (of a selection of around a dozen) useful for combat - it just isn't all that fun. I believe the biggest culprit is turrets. While it is possible to partially blindside a less maneuverable ship than yours in 1v1, ultimately maneuvering and dodging in combat is best done by spinning around in circles. When you're spinning around in circles, you can't effectively target and attack targets manually, and so you rely on fire-at-will auto targetting to do that job for you. This is boring.

The economy is workable, but not that interesting - different stations have a set low-mid-high value for all of the commodities. Buy and sell appropriately.

The storyline is workable. The Gemini universe is interesting, and is worth reading about if you're into that sort of thing. The storyline does an almost adequate job of immersing you in that universe. The voice acting/writing is awwwwwwful.

The good: All around, this is a workable game that will scratch your spacefaring itch, though will likely not leave you satisfied. The graphics are beautiful, each region of space is very well stylized in the coloring, asteroids, and various anomalies. Plenty of the starbases and ships have pretty unique detailed models. Music and sound are good, although the short soundtrack for the music is a mild disappointment there.

This game gets compared to Freelancer a lot (particularly by forums users), but it's like a poor man's version of Freelancer without any of its artistry or high points like the lore backgrounding the game, and the great universe design. There are similar mechanics: do some basic trading, have a ship...

TBH it is a bit of a disappointment after the hype you hear about it from fans. To be really blunt in its current state I think this is a $10 max game. It feels a bit like it would be a good iOS space game, but as yet isn't a good PC space game. It needs an additional layer of depth and polish to become anything more than average. I'm playing it a bit but it's mostly as a time filler and because its a pretty massive grind to get anywhere (which I assume covers for a lack of content).

The forums seem to be an unadulterated love fest for this game and that was one of the main things that swayed me, but it's fairly average so far. I think it has something to do with the developers being active on the forums, big-upping anyone that says anything positive. Will update this review if my opinion changes, but I have a pretty good picture of the core dynamics: capture till you get a bigger ship, capture till you get a bigger ship until you get the biggest ship. Do really boring missions until you get your rank up. Otherwise you might do the really boring version of trading or mining (compared to other games).

• Tutorial and the campaign to date are pretty bad and unengaging (I kinda know what I'm doing but just don't care).
  
• Visuals are mediocre, although the ship art is okay.
  
• Universe feels empty in a bad way.
  
• Voice acting in the plot is amateur.
  
• You can only save in certain places which is a pain in the ♥♥♥♥ (there are some lackluster excuses about this)
  
• Combat seems fairly one dimensional
  
• RPG elements are lighter than I expected (4 skills that you level, and some perks)
  
• Crew are just stats bonuses
  
• Trading economy and mining seem extremely basic

Overall I think a game like Starsector has far more RPG depth.

You can customise ship colours, decals, and names so we can all call our ship Stormbringer, however, I haven't tried naming one Mistake Not My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome And Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas Of Ire That Are Themselves The Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans Of Wrath - it might be possible.

The cosmetic stuff like naming the ships and changing colours seems to be my high point so far. It might end up being a good timewaster...here's hoping.

I love this game. Great mods, awesome single play gameplay. I wish there was some multiplayer action though. Maybe in the future sometime. Idk. Huge open world and lots of upgrades and weapons etc.

9/10 will play again.

30+ hours in game and I'm nowhere near finished with this thing! Totaly got my money's worth. I heard there are people with 1000+ hours and I know I'm not going there, but I'm pretty suer it will keep me occupied over 100 hours.

Then again, DLC is near and it means even more time sunk into this amazing game. Keep up the good work developers!!!

I kind of hoped this game would be an open world sandbox RPG like Mount and Blade but in space, however I was disappointed. It's suprisingly very shallow, overpriced, falls short in many aspects, missions are dull and repetitive, the game feels too grindy and the world is fairly lifeless despite being beautiful. With more depth the game could have been monumental.

It is certainly not a terrible game and it has some merits, but it did disappoint me. If I could give it a neutral or maybe rating I would as I don't think it deserves a thumbs down, hence my recommendation.

If you liked Freelancer, you will love this. Though, so far, the story hasn't been as engaging as Freelancers but there is a freeroam mode that basically cuts that aspect out of it and just throws into this really well designed and nice looking universe, for you to do in as you please.

The combat is awesome, the UI is nicely layed out and easy to understand and the game isnt overly complex for the sake of being complex (I'm looking at you X series). The soundtrack is pretty cool too.

Its quite fun and addictive for now, but I can see it becoming quite repetitive. I'm sure later on in the game things become a bit more interesting with bigger ships and fleet battles, but the early game requires a lot of grind it seems.

I recommend buying this on sale, as it is at the time of writing this review. I can't say, yet anyway, if its worth the full asking price. Though I am having a lot of fun with it at the moment.

Starpoing Gemini 2 is a humbling game. It isn't on the scale of some star exploration games, being in only one star system. But where it lacks in size to its competition, it makes up for it with sheer density and diversity in play. You can be a star trader, pirate, a security operative, or... yes, even a mere space station mechanic -- only accepting missions to repair other space stations to earn your money. The combat is intelligent and engaging, but not too challenging. The only drawback is I cannot bring my friends in. But with a list of objectives like I have in this, who has time for them? time to go kill some pirates and steal whatever they've stolen, and sell it! BETTER SHIPS ♥♥♥♥♥ES

Very good Freelancer-like spaceships game.

Very nice graphics, playability and effects. A lot of ships which are actually different one from one to another. There's not just the boring small-big-bigger-huge mechanics mixed with the Light-Heavy-Trader axis. With different stats (cargo load, soldiers, weapon spots etc) the choice between one model and the other seems to have some meaning.

Trading is a bit basic, although the map is very large and there are a lot different goods with different degrees of "rareness".

Main campaign not so exciting but with some twists and cutplay more than decent.

Big plus: the company is still supporting the game with fixes, adds and patches. Without asking you for more money.

Much wows, so honest, many pleasant.

With only 3 hours play this is only first thoughts.

A worthy title. If you have played any of the X series of games this is it's younger and not so complicated brother. In some ways it is more like Freelancer but either way it has nods to all these games whilst keeping it light on the learning curve.

You can jump right in and start blasting asteroids for early bucks and the early missions (freeplay) are doable with the starting ship.

I have several mods that give me Star Trek ships and a Star Wars universe to roam in which are both from the Steam Workshop.

In short (in earlry play) this is an instantly playable space trading/shooter that looks and feels great but don't expect the depth that the X series has (which for some people will be perfect ;) )

7/10 Go give an asteroid a new bumhole.

good game, good graphics, much fun. and if you get bored, try mods cause there are many available in workshop.

9/10 score.

Very much like free lancer and already the beginning of decent mods and conversions already in the pipeline

Fun game with lots of game systems. Plays well ona laptop during travel.