A real testament to swinging for the fences. It packs in so many ideas and tries so much impossibly cool shit that it's pretty easy to excuse just how much it botches basic design in spots. It's a massive game with a really vast galaxy to explore, and yet there's no quest log or journal of any sort. It has really smart, Valkyria Chronicles-esque squad management for staffing all your ships, but it doesn't make the barest effort to teach you about any of it. It is one of the least user friendly games you will ever find.

But I love it, I really do! It's so impossibly ambitious it's hard to believe they even attempted going for this on the DS of all things, let alone the fact that they pulled off so much crazy shit. It is one of the least polished games Platinum has ever put out, but it's left more of a mark on me than like 80% of their library. Its plot is a smart, full-on space opera that cares so deeply about the world it creates. It's vast and ambitious and spans decades and countless planets and it's just...so damn cool to think about. I love this game so much.