I ended up really enjoying this, even though you can feel the budget a lot and the engine runs really poorly on PC. The combat is as fun as it’s ever been and since you can basically fly, exploration is fun in a way that I haven’t experienced in other games.
Weirdly, the game’s best parts are kind of opposed: the exploration and combat really excel in the game’s wide open spaces as you fly and dash around but the plot really gets good in the back end as you end up on ships and high tech installations. There are some well-done Star Trek style ship combat cutscenes where everything plays out on the bridge because there’s no budget to show actual ship combat.
I do hope Tri-Ace get another one of these as they’re definitely on the right path with this series.
Steam Deck report: Steam says this is not compatible but I played a fair amount of it. The problem is performance: there are areas which just hobble the frame rate for seemingly no reason and in some areas the Deck will be in the high teens without actually showing anything interesting. There’s a room in a town full of crystals which maxed out my 3080 to the point where it dropped to 45fps, just with some crystals. Weird stuff.
As a more general PC port point the game tries to pre-compile shaders with varying levels of success as the game will still stutter on quite a lot of effects. Weirdly the downloadable shaders on the Deck don’t seem to stick either which made the first run through in some cutscenes genuinely painful with multiple-second pauses.
Weirdly, the game’s best parts are kind of opposed: the exploration and combat really excel in the game’s wide open spaces as you fly and dash around but the plot really gets good in the back end as you end up on ships and high tech installations. There are some well-done Star Trek style ship combat cutscenes where everything plays out on the bridge because there’s no budget to show actual ship combat.
I do hope Tri-Ace get another one of these as they’re definitely on the right path with this series.
Steam Deck report: Steam says this is not compatible but I played a fair amount of it. The problem is performance: there are areas which just hobble the frame rate for seemingly no reason and in some areas the Deck will be in the high teens without actually showing anything interesting. There’s a room in a town full of crystals which maxed out my 3080 to the point where it dropped to 45fps, just with some crystals. Weird stuff.
As a more general PC port point the game tries to pre-compile shaders with varying levels of success as the game will still stutter on quite a lot of effects. Weirdly the downloadable shaders on the Deck don’t seem to stick either which made the first run through in some cutscenes genuinely painful with multiple-second pauses.