Recent reviews by O.G. Orange Duck

so much sleep lost February break
I very much recommend (it's like a darker Zelda-like game for PC)

space minecraft kinda

this game's like crack
28 hours in like a week and a half (with life going on too)

fun game to waste a few minutes hours, and you can also get sucked down the rabbit hole of competitive rocket league (RIP rest of library)

Space trucking but sometimes you shoot people. It's a pretty fun game.

There's a bit of a story, but it's not so much that you won't be able to play it after a long hiatus (the story is kinda secondary). The loop consists of doing missions to get better ship parts; you can buy and sell without penalty to tinker with builds until you find one that suits you, which I find pretty nice. The side missions can get repetitive (fight these guys, deliver these items but bad guys are trying to stop you, retrieve this but bad guys are too). Mission difficulty is a bit funky, but I'll get to that after talking about combat.

I personally like the combat, but it might not be for everyone/not necessarily what you might expect. Your ship moves in a 2D plane, but smaller enemy fighters can move in 3D, so if you were expecting some grand 3D dogfights, you have been warned. My style of fighting usually involves manually baiting and targeting bigger ships so I don't take too much fire and pick them off first while letting auto-controlled turrets do the rest. There is some strategy to knowing when to retreat and regroup vs. when it's safe to blast as hard as you can. Each quadrant of your ship (port, starboard, fore, and aft) has its armor tracked separately, so you have to be mindful of what sides are taking fire so you can adjust accordingly, which I find a nice element of strategy. Ships themselves range from small, zippy ones to big, slugging ones, so it's nice to have those playstyle options. However, the range is a bit[/] limited, so it only goes to a certain extent, but there is some customizability. Mission difficulty (risk) is tied to your build (ship, weapons, armor, etc.), but it's a bit weird and I don't fully understand how it scales. You'll get orange (high-risk) and red (very-high risk) missions that are quite manageable, and white (average risk) missions that feel way out of your league. More often than not it's accurate, but it's skewed enough to make note of. Overall this inconsistency is the only real gripe I have with the game, and it's relatively minor.

Lastly, the atmosphere is solid. The default music really fits the theme of being a "space western", where you feel like a space cowboy/trucker, and they're bops. You can change the sound track; I've never done so. It's also a pretty game, even if the various different environments feel a little samey after a little while.

Another bit of atmosphere is the factions. There are two main opposing factions and two guilds, as well as various other different minor enemy clans, plus the citizenry (civilians). The two main factions are the Red Devil Cartel (pirates) and the Militia. You have a rating towards each faction, but you can only gain favor to the two main ones; the others are solely enemies save for a few civilians of those races. The ratings are a spectrum from hostile to neutral to allied. Being at least neutral allows you to dock at their stations, while being hostile means they'll attack you on sight. You also lose more rating for destroying a faction's capital ships (big boy non-fighter ones) the better your rating is towards them. You start out somewhat hostile towards the Red Devils, neutral towards the Militia, and neutral, leaning towards allied, towards the citizenry. Most missions affect your ratings towards the different factions; each will say which factions' ratings it will affect and by how much (and positively or negatively). This is a base amount; any capital ships you end up destroying aren't included in that total. These ratings mean you can flip your ratings with everyone; my first playthrough I was rock-bottom with the militia (attacked on sight at their bases) and allied with the Red Devils. The two guilds are the Merchant's Guild and the Mercenaries Guild. Unlike the other factions, they don't have ships flying around; you only do missions for them. There's a fee to join them (10,000 for the merchant's guild, something bigger for the mercenaries guild which I can't remember off the top of my head). All of the factions have nice flavor, and so do some of the later missions. It serves the atmosphere well and I find it a really nice part of the game.

Overall, I enjoy the game and would recommend you give it a try. It's worth the 20 bucks, and during the winter it goes down to 2 (which is what I got it for), and at that price it's a steal with the quality of the game. If the atmosphere I've pictured appeals to you, give it a shot!

this is too fun

poor man's space engineers

This game is a lot harder to get used to than Civ VI, even with 2 expansion packs, but from what I've played, it's still a good game.

It's a good game, with cute graphics, but it doesn't have enough to be worth paying for.

All the negative reviews are from whiny asses ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about how "base Civ VI isn't EXACTLY like Civ V with two expansions and 6 1/2+ years of updates". It is quite a different game than Civ V; I started on Civ VI, still can't get used to Civ V.
Going into the game with a fresh mind, it is a MUCH better game than Civ V base, and arguably even against Brave New World. While yes, the AI can be sketchy at times, it is not "unplayable", and though higher difficulties do increase this sketchiness somewhat, you try coding the Magnus Carlssen of Civ, whiny-ass V fan. The UIs of both games are very different, so stop whining your sorry asses off and learn; it really isn't all that difficult.
Also, tip: you can press Esc. to end any leader animation.
TLDR it's a different game from V but still a good game in its own right.