Starcom: Unknown Space – A Solid Sequel, Not Enough Ambition

“It’s not safe out here. It’s wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross; but it’s not for the timid.” – Q, Star Trek: The Next Generation

Pros

•  An extensive universe to explore, that features hundreds of handcrafted encounters and many secrets.
• Compelling progression that functions organically, based on your discoveries. Shipbuilding feels satisfying and well-designed.
• Space combat is adequately challenging (on Very Hard at least) and has enough variety of enemies and weapons to stay fresh.
• Text-based roleplay encounters are well-written, feel plausible and have many different outcomes based on rolls and choices.

Cons

• Balance issues with weapon classes and ship devices: some of them aren’t useful, or prove gimmicky, especially in late-game.
• Certain fundamental gameplay mechanics aren’t explained properly, which can lead to frustrating situations.

Bugs & Issues

• The ship builder may sometimes pick the wrong parts to move or become unresponsive.
• Text scaling above 100% can somewhat deform the interface on specific resolutions.
• ‘Load last save’ can sometimes load an incorrect save file, which isn’t your most recent one.
• In rare cases, laser weapons can start firing randomly with no enemies in sight.

Machine Specs

• i9 13980HX
• 64GB RAM DDR5
• RTX 4090
• NvME SSD
• 3840×2160

Content & Replay Value

It took me around 42 hours to complete Starcom Unknown Space (SUS) on Very Hard difficulty, taking considerable extra time to explore, build a maxed-out ship and complete all the side content I could find. There are some branching-choice quests, but the content largely stays the same: I don’t see a reason to replay once finished.

Is It Worth Buying?

Yes. The base price of 24,50€ is a great deal for this amount of content and quality. If you’re a fan of space exploration, sci-fi in general or open-world games, this is a great pick.

Verdict

A well-designed space sim that tries to overhaul the foundation set by its predecessor, but lacks the ambition to do so in full. It’s a solid entry for the genre nonetheless, and you’ll have a great time with it.

Starcom: Unknown Space – In-Depth Analysis

Writing & Worldbuilding

In this sequel to Starcom: Nexus, you’ll commandeer an exploration vessel sent to investigate a spatial anomaly, only to find yourself in a parallel universe with, seemingly, no way back. With only a small Human outpost near your entry point, hostile aliens and many questions, you’ll have to set out into the unknown in search of answers and, possibly, a way back home.

Even if the story starts off with a rather generic sci-fi clichè, it pleasantly evolves to a better complexity as you progress, with heaps of side-lore and indirect narration to complement your ever-increasing knowledge about this new universe. Your command crew members will all have their own personalities, which are well-outlined and reflected in the multitude of jokes, comments or dialogues happening as you travel or after many of the encounters. In the same way, the other characters related to both the main story and quests are written fairly well, although some feel too one-sided. The situations you’ll face, in a clear Star Trek inspiration, will range from diplomacy, covert ops and trading, to all-out combat and interaction with incomprehensible technologies.

Starcom Unknown Space does a good job of depicting how a galaxy would turn out after the collapse of a domineering civilization; factions once united under a banner rival each other for resources and territory, extremism arises, and the collapse of infrastructure isolates once-flourishing planets, often destining them to their demise. The worldbuilding is consistent, and well-thought-out, with all the different alien races feeling unique and with their own character. Sadly, there isn’t much depth in the cultures and lore of said civilization, past what you need for your mission.

Exploration & Secrets

You’ll traverse the galaxy using your ship, which may be fast but way too slow for covering distances of great magnitude. That’s why a series of fast-travel points is scattered throughout, allowing instant relocation or high-speed boosts, depending on the type. Generally, moving around isn’t a cumbersome affair, unless you are searching for the most remote, obscure secondary systems: some of them can take literal hours to reach, but are optional. A handy map with custom notes and an autopilot function is a convenient addition, which allows you to sit back while your ship reaches the destination on its own – if it doesn’t get destroyed by enemies in the way, that is.

Scanning planets will reveal resources, anomalies and other points of interest, which can then be examined by your survey team in text-based interactions, often unique. These lead to roleplaying interactions, where your crew’s skills, like Tactical or Astrophysics for example, will be used as a baseline against a dice roll, to either succeed or fail – there will always be consequences for failing, like injury to crew members or lost resources.

There is a huge amount of hidden interactions, both with other ships, planetside or related to anomalies and space phenomena. Entire systems are off the beaten path and completely optional, often housing unique enemies, technologies or encounters. Sometimes, a lot of out-of-the-box thinking is required to figure out how to access a particular system, or make something apparently useless into a critical asset; the game won’t hold your hand much.

Combat System

Space battles often will see you against overwhelming numbers of enemies. Designing a ship that has a good balance between offense, defense, speed and utilities is paramount to not getting overrun. Depending on where you travel, some foes may be way too strong for your current level of technology, so many systems will initially be ‘unavailable’ due to this fact, even if you can try. Various weapons such as plasma turrets, lasers and missiles are compounded by utilities such as shields and defenses like deflectors, although most of them need to be unlocked in research beforehand – you won’t have much going on early on in that regard.

Enemy ships and stations can be destroyed and torn to pieces since each module has its own health and will be physically destroyed if pummeled enough; on the other hand, your own ship modules can be damaged, but won’t blow off, which feels weird, as yours is the only ship to have this propriety.

Progression & Ship Design

The Caelano space station, your base, will have all the facilities to research new technologies using Research Points, obtained from interactions, discoveries and artifact examination, and also build a custom ship from the available parts, if you have the necessary materials, themselves gained from planet surveys, commerce, defeating enemies or quests. It’s very satisfying to come back after a long trip and design a brand-new ship with newer technologies and parts, ready to face those challenges. The design phase is complex enough that you’ll have to think carefully about the placement of each component, but not so much that it becomes a cumbersome affair. Overall, the progression system in place works very well with how exploration is structured and feels rewarding all the way to the end.

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