The story takes place in a galaxy at war, with the player as a starship captain on the losing side – the Galactic Federation. Your mission is to cross the galaxy with your ship and deliver intel to the reinforcement Federation fleet while getting hunted across the Galaxy by the Rebellion. While other games would just stick you into the pilot seat, FTL have you become the ship’s captain, the one who controls every member on the ship.
As the captain, your job is to order around the crew members, who in turn doing a task at stations abroad the cruiser, such as weapons, engine, shield, piloting and even doors. The most important task of the captain is to route the ship’s energy system – as the limited amount has to be divided between all the systems on the ship in order for everything to work. That’s part of the reason behind FTL’s unique playing experience, as the player has to focus on strategizing on the go, or even in the middle of a battle.
About the combat system – while mosts game would just put you in front of a gun or even automatically fire, FTL would have you juggling between a lot of systems. From lasers and torpedoes to teleporting bombs and penetrating beams – or even boarding crews, there are a lot of things that could be done instead of just blindly firing.
Over the course of the game, the player would get to explore eight sectors of space, with numerous beacons containing events for them to overcome. Each event is unique – with multiple methods of solving base on what you have on your ship at that moment in time. The sectors and events are generated randomly so each time you do a new playthrough, a brand new adventure is generated.
The player is able to upgrade their ship as the game progress, improving the current system or even getting a new one. Crew members are also not an exception – you can grab various new people, each with their own unique abilities. The enemies also get their own updates so the difficulty would remain constant.
As you are getting chased by a huge rebel fleet, lingering at a single sector indefinitely is not something you could do. Speed is important, but scrap, FTL’s currency, is also something you would need as much as possible. Planning your steps ahead is key – avoiding the enemy fleet while getting through as many nodes as possible in order to get more scraps.
Difficult choices and hard skirmishes are all over the nodes in the game – you might be torpedoing the enemy ships in a node, and resolving the conflict peacefully in another. Intervene in a mugging, rescue a castaway or investigating a space ruin – there are a lot of events for you to explore. Combined with the pausable combat, you can just play this leisurely and taking time to mull over options.
FTL is a project that has been planned carefully over several years. The gameplay is interesting with a lot of well-meshed features for you to try out. Text and story are concise and to the point. The soundtrack was one of the best features of the game – one of Ben Prunty’s best work.
The only thing that could be complained about in this game is probably the difficulty. It is really unforgiving to new players and it would probably take a while for you to be more familiar with it. Some other things that could be improved more are the unlock rate of new ships and crewmen history. Just a few lines here, some quests there, and this great sci-fi story would definitely be brought even closer to perfection.
Hope this review could help you discover worthy games to spend your time on. If you are interested in the roguelike genre, check this out Top 5 Best Roguelike Games For Your Mobile Phone
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