I had a go, expecting downwardspiral's comments to be highlighting where I'd find it a bit offputting. And, yeah, it's beautifully styled, it really is. Wish I could love it more for that to get past the 2d arcade minigames. Sadly not but hope the dev has tons of success for those who want to play the blend of things he's offering with it. I wouldn't say the difficulty is particularly high, it's more that the systems are obscure until you figure out what's going on with them as others have commented. I can see how you'd play it as part of the experience of the game. There's definitely an old school late 80s/early 90s vibe to the minigames - had flashbacks with the combat to a very old game called NOMAD which had a similar thing with needing to factor in gravity, leading on your targets, and ducking out of the way of return fire. All it needs is to put it into space and have three more walls and momentum to worry about too.
Would really love to see this done for old farts like me who prefer a more sedentary pace to combat in our old age. The setting and the art and the way it's all put together is very, very well done indeed.
Strategy + 2D shooting.
It is a strange combination.
But if you like both parts then the game merge it quite well.
The best part of the game is,
It doesn't really force player to excel in any particular elements of game.
You can downplay the part you aren't good and gain advantage in other sections of the game.
Like if you are very good at dodging and shooting, then you could use a light armor fast speed ship armed with few heavy guns to slowly take down SG by shooting their weak spot.
You could always retreat once fuel run low and then send second ship to strike it again.
You can also try to use heavy armour and bigger gun to go head to head, if you design your ship very well, it could take SGs and sustain a manageable danamge.
Doing good strategy movement on map will save you alot of trouble. Make shooting part much easier.
Notice how morale = arcade shooting retry chance.
The more you allow your crew to rest the more life you going to get in arcade shooting mode.
You could also completely dodging most of the combat and just go stealth.
And if you doing good in all aspects of the game then it isn't that hard.
I like how it doesn't try to be just hard by limiting player's options like many games today.
It allows you to beat the game the way you want. A very sand box style game.
Freedom over Difficulty seems to be the design principle of this game.
But yes, I think it is best for people who accept and love the 2D shooting combat instead of treating it as 100% strategy.
The more I played, I love every bit of the game(except the bug), even the landing mini game part is not bad.
Because how you design your ship also affect how easy you going to get the repair bonus through landing.
Not to mention how many time my landing gear was blown off in combat so I need to do hard landing with my rocket engine.
It felt pretty epic to land a half broken ship from a deadly battle.
I will try to design my newer ship with better landing gear and probably some side skirt armour that can be use as emergency landing gear.
And ofc, you can also design your ship without landing gear to reduce weight if your ship never need to go through serious repair.
It is very arcade but they make it connects to other parts of game instead of just being an isolate mini game section of the game like landing in other arcade games such as Ace combat series.
The more I play I prefer this 1v3 shooting combat over all vs all 2d command battle with small tactical map (somethign like airship conquest or master of orion type of game)
Because the biggest problem of those 2D ship battle is distance and small map.
In games like 2D tactical game such as MOO2 or Airship, the combat distance is often too short. There is no tactical maneuver of your battleships.
If the game really want to go for the non-action style battle, I think it is best to follow CMANO or Rule the waves type of game. Where battleship gun shooting range is also beyond visual range and fight directly on the global map instead of a separate tactical battle map.
The 2D shooting combat is very methodological. In a weird way, it reminds me the time I play IL-2.
Where I use 20mm cannon to rip enemy airplane apart. In this game, 100mm and 130mm are wonderful.
You don't want just spray the bullet. You want to position you self and aim for their fuel tank and bridge then use MG to probe a bit, if the trajectory match, then fire the cannon.
You could also use boom and zooom, don't shoot in long range, just dodge then fly pass enemy and only shoot in close range.