Starbound | a Review
originally published on 26/08/2020;
Hello everyone, I am the last of his race, but not really, G.E.M.Simov, a fellow from Earth come down to talk about Starbound.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it. Also, I am a gameplay designer and a writer so I got the credentials to talk shit.
Gameplay
Starbound is a 2D game, a sidescroller, if one will, that has many elements of Minecraft incorporated into it, meaning that, for the most part, it features environments which can be destroyed, turning into blocks afterwards, and then these blocks can be placed down with the goal of reshaping the world.
On top of the Minecraft inspired sandbox that Starbound features, it also has combat, very lackluster RPG elements, survival elements, and a lot of exploration. Let’s get off on the right foot and talk about the sandbox-y nature of Starbound.
As I mentioned, there are many environments that can be destroyed by the player, and then turned into parts for the player to use in building their own environments or small constructions. Unlike Minecraft, however, which only allows for the controlled destruction of one block at a time, Starbound features the ability to destroy up to 4 blocks at once, right at the beginning of the game. Later on the amount of blocks to be destructible at once becomes more and more incredible, reaching 25 blocks that can be destroyed at once.
That addition allows the player to really begin processes, such as terraforming or building, much more efficiently and much quicker than one would in Minecraft, or Terraria, as in the latter games the player needs to technically reach the end game to have a solid go at terraforming and building at max efficiency, while, in Starbound, the player can reach maximum efficiency before getting anywhere even remotely close to the end of the game.
There are also other ways to upgrade the player’s ability to destroy things, such as increasing the speed at which blocks are destroyed, increasing the range of the tool used to destroy blocks, adding functionality to destroy (and pick up) liquids. All of those can be obtained after completing the first quest in the game, and there is no need to reach for the end game.
As I mentioned, the game offers combat. The combat in Starbound is dreadfully surface level in its complexity and in the mechanical opportunities the player has. There are two types of weapons, which determine how the player fights - ranged weapons and melee weapons. Ranged weapons require energy to fire a single round, but offer the advantage of range, while melee weapons do not require energy to be swung about, but need the player to be in the face of the enemy.
The combat goes as follows:
1 - Player sees an enemy.
2 - Player attacks enemy.
3 - Player avoids an attack from the enemy by jumping or blocking.
4 - Repeat points 2 and 3 until the enemy is dead.
At first, it does not appear that bad, but it is. There are limitations on what the player can do in combat - such as how many times they can swing their weapon. Even if they are using a melee weapon, there is still a limit to how much fighting the player can do - as swinging three times in a row, with almost all melee weapons, imposes a halt in animation, which renders the player unable to do anything remotely associated to combat for at least a second. That one second of dead time is very disruptive to the flow of the game, and I constantly found myself wondering why was that even a thing.
If the player is using ranged weapons, then they just shoot once, then they wait an arbitrary amount of time (the fire rate of the weapon) after which they can shoot again, but they need to be VERY careful, otherwise their energy might get depleted. When the player’s energy is depleted, they need to wait for a few moments, being unable to use energy, after which it quickly fills back up.
The combat left me feeling very unsatisfied, as there are a very small number of additions that the game makes to it. The player can get an upgrade that allows them to dash in a direction, which can help with combat. The player can get an upgrade that allows them to jump twice, or even thrice, which can help with combat. Even if those things can help with combat, they only aid in making avoiding attacks easier.
The combat is dreadful, though. The hit feedback the player gets is very unsatisfying, the enemies do not react in almost any way to being stricken by any kind of weapon, the difficulty “curve” of the game makes enemies intensely thick bullet sponges or pin cushions, which takes even more fun out of the experience, and the combat is the same no matter which enemy the player is fighting. It grows stale and boring as soon as the player is done killing their fifth enemy.
The poorly implemented RPG elements in Starbound, which I can almost swear are there only for the sake of having the “RPG” tag on the Steam Store, are a reason for this. Instead of leveling up, or having a way to make the player characters, themselves, stronger, Starbound has armor and weapons which grow in power as the player finds and uses rarer metals. The creation and equipping of those weapons and armor are the RPG elements of Starbound.
There are no choices that the player has to make, because there are no choices the player can make. There is no uniqueness to the player character, no difference in either play-through, as the player character is everything at the same time, and is always the same character - that one survivor from Earth. The player character does not get any stronger, only the items they wield do, which means there is no progression, for the player character, from point A, that being the start of the game, to point B, the end of the game. There are no stat points, there are no skill points, the upgrades are all mostly based around utility and do not offer any interesting combat changes.
There are also ‘quests’, which are boring, mundane tasks that repeat on an infinite loop, with the rewards they offer being loot boxes that might give the player something useful, or might give the player hot garbage. The quests in Starbound are as interesting as the soles of my feet - meaning they are very boring after being looked at once, as they do not change.
The survival elements of Starbound are based around a hunger mechanic, which can be completely circumvented by picking a lower difficulty level (which has no effect on the strength on the enemies, mind you), and, instead, changes the character’s stats. On the lowest difficulty level the player character dies and gets reborn, has no hunger bar and has a grand old time. On the medium difficulty the player character dies, drops all of their items, loses money to get reborn, and has a hunger bar. On the last difficulty, which should not exist in a game with as egregious a combat system as Starbound, the player can only die once, and then everything is kaput, its over, no more character X.
The difficulty scaling of Starbound is also quite atrocious. It is based around what kind of Sun the planet, upon which the player is, has. A certain type of Sun makes the game nice and easy, offering enemies with around 25 to 50 health, who can be killed in 3 or 4 attacks and need 5 and up attacks of their own to kill the player. That is reasonable difficulty. However, someone decided that, instead of having a linear progression, Starbound should have insanity on a plate.
The planets become more and more deadly, as enemies need less than 5 attacks to kill the player, some even needing only 2, and require the mauling of a thousand men to bring down, having health pools of up to 500. With the horrible combat system in place, this is not good nor is it fun. There are boss fights, but they boil down to - dodge everything until the boss can be hit a few times, then do it again. They are the very opposite of fun, incredibly frustrating, and buggy.
The absolute worst thing about Starbound is the presence of latency. The game is always online, featuring the patented scum-fuck-bastard company move of making sure there is always on DRM so that the player literally cannot play if they are not connected to the internet. The game is miserably horrible in the aspect that it makes the game have input lag, have sections where the player moves a bit and then stops moving, even though the animation for them moving is still playing, while waiting for something, have sections where the player moves forward and then is immediately teleported back to a recently occupied spot as if the player’s PING is too high.
This is unacceptable and games should cease these practices at once. Do not give me latency in my single player game, you imbeciles.
All those things pile on together to turn Starbound into a horrible experience for a player who wants to go through progression, get stronger, and beat the big bad boss while enjoying any kind of reasonable difficulty.
The only saving grace are the building and destruction of things. The player has the potential to make themselves a nice village, make themselves a set of wonderful buildings, and these things make the game very enjoyable. Other than that, Starbound is a horrible mess. 1/3
Presentation
Starbound, as mentioned, is a 2D sidescroller. It is also made up of pixels, much like both its inspirations, Minecraft and Terraria. The way in which Starbound presents itself to the player is one that allows for a lot of detail. While in Terraria the player character is small, the player character in Starbound is about two times bigger than the player character in Terraria, leading into more detail that can be observed and more customisation that can be done.
The environments of Starbound are all interesting, well crafted, those of them which are not random, and, those which are random, all have very good algorithms to mostly keep into the realms of “this looks really good”, rather than the horrid mess of the “bingle bounce let’s pounce” that produces wondrous vistas of blocks just floating in the air, Minecraft style.
The blocks, themselves, are all nice. The textures on them appear to pop, they look good, they seem to all fit in the art direction of Starbound, which, I dare say, is “something cozy”, because most of everything ends up looking cozy, if built using a wide variety of materials. Of course, there are other materials which end up looking quite naughty if combined and used to make something eerie or spooky.
Starbound’s musical score is very pleasant, quite pleasant for the ears that hear it. The tracks are quiet, somewhat melancholic as they attempt to encompass the magnitude of space, which is so awe-inspiring it makes one experience the sublime, which is quite melancholic in its own right.
The sound effects in Starbound are neither bad nor good, overall. There are some really well done effects, but then there are also some that I really dislike.
Overall, Starbound has quite the enjoyable, well done presentation that left me thinking to myself that, if only the Gameplay was better, I would want to play it for longer periods of time. 3/3
Story
Starbound tells the tale of a member of a group of people, founded on Earth, which had, as a goal, to keep the peace in the universe and deal with criminals. Space Police, generally. At the start of the game, Cthuhlu’s autistic cousin, the Destroyer, destroys the Earth, and the main character survives, just as they were about to graduate into being a proper Space Police goon.
The game revolves around the player character, being that last Space Police dude, running about the universe in search of a way to stop the destroyer. The story is very lackluster, although there is a bit of lore that helps it stand on all fours, barely.
I could not care any less about the story than I already did, though. It was not interesting, nor was it satisfying to end the game. The lore was interesting to uncover, but the more I found out about it, the less sense things made. Yes, of course, these creatures with intelligence, comparable to that of a 6 year old child, somehow grasped space travel and swarmed the universe, almost destroying all other life-forms in it. Excuse me, what?
Or these people, who believe in some fucked up God, and still perform the ritual of THROWING A PERSON OFF A 200 METER TALL TOWER, because that way the corpse ascends to meet with God! And these fellows also have attained space travel. There is a pretty pleasant 1984 reference, another race, which is a bit more reasonable, in its possession of space travel. Then there is another one that is bad.
ROBOTS WHO ARE LITERALLY INCAPABLE OF PROGRESSING, culturally or technologically, past the medieval times, MAKING CUSTOM SPACE SHIPS!!! What the hell? No, bad game! Bad! Nonsensical lore! Very bad!
Those are the few races that are playable. They have lore, which makes very little sense. Then there are the tens of other races, which have no lore and make no sense, at all! Starbound had the potential to be something awe-inspiringly great, with its story, but, alas… It failed. 1/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? No. NO! How does anyone expect from me to give an always on DRM pile of steaming trash the legendary point? I’m not giving it to Starbound, no, thank you. 0/1
Conclusion
5/10. An average game that gets a bit too much love from other folks. Play it on the lowest difficulty and build. Not worth it for much else, really. Could recommend it to fans of Minecraft or Terraria, but then why wouldn’t they play either Minecraft or Terraria instead?
On the wall of shame, I hang this game. So much potential, lost. Alas, I can’t save it.