A True Classic of Adventure gaming
Star Control 2... Even today a truly amazing game. Using a combination of an amazing Story, addicting game play mechanics And a nice visual presentation, Star Control 2 offers an experience that even today has fans crying out for a sequel.
You begin this game returning to Earth from a distant colony that has been separated from outside news for some amount of years. Upon returning to Earth, you find that the Humans, and the rest of the Alliance of Free Stars, didn't fare so well against the Ur-Quan and they're "Battle Thralls". Now behind an Impenetrable Slave Shield, All of humanity (save you and the Starbase in orbit) is trapped on they're own planet.
The Goal of the game at first is to free Earth... But that goal will expand later on.
Throughout the game, you'll find yourself mining resources for new ships, making Friends and enemies with the neighboring Aliens and Fighting in Ship to Ship Combat, All while trying to complete your objective of saving the Universe from the Ur-Quan.
The Aliens in this game, while maybe not original or realistic, each have a ton of back-story and play their stereotypes really well. You'll find stereotypes of just about every culture or mindset that immediately comes to mind, and the English voice acting of "The Ur-Quan Masters" Remake works very well for all of them.
The Sound and Music in this game are... adequete. Nothing special about it, but everything works well. However, The "Ur-Quan Masters" remake that was released includes some good Fanmade remixes of the musical score making for an even greater experience.
Combat is a simple addicting Top-Down space shooter. You get a Primary and Secondary weapon for each ship, and have to move around with simplistic space physics. The Opposing AI is prone to some "cheap" tactics, as forcing them into colliding with the planet, or using "Spathi-Fu" (Just running away and using the Spathi's reverse firing secondary).
Eventually, your flagship becomes a little too powerful, and you have no reason to use any of the other ships... definitly a bad point in the balancing of this game.
All in all, an excellent game that suffers from a few shortcommings due to the Small staff and presumably small budget.