Forces of Ether Reviews

I was expecting more ground action in this game, but way too much of the gameplay seems to be focused on spaceship battles that are very similar to the 2D arcade games of the 80s such as Asteroids, Moon Cresta, Sinistar, and Galaga. These sections actually ruined the game for me, This is because you are constantly required to travel in a spaceship to reach the next destination that is required to complete a quest. And every time you travel in a spaceship you are surrounded by large groups of enemy spaceships that can completely disrupt your quest by destroying you. Enemy spaceships also take numerous shots to bring down. And when your spaceship is destroyed, you are sent down to the ground on the nearest planet to face hordes and hordes of aggressive enemies who all mad rush and attach to you in large groups. If you die on the ground, you then have to keep refacing the same respawned enemies until you can finally make back to your spaceship. You are then again surrounded by enemy spaceships that can once again bring you down where you will repeat the entire process. I found this to be a very frustrating experience. You can improve your spaceship and character by collecting ether from killing enemies. But this takes quite a bit of time to finally notice any difference in gameplay. You can also improve your stats through traders. But you must find them on the map, which is surrounded by tons and tons of enemies. And when you do find a trader, the items to improve your spaceship are very expensive, which would require you to spend a ton of time grinding to kill enemies for more money. On land the quests seem to be very similar with visiting a contact on planets that all look the same and asking for work then killing enemies and returning to that contact for a reward. There is also a ton of dialogue to read in this game, there is no voice acting, and there are also no difficulty settings. The frame rate also drops every time the game auto-saves with no way to disable auto-save. Overall, this game started out pretty well but eventually became more frustrating than fun. I therefore cannot recommend it.