Ceres Reviews

The audio sliders don't work and just blast full volume, completely drowning out voice over, the UI seems to only scale menu elements while ingame UI remains too small on a 4k monitor, there didn't seem to be a tutorial of any description, not even pop-up text boxes, there are rebindable keys but only for some controls - if you want to pan the camera with wasd for example you're SoL. Oh and apparently I hit level 5, but the only way I know that is because there's a steam achievement for it, the game didn't bother telling me. Terrible

The game's interface is sadly anything but intuitive. When the game seems to freeze but you can still move cursor and interface stuff around, press the space button to unpause, because it has gone into a pause and you cannot do much when it's paused. Te tutorials seem kinda clumsy because of that. Sadly the controls are kinda unpractical and are also seem quite unreactive most of the time (either that or the ship's crew does what it wants and ignores orders as soon as combat starts). The tutorial seems a bit bugged since most of the time it deactivates the control menu and no button press can get it back in, even when the tutorial text says "press this symbol". So i guess it may be a bug or some interface error ? I'll check back in a few patches.

Couldn't even make it through the tutorial without constantly encountering problems.

I very much enjoyed playing "nexus - the jupiter incident" and was very happy to see, that this kind of game has a rebirth with Ceres. Ceres is a very deep tactical game with tons of possible tactics with different type of ships. You can modify your ships very nicely with different modules and together with the huge amount of possible ships you can try more or less anything you want. Pro: - very deep tactical game. - many different ships and modules/weapons - perk/skills for captains,AI and crew - board, hack or schredder the enemy to pieces - trade, bounty hunt, explore or be a humble miner (to some extent) Con: - trying to maneuver in combat is a bit tricky (micromanagement) - graphics are a little bit old/simple, but i find them very appaeling anyway - there are some bugs/glitches left, but they are minor. for beeing developed mostly from one coder, this is really great.

Very deep, very detailed tactical game with very deep, very detailed character, crafting, ship, customisation, mining, looting mechanisms... I liked it. I always waited games like this one... Yes, it is not an AAA game from a big game company... But the trick is that... You cant get a detailed game like this one, from a monsterous game company... They just want suck the money fast, so they create same games, with different graphics and stories, over and over... But, at the end, they are same games... same details, same mechanics, same, same, same... You can get a game with this detail level, only from a "dedicated- one person-idealistic-young developer", and of course, you know the story... The game is so detailed, so good, so dreamy for core players but not for the casual mainstream players... And game will not sold too much, so the developer and the distrubutor have to change the next project to less detailed, more mainstream, more casual game... A great game, not for everyone but core strategy/tactics/RPG gamers.

The good: - System Designs are well thought out, robust, and add depth to the game. - Concept is great: Squad/Small Fleet in space (been waiting for something like this for awhile). The bad: - The art style falls into that awkward category of games that look old but don't pull it off in some charming way. - Character portraits look like they were made in EVE Online in 2003. - It's difficult to get into without going through the tutorial which is bland and more or less like reading a manual. The ugly: - Precise navigation feels impossible. I can only guess I'm doing something wrong, whether in map mode or in 3d space, I can't seem to get my ships to arrive at the right x,y,z coordinates without major headaches. - Interaction with objects is difficult as well. Non-ship interactible objects seem to be the worst offenders. - NPC Ships can (and will) follow you across the map. While I don't generally mind that idea, it only leads to frustration. One time I was trying to read quest text, and a bunch of little drones were swarming me, so I bolted away, then started reading the text again. They followed and blew me up. Several hours lost since my previous auto save. Another time I had traveled to the main space station. I was docked with it, changing loadouts when I was attacked and destroyed by... Well I have no idea what it was, but it wasn't fun. Final thoughts: - I'd be more excited about the game if it were early access so the "ugly" issues could get addressed, I don't feel this game reached the quality level that you would expect for an actually released title. (indy or not) - If you can get over the old-style art and initial learning curve, there could be dozens of hours of fun. - If the game were $10 I'd probably give it a thumbs up, but only for those who are system design nerds and/or are into sci-fi ship management.

When i first found the game and played the demo for 5 mins, my first thoughts were "why isn't this in the top sellers?" I played EVERYTHING since homeland, and it left me wanting. There was always something missing. When i first started battle, i did bite off more than i can chew. Usually i would just have given up. But i was playing Ceres - so i turned my armor towards the heavy hitters, where it was thickest, moved all power from weapons into engines and systems, and commanded the crew to focus on repairing the most critical parts of the ship, while preparing to jump the hell out of here. I send all the drones to attack, hoping they would catch some of the fire, and took over control of the ship manually - there were heavy slugs incomming, and someone had to dodge them after all. With my mineral resources used up by the repairs, the energy almost out and modules in critical damage, i got just enough space in between me and the bulk of the enemy fleet, to speed up for the jump, except for the pesky frigate that was fast enough to catch up with my ship. But this was one of the possibilities, that i had accounted for. Some hours before all this mess, i was sitting, docked, at the nearest station, browsing through the shopping list for the latest ship AI, that would give me just the right edge. Selling off a large laser, that i was saving for my next ship, i decided to buy the most costly AI - i was a Cyber-mechanic after all, and preferred hacking skills over pure firepower. Who would have known at that time, that those hacking skills would allow me to disable the ship of my nemesis, saving my ship and crew in the battle to come...

First I have to say that I really want to like the game. And I certainly want to support the developer. But I make the review for customers like me. Its really hard to find a game to compare Ceres with. According to the developer it has been inspired by Homeworld. But in Homeworld you just do one fixed mission after the other. In Ceres you have a whole solar system to explore. So its like a mix of Homeworld and Nexus: The Jupiter Incident and a touch of Eve-Online in an Open-World setting. While this is in principle a good thing the execution lacks some basic things which make the game pretty hard to play (at least from my point of view). I did the tutorial and double clicked on the instrucotrs ship as it requested from me and my ship launched some missiles. The instructor fired back and my "mission" was over. I left the game frustrated for some weeks and came back. Tried the tutorial again. Got stuck somewhere and left again. Tried 3rd time after some weeks and it hung somewhere but I could solve it in the end. So from my point of view the tutorial leaves much to be desired. Then I tried a normal game. There was a large "level" with coulds, asteroids and stuff. I killed some pirates with my starter ship and followed the mission. After finding a destroyed station I tried to approach it to make the requested scan. The ship flew 3 times around it, collided with an asteroid nearby and it took some minutes until I was finally in the right position to do the scan. Did not know how to proceed so I decided to investigate the wormhole nearby. Accidentally double clicked it and my missiles started to attack it (a wormhole!). When I came close 4 alien ships appeared and quickily ended me. So you see this game is a bit rough around the edges. Especially the user interface is one of the worst I have seen in a game so far (and I have seen alot). The controls are unresponsive (giving a flight direction with double right click works 1 out of 10 times). There is no information about your targets (health bar, faction etc.). So you don't know who you shoot at and why. I would have liked a list of points of interest (missions, discoveries) where i could quickly navigate to without searching 3d space. I had no clue how many loot is there to collect by the drones. I have not tried fleet command since I just had the starter ship but when I can hardly tell one ship what to do how am I supposed to control several of them? I had never the feeling I know what I do, it was more like try this and that. So I was simply lost in the complexity and had no real guidance. I'm sure when one learns the ropes and quirks of the game it is fun and interesting. But a game must be accessible from the beginning to investigate the player with it. When it "prevents" the player from playing it does not a good job. I don't know if its just me and wether I'm "spoiled" by easier games or plain silly. But I could not grasp the game to a level where I could be confident with playing and enjoy it. I just fought the UI and thats sad for me. Because I think its a pearl of a game just unecessarily difficult to control and to get into. So if you are a fan of spacegames or you like to figure things out and can handle a hard UI you should give it a try. But I think most people will be frustrated with the game. Thus a negative review albeit I really like the concept. Note: I play Steam in offline mode and thus my time played displayed is wrong (it seems to count only when online). I should have played around 4 hours now.

[b]The Bad:[/b] [list] [*][b]Bugs, and lots of them.[/b] Most of them aren't game-breaking, but they range from annoying to downright obnoxious (e.g., duplicate "outlines" when in tactical mode, formation bugs that prevent you from placing ships properly, drones stuck hovering ~100m off your ship that won't return, mods that stop working, repair systems showing offline even when idling at shipyard with no damage, etc.). I did encounter one bug on the final mission that did break my game, and reloading from saves didn't resolve it. GG I suppose. [*][b]Poor Optimization[/b] Generally the game performs well, but send out 20-30 drones, or turn on tactical mode with active scan up during a larger fight, and I've found the game will often slow to a crawl. There also seems to be an issue where the game becomes painfully slow regardless. My only recourse has been to save/load which fixes it for a time. [*][b]Ship Control[/b] It's VERY difficult to manage your ships properly aside from pausing and issuing orders one by one. The fleet formations don't work very well, and something as simple as jumping to a location or ordering your fleet to follow something will cause untold numbers of collisions, to the point I almost lost one of my battlecruisers during a fight before I realized two of my ships were tangled in a dance of death. [/list] [b]The Mediocre:[/b] [list] [*][b]Not Early Access[/b] I know, I KNOW! In the age of early access letdowns, I too hope the next person to say "this game has potential" dies in a fire as much as the next guy, but this game [b]does[/b] have potential, and if it were in early access I'd definitely recommend watching how it turned out for anyone even remotely interested. Unfortunately, it's in a relase state so I'm uncertain how much effort is still going into it. [*][b]Mediocre Story/Voice Acting[/b] To each his own here, and while I consider myself pretty forgiving, the story/voice acting are both very underwhelming. The story overall is your typical [spoiler] save the human species [/spoiler] trope which is fine, but it's telling is mediocre at best. [/list] [b]The Good:[/b] [list] [*][b]Customization[/b] One of the places this game really shines is how much customizing you can do on your ships. It's [i]almost[/i] too much for me, because I got OCD about that shit, and spent way too long on it. XD [*][b]Boarding Mechanics[/b] While it needs a little balancing (boarding and capturing a ship is too easy to accomplish once you figure it out), it's incredibly satisfying to snag a top tier ship in a fight where you managed a lucky hack and if you miss your next hack you're very likely to get obliterated before you can successfully capture the disabled monster in front of you. Epic stuff. [*][b]Combat[/b] The combat is fun, to a point. It becomes slightly monotonous later in the game when you're fielding a fleet than can wreck an entire zone even if they rushed you all at once. Still, firing a beam of megadeath right through an enemy frigate is absurdly cathartic. Overall I enjoyed it. [*][b]Sounds/Music[/b] The sounds and music, while not top notch, fit the theme well and add to the atmosphere. They won't be winning any awards for it, but that doesn't mean they're not enjoyable. [*][b]Graphics[/b] This area I considered placing in mediocre, but I can't bring myself to. Yes, it's what you're thinking, it's exactly because the game is indie that I consider them good. There really aren't any issues with them, and while it's easy to make space beautiful, they're still good for what they are. [/list] [b]Final Thoughts[/b] The game could do with some polish and bug fixes. I realize it's just the small (I think one-man) dev team working incredibly hard and I respect that, but that should never be used as an excuse. Besides, I voted with my wallet here, and I sincerely hope the guy behind this goes on to make bigger and better worlds. Overall, buy this game if you're a fan of the genre and are a patient person. Just remember to save often, lest the bugs eat you. If you're on the fence, or are not a forgiving person, either wait til it's on sale or pass on it. Either way I recommend following the team behind it, there's clearly some talent there. [b]Potential FAQ[/b] Q: "But why did you put "the bad" up front if you're recommending the game?" A: "Because I want people to know what they're getting themselves into. It takes effort to look past those issues and still enjoy this for what it is." Edit: Formatting

From what I could experience in the first 10 hours of game play its clear this title has a lot of potential. The graphics are good without being too demanding so heavy fighting hardly slows down at all, making for some seriously nasty battles. It feels balanced and the ship modification adds a real personal feel to what I do and how I play the game. The only time I failed at a mission so far was due to the tricky nature of disabling a ship without destroying it, as you need lasers or boarding drones which turned into a bit of a game of hide in the bigger ship's blind spots. The learning curve can be a little hard but if you played and loved games like Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, Freelancer & Independence War, then this game is right up those lines. For the new players, heres a few quick things I learned that were the most useful starting out: [olist] [*] Create a group for your ships with ctrl+F1-F4 to make fleet orders easy, else you will have a lot of trouble with collisions and having to give orders multiple times. [*] Double right-click is your friend, it tells your ship(s) to fly in a given direction relative to themselves until told otherwise. [*] Nav points / points of intrest are the best way to travel. Full of loot? Just set a point of intrest where you are, then just order your ships to jump to the nearest station. Its faster than normal speed and your ships WONT CRASH enrout! [*] Turrets are picky, make sure you dont buy a FIXED weapon (instead of a turret) or the wrong size for the mounts on your ship. Its a costly mistake to make. [*] Repairs are a big deal, so think about having a ship just for utility drones if you dont have any. They can fix as well as mine for the minerals used to repair your fleet, plus you need them to grab more booty! [/olist] As with any game, there are bugs and issues to be sure but so far none have been game breaking or even all that troubling. A few graphics oddities with the tactical view for instance, or autosaves in the system view getting bugged. Nothing that impacted my enjoyment even a little, so way to go testers and devs! Compared to some reacent big name games, thats actually saying something, keep up the great work.