Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander Reviews

This game is being presented as a funny little strategy game with a cute and interesting story. And I feel like that's what it is, except for one thing: the strategy. Let me start by saying that this game requires a lot of grinding and can be quite repetitive. Now that alone isn't all that bad, I just always listened to podcasts while playing. But what really made me stop playing was the combat. While there are lots of options, different attacks with nice animations, they don't really make a difference. As long as you have 2-3 ship types in the fleet, you're gonna beat all enemy fleets that are rougly at the same level. No strategising or thinking required. Just repetitive spamming of attacks, over and over again. I had to start a new game because of a bug (morale just constantly dropped, staying at 0 which made the game unplayable. But I haven't seen many bug reports so prob. was just unlucky) and tried to think about my choices, tried to combine different attacks, tried to actually think about what I'm doing but in the end it just felt the same as my first game. Combined with the fact that the enemy ships are basically always the same level as you, which for me really killed the sense of progress, I just couldn't bring myself to finish the game.

[h1]FTL meets XCOM. [/h1] Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander is a space strategy game from Massive Damage. Artefacts of an ancient, highly advanced civilization have been left scattered throughout occupied space. Halcyon 6, a derelict starbase, is one such artefact. Now in the hands of the Human Federation, Halcyon 6 is yours to command and restore, but with several factions around you, including a mysterious alien force, it’s going to be difficult to restore the base and protect nearby human settlements. Visually, Halcyon 6 is fantastic. The pixel graphics are awesome, the menus and UI are great too. The design, though, is what really makes the visual side of things shine. The different factions are all well thought out and they look awesome, plus the different factions all have their own ships which are also very well designed. Halcyon 6’s gameplay consists of several different elements which come together to create one game. Firstly, we have base building a la XCOM. You clear out rooms on the starbase which can then be used to house anything from power generators to ship hangars. Then we have a research tree similar to the one in Civilization: Beyond Earth (though Halcyon 6’s actually makes sense) through which you can unlock new ships, new rooms as well as improve fuel usage etc. Research is carried out instantly but it costs Materials and Dark Matter (two of the three resources in the game, they’re also used to build new ships and rooms though ships and rooms also require a certain number of humans to work on them, more humans can be found at colonies from which you can evacuate them). Fuel is the third resource which is consumed by fleets when you send them out. The game’s hints of FTL come from the different factions and the overall feel and the game’s design. The similarities also extend to the map which is a reasonably large portion of space filled with different sectors. When you send out a fleet and they move around the map is when time moves (though you can also unpause the game to hurry along any construction). Enemies and neutral or friendly ships can only move when time is unpaused so pausing the game can be used as a way to assess what’s going on and plan for any incoming attacks. Combat is turn-based and can be up to 3v3 ships (though if you move to a sector with multiple groups on enemies you’ll have to fight one after the other). You have three different ship classes, each with a corresponding crew member class, there’s: Science, Engineering and Tactical. Each class has specific skills that you can unlock (and level up with your character) and each ship has three default skills as well which also improve when you level up. Skills usually inflict damage on a single target (though there are group attacks as well as buff skills for yourself/team) and they also inflict, exploit or inflict on-self different effects (usually a mixture of the three). Inflicting something generally deals damage over time or has some kind of status effect, for example you can disable a ship for a number of turns or damage the hull which deals a certain amount of damage over a number of turns. Other skills will then exploit these effects to create combos which deal considerably more damage than usual. For example, one of my Science ships can disable sensors which can then be exploited by my Tactical ships to deal considerably more damage than usual. To be effective in combat (and not get your ass handed to you) you’ll need to use these combos as much as possible. Inflict on-self will inflict a negative (occasionally positive) status effect on you. Combat can be very challenging so it’s important to make sure you’re prepared before you can and attack something, especially as you can’t save/quit once you’ve entered combat (though you can at any other time). When you unlock a new crew member slot, you’ll be able to choose between the three classes for what you want. Each crew member has specific ship and ground combat skills that they can unlock later when they level up. Ground combat works in the same way as space combat and occurs when enemies are found after clearing out a room. Your crew members earn experience, and in turn level up, by surviving combat and they’ll sometimes earn bonuses such as a damage increase against certain factions as well. Halycon 6 does have a story and it plays out in a similar way to XCOM. Like with XCOM, you can pick and choose when you want to progress with the story of the currently available first act (act two and three will be added later). The other factions will become more powerful over time but rushing in can be just as bad as taking too long. The story progresses through main missions and side missions. Side missions usually consist of simply protecting a human colony from a fleet of pirates or aliens but there are other tasks you’ll have to complete too, such as defending your starbase from an attacker (incredibly important since the humans on-board will gradually die while you’re being attacked). There are a couple of different storylines running through it so you may receive several main missions at once which usually require a couple of extra steps than a side mission. I won’t go into any more details to avoid spoilers though I will say that the first act already offers quite a lot which is obviously stretched out by the fact you can go through it at your own pace. Completing missions awards you with valuable resources and this is one of the three ways you can get resources in the game. You can also visit human colonies that have resource extraction facilities (fuel, materials and dark matter) which will collect a certain amount of resources for you to collect, once you’ve collected them the colony will begin producing more. The starbase also produces resources though it does this incredibly slowly to begin with, you’ll need to complete research for this to be a viable means of collecting the amount of resources you need. Just like in XCOM and FTL, resource management is INCREDIBLY important. Run out of fuel and you can’t send your fleet out. Run out of dark matter, you can’t repair your ships. Run out of dark matter and materials you can’t build anything new. Run out of everything…well you’re just screwed. Just a couple more things to wrap up. The game is pretty difficult to begin with and you’ll probably die quite quickly but once you’ve got the hang of things it’s a manageable difficulty. The soundtrack is excellent. Controls are basic, you don’t have to use anything other than your mouse but there are also helpful hotkeys. And lastly, despite being an Early Access game I didn’t encounter any bugs while playing it. [h1]Verdict [/h1] Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander is an excellent, well designed, space strategy game with great gameplay, a good amount of content (with more to come) and an interesting story. If you’re a fan of strategy games you’ll definitely like this, even in its Early Access state. [i][url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/lonerangerreviews#curation]Lone Ranger Reviews.[/url][/i] El K.

[h1]It's not like FTL[/h1] People love FTL because of its challanging yet rewarding gameplay with interesting RPG elements and fighting mechanics. Halcyon 6 didn't manage to accomplish it, Firstly, fighting is unreasonably slow, not challenging and not rewarding even at higher difficulty levels than normal. Secondly, leveling up characters isn't satisfying, because nothing really changes except for you get a few more abilities and then you upgrade them. Before you say "well, getting more abilities and upgrading them is character progression by definition". Yes, but in practice, it doesn't matter here. Game bugged out for me once and I entered a fight without my character, so I only had my ship's basic abilities (as if, the ship was flying by itself). And I won, and it was an easy win. See my point? Character progression, while being a neccessary element of the game, remains pointless in practice. [h1]It's not like XCOM[/h1] People love XCOM because of squad customisation, base development and interesting tactical turn-based fighting. In Halcyon 6 base-building Is good, actually, no major complaints. A bit tedious to navigate through at times, but nothing game-breaking. Squad customisation and tactical fighting is not present though. I played with 2 ships for 5 hours straight because frankly, getting more characteres to run new ships (as well as building those new ships) is resource-consuming and there is no real need for it in the first place since fights are very easy anyway. In XCOM you just cannot get by with a small group of troops: you constantly need more, you want to upgrade your squad, you want to try different combinations and see what works best. In Halcyon 6 rolling with Engineer + Scientist + Tactician is your best bet and it's obvious even before you get into your first fight (3 classes - 3 available slots... hmm what do I choose?) And once you get in a fight, you don't need to plan out your actions, because, for starters, it's not really possible due to RNG and enemies acting in an unpredictable fashion. And secondly, you will win the fight easily anyway so why bother. [h1]It is more like Darkest Dungeon[/h1] If you've played Darkest Dungeon, you probably know that it starts fantastic, addicting and all-around fun only to turn into a grindfest after the first 20-30 hours of gameplay. Well, that's actually pretty much how Halcyon 6 is like, except for instead of 20-30 hours of fun you get around 2-3 hours of fun. In Darkest Dungeon you upgrade your base and your "squad" inbetween going to various missions similarly to what Halcyon 6 is all about. Except for, in Darkest Dungeon you have way more classes to choose from and you have various dungeons with different enemies to explore and loot. Instead of various dungeons Halcyon 6 offers you to fight off same goddamn aliens that keep swarming your colonies over and over again. And they don't even drop loot! It is a chore and the game doesn't even try to make it fun. You also have Pirates attacking your base from time to time, which is not really that different from aliens though. It gets a bit different when you get onto story quests, but the proportion between fights with aliens / pirates / other factions is ridiculous. I remember only 1 fight with another faction from my 6 hours of playtime. ONE. I wish I could go off and explore other factions more, but upon return I would have found half my colonies to be destroyed or occupied by aliens, so that wasn't an option. Alien invasions are simple: they open up a portal, immideately send one or two fleets to a local colony and then they keep doing that until you destroy the portal. So you fly over, destroy the portal, then fly around cleaning up the mess they've made, then fly back to base only to realise they have opened yet another damn portal and, yet again, are already swarming your colonies. [h1]Rinse repeat, rinse repeat, rinse repeat. Forever.[/h1] It's so sad. The game has great promise to it. Most flaws I described when comparing Halcyon 6 to FTL or XCOM are completely fine because regardless of them the game has it's own charm. Aliens though. I hate aliens. I wish there was a mod that allows you to tweak the time inbetween alien attacks because it's just unbearable. You keep flying around your Faction cleaning up alien fleets over and over again. Fighting them takes a load of time and gives completely zero joy. [h1]A few kind words about the game[/h1] The game is not terrible, in fact, it could be great! I really liked that you can have different characters of the [u]same class[/u] and they would have different backstories, different unique abilities and personal traits. You have a wide variety of ships to choose from, which is also great. There is a number of factions/races that you get in contact with, they all have their own style of comunication and actually say interesting stuff followed by well drawn animated portraits you see on the telecomunication screen. You can choose how to answer to them and from what it seems, this impacts on how they treat you in the future. After you've developed your base enough, you can actually automate the resource gathering process using drones (many people complained about having to manually gather resources over and over again). I wish, you didn't have to manually install drones though, makes zero sense, but that's besides the point. [h1]Conclusion[/h1] It saddens me that developers put so much time into the game to recieve so many bad reviews by unsatisfied players, because the game actually could be truly amazing. Halcyon 6 just needed a bit more polish before release or a nice patch that fixes game-breaking flaws. The basis for a great game is there, too bad it was ruined by simpliest things. There really are not too many major issues in the game. Unfortunate part is, even though the number of said issues is not great, their impact on the gameplay is.

This review is more for people who are on the fence for purchasing this game, and are looking to get more insight from the reviews. There are a load of reviews comparing this to FTL, but the only similarities that these two games have is that they're both in the space genre. Don't get me wrong - this game mixes the base-building of X-Com with the encounter RNG of Darkest Dungeon. You get to expand your starbase out, while dealing with random encounters of other alien races, pirates, space monsters, etc. It's exciting because even as you're going through the tutorial, you can see the potential for a great game to unfold. Unfortunately, this excitement dries up after an hour of grinding the same planets and battles. The FIRST problem is that the combat in this game is a turn-based JRPG style - not the real-time, systems-based battles of FTL or the tactical RPG of X-Com. Unlike most JRPGs that sport an expansive selection of actions, you have a very limited number of attacks/buffs per character or ship, which means you're spamming the same attack combos each battle. And you will spam these combos many, many times. The SECOND problem is this game is similar to a "clicker" farming genre of mobile app games, because you're stuck shuttling resources between the starbase and systems ALL THE TIME. A system will generate one type of resource, and once it reaches capacity for that resource, an indicator will signify that it's ready for you to send a fleet over to pick it up. You're basically just clicking systems and ferrying resources around for about 1/3 of the game. This sucks! because they've managed to make a compelling character generator (complete with backstories), interesting aliens, dialogue, and mixed it with fantastic music and graphics. Unfortunately, the game falls short of being fun and lands in being super tedious. It reminds me of Cosmonautica - another highly polished space game that at it's core just isn't very fun to play.

[h1] NOT AT ALL LIKE FTL OR XCOM [/h1] Now that we got that out of the way, Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander is a difficult turn based space RPG. You are the reminants of an alliance that was all but destroyed by an unkown foe. Tasked with survivng and eliminating this unkown foe, you upgrade your starbase (Halcyon 6), train crew, gather resources and build ships to pilot in your strugle. Gameplay revolves around a time system. Activities outside of combat take X amount of days to complete, meaning time management is a core part of gameplay. The 3 resources that the game has you gather are mainly gained by visiting locations around the map by sending a fleet to retrieve them (there is travel time in days), winning battles, and finishing quests. These resources are used to upgrade your tech and build new ships. Combat is done in an old school turn based system akin to early Final Fantasy games, be it ground or space combat. Turn order is displayed for you to use for planning out your combat. However, the main flavor of combat comes from combos. Attacks can have two types of modifiers to them that enhance it beyond doing damage to add a status effect on your foe. Some attacks can be used to exploit a particular status effect to do bonus damage and remove said status effect. For example causing a hull breach (light DoT) then attacking with a skill that exploits it, will cause the hull breach to expire immediatly, but the attack will do more damage in return. All in all, its a fun, albeit stressful, game of time and resources management with the flavor of old school turn based combat. If that sounds fun, pick Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander up. 8/10

Yes. Old final fantasy battles with xcom base building, Star Control 2 factions, Star Trek inspiration and good bit chime music. [strike]9.8/10[/strike] Update 8/2017: They're still providing DLC sized free updates. [b]10/10[/b].

Since patch 1.1 - best game I've played for months -gorgeus retro graphics -animations are top notch -great strategy aspect -and base managment -in depth turn based space battles but 1.1 is 1.0 in reality, and everything prior to that should have been flaged as Eearly Acces/was beta quality, grindy, repetitive, tedious gameplay, not to mention save game breaking patches. Let's hope developer learned a lesson - finish youre game before release. But it's a past now, everything was rebalanced, fixed and polished, and 1.1 is a blast to play - highly recommed !

A great sci-fi turned based stratergy game. Reminds me a little of FTL... Pros: +Lovely pixel art +Satisfying combat, each attack feels great +Lots of ship and captain customisation +Base building, clear parts of the space station and then build the rooms of your choice +Plenty of difficulty choices, so play as chilled or intense as you want +A decent amount of interesting story and each captain has their own background +Both ship to ship and ground combat +Easy to play a few minutes or loose yourself for a few hours Neutral: =No major bugs or gliches for me so far, but it does crash everytime I exit the game =Grinding. It's a love or hate situation. Personally I felt that it has just the right amount of grinding for levels/resources, but others may find it a little boring =There are quite a few things that aren't really explained properly. I felt that this added a little sense of mystery to gameplay, but others may find it annoying Negatve -Combat does get somewhat 'samey' after a while. Once you figure out a good strategy, it just becomes a rinse & repeat scenario Overall, I really like this game. I bought it for 50% off in the summer sale but after playing I would have happily payed full price. It's one of those games (as with all great games) that after a bit of playing, you'll need to start a new game to exploit your new-found knowledge. IMO Buy It!! Exploit those hull breaches!!!

XCOM! Master of Orion! Civilization! FTL! I love all of those games, and having them as inspirations gave me great hopes for the game. And, in the beginning, it was good. For a while. There's a science system with a tech tree! There is a base that you get to build up (fun!) that looks (and feels) suspiciously similar to the one from XCOM2! There are battle tactics that you can use to "exploit" your enemies' weaknesses! There is a wide(-ish) universe just waiting to be explored! There's some sort of story going on that you get to slowly learn about! But then... it became tedious. The tech tree is 100% linear and gives very few (no?) options, since you'll probably just research everything. Research itself seems tacked on - you simply "buy" the techs (instantly) with the exact same resources you use for everything else. The buildings you can build in the starbase are extremely limited, and they sometimes produce unexpected results. (For example, you can build two Dark Matter Multipliers, but if you assign an officer to one, both get locked out.) Tactics become "solved" pretty quickly - you find a good rotation of "inflict status condition, exploit status condition, utility skill, repeat" and I never had to change it. Imagine doing the same skills over and over again for 20 hours. Awful. I wished I could have put the battles on fast-forward. There isn't actually anything to _do_ in the universe except battles (boring, as per above) and resource gathering (even more boring, but thankfully you only have to do that for the first few hours). The story has few details, is very linear, and fairly forgettable. Interactions with AI groups seemed meaningless. :/ In fact, after the first two hours, after I had learned all the systems... there wasn't anything else new in the game. It was the same things, over and over again. Tech up, build some very similar but now larger ships, fight enemies with the same strategies except their hit points are higher and so is my damage output. But because I'm a completionist (gotta finish!), I spent an addition 25 hours grinding through it, hoping for more. Unlimited re-playability? Not at this point. I could not play this game again, as it is clear from the mid-late game that there wasn't anything more to it. I really want to like this game. And it deserves somewhat decent, but not amazing, reviews. If I had stopped after 2 hours, I would have also given it a great review. But I have to not recommend this game as it does not actually fulfill its promises past the first hour or two. There's room to grow. There's lots of promise. It's just not there yet. It's a good start, but it's like being promised a trilogy and only getting half of the first book. I think this will get there, someday, but it's just not there yet.

I originally wrote a negative review for this game, then I played it again on a harder difficulty. I discovered that almost all of my complaints went away on a higher level, and I'm having tons of fun with it now. I recommend going a level harder than you think you should, because if the game is too easy it eventually becomes a grindey snoozefest halfway through. On higher levels the enemy is constantly breathing down your neck and you're forced to prioritize your actions and plan ahead. Don't be afraid, the game doesn't become frustrating, it just gets more interesting. By far the best aspects of the game are the graphics and the writing. The overall presentation is extremely charming and witty. The game has problems, but when you beat the game you get a message from the devs saying they have plans to fix the issues and spice up the gameplay. I've decided to trust them. If the devs deliver what they promise, this could be a classic on par with FTL, but it's not quite there yet as of this writing.