Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters is an open world adventure game set in a sci-fi world. It’s actually a port of a game called Star Control II that was originally released in 1992. The team behind this port are Pistol Shrimp, who are the developers and the publisher. The release date of this port was February 19th 2024.
When looking into Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters, I was intrigued to see how well the game stood the test of time. However, upon playing, I was let down quite a bit. There are a few ways it still remains a solid game but the ways it doesn’t really hurt the experience. If you where a fan of the game back then then I can see you being excited for this but anyone else not really.
Exploring The Many Planets
Most of your time with this game will be exploring the vast open world of the game. This exploration accounts for about 90% of the game and can get a bit boring, so I would recommend taking breaks. It is cool though how each small dot you see on the map is somewhere you can go to, it’s that full.
The controls for exploring are in tank control style. I really personally dislike this style of controlling but on top of this the ship can go really fast making it hard to land on a planet. There where several times I had to spend some time trying just to land on a planet. This is even more frustrating knowing that there is a time limit the game puts on you. Most people will not complete the game in one run due to this pressuring timer. For me, this timer goes against what the game wants you to do…. spend time exploring.
When exploring, you can land on planets and salvage materials from them as well as encounter other lifeforms. Materials are important to collect as they give you currency to use for fuel and ship upgrades. Speaking of which, you can upgrade and add many things to your ship to allow you to have an easier time while exploring. It’s essential you do this if you want to get far. While, the encounters with other lifeforms provide you with vital information, which you will need to make note of in order to get through the game.
Exploring is what this game is all about and there is a lot to explore, but sadly you feel rushed and need to put up with the controls.
PRIORITY OVERRIDE
The other main part to this game is it’s combat, though realistically, this accounts for about 10% of the game. Sometimes, when you explore the open world of the game, other lifeforms can attack you. Though, other times, battles can happen through specific story moments. The random encounters seemingly give you a chance to try and be friendly with the other lifeform, though I only tried to do this once and a battle ended up happening anyway. So, I am unsure if you can actually avoid battle.
While in combat it’s your job to come out on top and be the last ship standing. Before entering the combat arena you get to choose which ship to deploy into battle, from the ones you have collected. Each ship plays differently so choose well. Once you chose a ship, you are then able to start the encounter. The tank controls really hurt the combat for me as it’s quite hard to manoeuvre around and shoot well. There is an auto combat mode, though this takes away any fun you could of had with combat away and basically makes the game just about exploring. I put up with the controls for most battles, as I still wanted some variety in gameplay.
I do want to make note that this game does feature online pvp but I didn’t get to test it out myself. As well as, this there is a mode that lets you test out different ships in a series of battles against an AI opponent. I found this to be a useful tool to get the hang of different ships and figure out strategies to fight them.
There are some neat ideas here but combat is hurt by the controls and makes it not very enjoyable.
Colorful Planets, Colorful Characters
The writing for this game is pretty good. The characters have tons of personality and feel really well made. I also really like the dialogue choices you get when talking with them, some of choices have great humour. There are also choices that do influence what happens in the story, so it’s important to choose well. This allows you to have quite a different experience on multiple playthroughs and to have a more personalised experience in general.
The narrative as a whole is quite interesting and made me want to know more. It doesn’t feel overpowering with information but it has enough substance to it to get your invested. The main goal of the game stays the same the whole way through, but what you find out between that is intriguing. I do wish there was more narrative as a whole though, since what is here is quite good.
The writing helps get you through the game for sure, I particularly like characters of the game.
Superb Sci-fi Style
The presentation for this game is another good aspect to it. The animation and artwork were absolutely stellar for the time and still hold up well. All the characters look particularly full of life and I love the 3d effect to them. You can tell a lot of hard work is in this area of the game for sure.
I want to also shout out the soundtrack here. It’s really good. It fits the vibe of the game really well and is full of jamming tracks. I can see myself listening to some of these tracks even outside the game. The tracks that aren’t as jamming still fit the theme really well. The hyperspace theme is my go to track, can listen to it on repeat.
Conclusion
Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters is a game definitely of it’s era, showing the very origins of open world games. It would have been nice to see some changes for this version to modernise it, but it is a very faithful port and that’s what the aim was from what I gather. I respect this, but it makes me sad knowing I could have enjoyed this game more if they hadn’t been so faithful. I feel this is a great nostalgia trip for anyone who played the original game though. It is probably like this as these people were in mind first and foremost.
The game is free so you can always give it a try yourself and see what you think. If you would like to do that you can go here.
