Starpoint Gemini Review

It’s already been out for months, but it’s never too late to take a look at a game, right?  With that, Iron Hammers reviews the RPG/tactical sim space hybrid Starpoint Gemini, giving it a 3/5.

Starpoint Gemini centres on you, captain Jared Hunt, and your ship the Amargosa (you can customise your character if you wish but I chose to stick with the original). The story has a slightly complicated start but basically you’ve been extracted from a stasis rift in the game’s present day. Your captain still believes that you’re 20 years in the past and fighting a now resolved war, however a new war has sprung up in the Gemini system. I must say I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the storyline overall, though this starting point does raise an issue for me if you’re viewing Starpoint as an RPG. You’re meant to be Jared Hunt, who is at first bewildered by his new surroundings but as a player you have much more information about the present day and little about Jared’s past war. This isn’t a big problem for the story as a whole but when you want to connect with the character you’re playing in an RPG setting you’re left with very little ground to stand on. This small issue with the intro is symptomatic of a real issue when trying to play the game as an RPG, you’ll actually be playing the ship not the captain, but I managed just fine after getting my head around it, but in a way it doesn’t really live up to it’s billing as an RPG. Having said all that I did quite enjoy the story and the writing was enjoyable and moved the plot along nicely. Little Green Men are based in Croatia and one thing games designed in Eastern Europe are sometimes troubled by is a lack of any decent voice acting. However, Starpoint’s voice acting is pretty good. The characters are heavily accented but they really dont feel out of place in the space setting, I guess Eastern European accents in Space is a pretty standard sci-fi fare. Like I say, I enjoyed the story of Starpoint and the characters you encounter have a nice diversity of attitude toward you, being brought 20 years into the future you’d assume you’d be well received, but the ‘˜revenants’ (people extracted from stasis rifts) are often mistrusted or straight out hated.