After playing for about 400 hours, I realized what I want to say in my review.

The game is fun for two primary reasons (1) the combat (2) the loot and progression systems.

The combat is quite enjoyable. It’s simple but fun. I strongly recommend a gamepad, enough so that I don’t recommend that you play the game at all if you stick with a keyboard. It is very satisfying melting a ship with a laser, or sending a barrage of missiles at the enemy. The variety of weapons categories, let alone types is huge.

When you start off your ship is “weak”. It has default gear, you’re level 1 so you have no damage and health boost etc.

As you keep playing you level up gaining 10% damage and 10% health per level. A ship that is level 100 has 1000% hp and 1000% dmg. Much more powerful.

Along the way you collect loot from fights, craft it, buy it from shops etc. This may be normal quality of an item you can’t craft, or it may be a rare or epic version of an item you do have. There is a large variety of modifiers. A missile can have 50% decreased cooldown, 50% decreased energy cost, 100% damage, 200% damage and 50% increased cooldown, 50% range, 100% projectile speed and 25% less damage, 80% reduced projectile weight, that’s what I can think of off the top of my head. Each is a huge improvement over the normal item, but all of them for vastly different reasons. The number of combinations and loadouts is enormous.

You can create some very unique ships:
* You can create a worm that shoots out a black hole to pull in ships to you, then you can use a health-stealing fusion beam to suck up it’s hp while healing yourself.
* You can create a missile skirmisher with very high speed and maneuverability. It can teleport next to the enemy, unleash a barrage of missiles, and teleport away before taking any damage.
* You can create a super versatile interceptor that zaps the enemy with high damage lightning.
* You can use emp torpedos to rob the enemy of their energy, preventing them from firing back
* You can create a drone carrier that is slow moving but hold enough drones that they can fly out and obliterate virtually any enemy.
* You can create a scout that stealths up to an enemy, fires all of its cannons, and then self-detonates for a high damage kamikaze attack
* You get the idea - I could go on for a while - it taps into your creative builder side of your brain to come up with new and better ships to overcome new and stronger enemies.

And that is why I recommend this game so much. If any of the above sounds awesome to you, you will enjoy this game even though it can be “grindy” at times. You’re not playing it for the end-game, you’re playing because you enjoy the combat and the possibilities of what you can create and how strong you can become. You can also play the mobile version for free if you aren’t sure if you will like the game. Within 15 minutes you'll know.