Starlink: Battle for Atlas (2018)

It is not a bad game. The flight and fight mechanics are simple and easy to learn. Space to planet transitions are well done. Fights are addictive. There are some fights in space, but most of the fighting takes place on the surface. There are seven planets and one moon and all are memorably different. There is not a lot of boring grind and pointless mining for resources.

It looks really very beautiful and the story is even interesting but the gameplay is too slow for me. Campaign is too short, economy and planet management aspect is reduced to occasional fights with legion and outlaws. After campaign ends, there is absolutely nothing to do besides defeating regularly spawned primes.

Intro

Starlink is a third-person shooter in which you play a team of pilots who shoot enemies and collect loot. There are also platforming bits and those puzzles with rotating rings.

The Good

• Almost everything looks nice, especially the planets.
• Gameplay is smooth.
• All inactive pilots earn skill points from some actions.
• The overall visual design is unique enough not to be boring.
• Gravity weapons are pretty neat.
• Decent ship/weapon mods system.

The Bad

• Each pilot has to level up weapons and ships. It's annoying and doesn't make sense commercially because it discourages you from buying more of them.
• No hotkey to swap loadouts (you often have to use specific elemental weapons).
• Some of the planets have annoying objects that attach themselves to your ship and have to be removed manually.
• Travelling takes way too long.
• Stamina meter sprinting.
• Too much grinding even in a 20-30 hour game. Upgrading buildings is such a drag.

The Ugly

Even by Ubisoft standards this game is extremely generic and lazy. Every planet has a handful of plant types that all work the same. Every planet has a handful of big animals that are irrelevant to the game (you can only scan them). Every planet has the exact same buildings. Every planet has the exact same randomly chosen alien people in those buildings.

And they all offer the exact same selection of about five different randomly generated missions. There are really just three non-generic missions. Everything else is always the same. Pirate stronghold ships. Dreadnoughts (enemy stronghold ships). Primes (really big monsters). Extractors. Et cetera. There is very little unique content, and that's in part because every single pilot has voice lines for all of it.

I did all the non-generic quests. I beat all the Primes and Dreadnoughts. I built on all the building sites on all seven planets. I did a bunch of generic missions and upgrade grinding. And i still beat the game in about 28 hours. You can probably do it in half the time. And this is a €40 game! Not to mention that's without all the pilots, ships and weapons that they nickel-and-dime you for. I was actually kinda confused that we went to fight the evil boss so quickly, i thought there would be some kind of twist or something.

Conclusion

While Starlink is fun at first it quickly becomes repetitive because of the lack of content. It's not bad, just really not worth your time. And especially not your money.