BG: Scattered Hopes is a bit of a frustrating game. I really want to like it, because I really enjoy its premise and a lot of its general structure, but its flaws really hold it back from pushing it over the threshold from okay to solid.

The good:

Scattered Hopes can best be described as a FTL-like roguelite that uses a real-time tactics (with pause) battle system. It sees your fleet of ships fleeing the Cylons as you attempt to rejoin Battlestar Galactica, and it does a great job in terms of general atmosphere and tone. In these battles, you don't really win as much as you escape while minimizing damage to your ships and fights, all the while trying to carefully manage your ship's resources.

There's also a system of relations with both your Hero officers, and the various factions aboard the ship. Managing your relationships carefully will cause you to receive beneficial perks and events, while the opposite will happen if you manage them poorly.

The Bad:

Where I get frustrated kind with Scattered Hopes comes down to a lack of content and some general rough edges with the game. No sooner than my second run with the game, I was already seeing some repeated random events, and though they have lots of flavor text, they do sort of lack substance. Virtually every crisis event in the game generally comes down to "spend one unit of Hero's time, or spend a few supplies or scrap." A lot of these choices just aren't all that interesting, let alone when you've already seen them.

Combat generally works alright, though later in the run, you'll often find enemies can stun your ships for lengthy periods of time, often leading to them being killed before you regain control. Due to this, it seems the long range ships are generally a lot better than the close-range ones.

Also frustratingly, despite Crying Suns not going down this dark path, Scattered Hopes features, and say it with me, metaprogression upgrades that objectively improve your stats! As is the same problem with all these games, this system just artificially inflates the difficulty because you're not playing the "real" game until you've gotten the upgrades, and pads out the runtime of the game. I let out a lengthy sigh when I saw just how much currency and runs you'd need to grind to get most of these upgrades.

All in all I can't really issue a recommendation for this game, though I wouldn't describe it as outright bad. But it really needed to focus a lot more on being a better game with more interesting content and choices to make, rather than having lengthy dialogue scenes.

55/100