Drox Operative 2

There's a speed cap on your ship. Unfortunately, it's not very high. One of the first upgrades you can do will dramatically slow down your ship if your helm stat isn't high enough. This isn't very convenient for a game about space exploration and diplomacy. The combat gets tedious very quickly, you can even get weapons that auto aim, so you just fly somewhere, keep both mouse buttons pressed and see random stuff explode around you. The interesting part of this game is the different races and how they develop and interact with each other. This is slowed down by the speed of your ship and the amount of random enemies you encounter as you move around the galaxy. Until 5 diplomatic events all of a sudden happen in the same second. The Drox missions are most interesting, but getting anything done turns into a sluggish mess very quickly because the overall resistance of the galaxy is so high you can't get anything done.

It's a good game. Easily my favorite diablo-like, including Diablo.

Yeah it says 3 hours, but I've played this more on other platforms. If you're going to play one game from Soldak Entertainment, pick this one. I view this as the peak of their creativity with the type of game they're known for, and I wish they went forward with this space concept to another title. This is pretty much Drox Operative 2.0 more than a sequel, but the refinements are good to the point that you really shouldn't bother with the first game at all.

An interesting idea, but feels very barebones/early access. There really isn't any structure or story, about 90% of quests are just "transport thing X from place A to B," and the other 10% are "kill thing X at place A." There is a massive universe with all this diplomacy happening in the background, but it's so complex and fast moving that it's impossible to keep track of and most of it doesn't seem to matter, so you just ignore it except with regards to who is at war with you. Enemies pretty much just spawn in tiny groups and sit there until you kill them. There are lots of items, but most are functionally identical even if they have different names. Systems are procedurally generated, but objects are so limited that every system seems pretty much the same other than which faction is present. It feels like an alpha framework upon which a game could be built, rather than a final game.

Same addicting formula, but in space.

Very addictive, though not necessarily in a good way. Endless, samey combat hoping for the Diablo-style loot RNG to bless you. It's not a difficult game but the balance is wonky and unpolished and talent progression feels very slow. But something has kept me playing for 80 hours, apparently... I do enjoy my little fleet of fighters melting everything that comes on screen.