Hazeron Starship

There have been no updates in over a year, and the developer has been radio silent. Many things are missing from the game, such as AI empires to interact with. Last time I played, there really wasn't much to do. Even though you can make all kinds of things with a lot of freedom, there's not much to really do with any of it and the visuals don't exactly inspire me to make anything just for the sake of it. I [i]love[/i] mechanically unique and complex games, and this is a game that [i]should[/i] be right up my alley. But if all we're going to be left with is an unfinished singleplayer port of a game that was initially designed as an MMO, then I absolutely cannot recommend anyone spend money on this. If the game is updated and progress is made, I will update this review should the game reach a properly playable state. I never played Shores of Hazeron, and never even knew it existed, so my experience with Hazeron comes exclusively from this release. I have no nostalgia for the original, I only saw this iteration and thought it looked like an interesting experience. If you're going to charge money for something, it should be worthy of the price you're asking for. This just... wasn't.

Figured I'd finally leave a review for this [b]Do not buy this.[/b] If you've heard stories about the Shores of Hazeron MMO, this isn't it. I played that from 2011 until its shutdown, and I can confidently say this has almost none of the charm or fun from it. Far less friendly to play for no benefit. Almost every mechanic has been removed or replaced with something worse, for example: [list] [*]No multiplayer [*]No other empires to interact with [*]Intuitive tetris-grid inventory replaced with soulless tree [*]Intuitive floor-based building system replaced with pre-designed buildings [*]Removal of reasonable building limitations making cities a chore to organize and manage [*]Same no-constraint issue for spacecraft [*]No PvM or PvP challenge making most of the game's mechanics irrelevant, including military buildings, most items, most ship functions and all combat mechanics [*]No progression, no research system, your empire knows everything the instant you start [*]Difficulty removed to the point where the remaining mechanics are made irrelevant, for example: [olist] [*]Unconstructed airports being able to teleport infinite resources across the solar system instantly [*]B…

This is no Shores of Hazeron. There's a steep learning curve that most will have zero interest in tackling. If you do tackle it, you will find it has eliminated pretty much everything fun from Shores of Hazeron. I'm sure if I wished to invest a ton of time, I could find ways to have fun and remain interested. The game gave me no desire to go beyone where I did. So, I let it sit to see if it made improvements. Instead, what I see is there has been no update since June of 2024 and the developer is silent. The game appears abandoned.

Full of half baked unfinished ideas which was fine during active development. But the game has since been abandoned and we're unlikely to see the potential ever realised. There's nothing else quite like this out there but this was originally an MMO and the players drove and created the content. The single player experience is lonely and lifeless. You're the sole sentient in a dead universe and there is no reason or push for you to go anywhere or do anything.

No game comes near the scope of this game since. Come back to us Haxus!

If you're thinking about revisitintg the MMO through this for nostalgia... probably don't. It's just not the same.