Hello! I picked up Starpoint Gemini 2 for free a few weeks ago and only got around to playing it within the last few days. I'm pretty bored as of recent times so i figured a review/gameplay blog would be fun for a bit. I'll try to break this down as best i can, probably in multiple parts.
Overall:
Starpoint Gemini 2 is a RPG Space Simulator created by Little Green Men Studios and published by Iceberg Interactive. It is the sequel to the game Starpoint Gemini 2 and follows the story of a young captain who is the son of a war hero from the conflict in the previous game. The Protagonists father is killed and gives his son a final mission to continue his work to help bring peace among the warring factions of the Gemini system. You have the ability to choose a player class to augment fleet skills, gunning abilities and support logistics through a basic yet elaborate skills and perks systems. Skills and perks alter abilities and stats such as protection from various types of gunfire, natural threats such as radioactive nebulae and electrical anomalies. There are multiple options for traveling between two points in space. You can go from one place to another by flying there on cruise engines (known as the Power to Engines sequence), riding a gravitational anomaly between two regions, paying to use a "T-gate" or Torrent Gate, like an always on jumpgate from Freelancer. There are wormholes you can travel, but have a higher risk due to the possibility of wormhole instability and finally there is an item you can buy at stations and planets called a "T-Drive" which you can use to travel great distances at the cost of using more T-Drive modules the further you want to go. The game feels repetitious between story missions due to the amount of grinding it may require to reach the next level or earn enough money to buy the next ship or upgrade you want. There are a variety of auxiliary missions one can perform and some are similar to the freelancer jobs you can find at a bar on Freeport 9. Some of them include assassinations, ferry (moving goods), taxi (moving people), maintenance which can unlock remote shield recharge and repair stations, research missions where you fly out, scan an anomaly and get paid, destroy and protect convoys/stations/VIPs etc and a number of others i haven't found yet. If some of these mundane missions aren't for you, you can also trade your way to that big dreadnought you've been eyeing. I haven't done much trading, other than selling the loot dropped by exploded bad guys. However there are some notable things i have noticed. There is a dynamic supply and demand economy. A military outpost with too many rifles will sell them at a cheaper price than a remote mining facility in an asteroid field 100 klicks from the nearest station. The amount of commodities is astounding from military equipment to ores, gases and consumables. There is even a nifty feature that allows you to find what discovered station/planet has the best buy and sell prices for whatever is in your cargo hold.
Overall, I really enjoy the game, even through it's repetitiveness and convoluted travel system. I want to mention some of the other features in the game i haven't quite tried out yet.
- Bounty Board: Hunt for high value targets. You actually have to look in the area they were last reported being seen. The bounties are very high level and likely hard to kill, but the rewards are quite lucrative.
- Boarding and capturing enemy vessels: You can capture an enemy ship and loot it, destroy it or tow it after a successful mission. Selling captured ships is an easy way to make tens of thousands of dollars at the cost of not earning any XP (so i saw in a youtube video)
Features i haven't mentioned
- You can hire mercenaries to follow you around, up to two at the highest rank
- Asteroid mining. I've caught diamonds and uranium in an ice field...
- NPCs. They patrol and scan you much like the invasive policies of the Liberty Police Department and force you to turn over your goods or be subject to destruction
- You can command your ship to "fire at will" and your weapons will engage targets automatically. This is helpful when fighting multiple enemies
- There are 4 views: Turret view (like FL Turret View), Mounted view (a camera thats mounted on the top of the ship, normal view (as if you are looking through a camera mounted at the front of the ship) and "Chase cam" which is more or less a target lock camera. This requires a little bit more thinking and finesse when flying due to things like perspective and stuff. No Bridge cam like Star Trek Bridge Commander which would be totally sweet!
- Each component of your ship can have extra equipment added to modify the base stats. So you can have your engines have more power output as well as more hit points. You can add upgrades to your light and heavy turrets, sensors, engines, transporter (for loot) grappling hook, shields all of it.
- The Ability to redirect power to various subsystems has been helpful in evading, attack or defending against threats. It is advised to map a key to each setting as well as neutral power distributed evenly
- Some ships have built in cloaking devices. They have a base rating for cloak stability and effectiveness but can be altered with upgrades. It is an active camouflage however it can still be defeated if an enemy ship has a powerful enough sensors. We'll certainly put that to a test 
- The larger ships (Battleship Class and up) have hangers for fighters. For balance reasons, there is no ship with a hanger and a cloaking device
- There's a flashy news system. Won't compete with the Galaxy News Network...
This game surprised me. It had the comfort of Freelancer with the scale and depth of X3 Terran Conflict. The Story seems a little slow, but i have less than 10% of the galaxy explored and i am unsure of how big the story is. The free Origins DLC remasters the first game and allows the players to experience the events leading into Starpoint Gemini 2. I think my next post will be a documentation of game play in the form of Journal entries
