Is Star Control 3 actually a good game?

[Alen]

Ive always wondered this and never really tried the game out. I know its not made by Toys for Bob, and ive seen mixed reviews, but Ive seen pictures of it and it looks like sometimes your talking to a mutilated Muppet, and also that they removed a lot of the races. so just curious if it is a good game or if it is as big of a dud as Duke a Nuke'm forever.

[spinsane]

Well, if you actually remember anything that happens in SC2, no. Otherwise, umm... it has its moments.

The plot and reveal really isn't too terrible- if you can find it for free its worth playing through it once.

[Rider]

Personally, I view SC3 as an abortion. It's poorly written, graphically uninteresting compared to the vivid theme of it's predecessor, non-canon and has a tendency to break if you perform certain actions in the wrong order leaving no other choice but to start from square #1.

It's not just a disappointment after Starcontrol 2, it's just a really bad game.

[Alen]

so i guess its an abomination of a game and it doesn't deserve to be titled star control

[Dragon]

The short answer is no, it's not a good game. 

When compared to SC2 it's awful - the ships are bland and grey and some of the concepts were, well I can only describe them as, stupid.  It's broken and buggy - I haven't managed to complete it twice because events just seem to stop (although this might be a lack of perseverance on my part).  The melee AI is frustrating rather than fun and tends to run away to the furthest side of the map from you which makes battles tedious or impossible.  I'm not sure who thought the puppets were a good idea, the original races looked wrong and the Syreen particularly so.  Their entire race must have taken terrible genetic altering drugs or something.

The story is a complete departure from what was implied in SC2.  New races and a new universe were a good idea because it was no longer TfB telling the story; but then there were sweeping changes to the existing races which ignored canon.  Had SC3 been isolated in it's own universe with it's own separate story there might have been a good deal less griping.

As it is, if you're looking to kill time, find something else.

[Lukipela]

Star Control 3 is not a good game. However, it's not the abomination of abominations either. In my opinion the story has several good ideas. The execution was lacking though, and the fact that they ignored a good deal of stuff from SC2 weakened it further. To me, the worst part of SC3 was always the bugginess. If you perform tasks out of sequence, the game breaks. You only notice this when some certain key event fails to trigger, leaving you stranded in the plot. I agree with Dragon that the bland colours and puppets didn't really do much to enhance the experience. the colony system implemented was also pretty clunky. Compared to SC2, it's trash. On it's own, it's a mediocre game with a few nice parts.

I'd say it's worth playing through once. Keep in mind though, that I'd recommend trying it out the same way I recommend trying StarCon out. The gaming experience isn't very good, but the games are a fascinating piece of history.

[Death 999]

It was a great buy when I bought it years ago, because UQM didn't exist back then.

Now, if you can get it for free, it'll be barely worth your time.

It's a really mixed bag. Much of what you do is simply boring, repetitive colony management. The tasks they took away were moderately interesting, and the tasks they set you are just dumb.

You occasionally get into a fight, but aside from the trivially easy daktaklakpak... not much. The balance of the ships is poor to awful, partly due to inexcusable bugs, and partly due to AI that's smart enough to realize when it is doomed, but dumb enough not to realize it's not getting anything done in the corner of the screen.

The rest is talking. If the writing were as good as UQM's, this would be fine. Instead, it's really uneven. The new aliens are a mixed bag with some very good bits, but the allies are uniformly execrable. Hardly any new race lacked something ridiculously stupid about them, but for the better ones it was less difficult to imagine a non-stupid explanation.

The best of SC3 were certain good ships they introduced -- the Pinnacle was good as-is; with minor modifications, the Doog Constructor, Exquivan Conclave, the Harika/Yorn Hunter, and Vyro-Ingo bug-sack could have been very interesting.

[Scott_Irving]

I've said it before but I'll say it again, I owe SC3 a debt of gratitude for getting me into the series, with out it I never would have found out about this site and the other SC games and I never would have gotten as involved in this site as I am. That being said, I personally like some of the "puppets" and a few pieces of the music from it, like for instance the Arilou midi. It had some interesting new ideas and races. I liked how it tried to add a bit of a Simcity aspect to the game as well, which had it been done right could have added more depth to the game, building on planet exploration from SC2. I personally have experienced the "game break" mentioned, had no idea what happened but managed to eventually get the plot to "restart" so to speak, using a cheat of some sort. That says to me along with other bugs in the game that it wasn't really quality tested before release. The other thing I have to respect is that it's the only melee I've gotten friends to play, despite it's inferior pseudo-3d view. Lastly If you want to play it stay tuned as we may have an SC give away to go along with the site reopening. Otherwise there's plenty of ways to get it.

[Lukipela]

I've said it before but I'll say it again, I owe SC3 a debt of gratitude for getting me into the series, with out it I never would have found out about this site and the other SC games and I never would have gotten as involved in this site as I am.

I've never heard you say this before, but interesting nonetheless.

[Scott_Irving]

I have, just in different wording more like I owe SC3 for introducing me to the SC world.

[spinsane]

No ship in SC-uni should have near-idle regeneration. The Harika/Doog ships were just so ridiculously good. I think as soon as I got a Harika, then later a Doog, then late- I never lost another ship in the game. I mean, A Nemesis can't even scratch them with marines.

Most of the other ships took way too long in fights. Conc, Exquivian and Ploxis ships took forever to fight with/against- they were like Spathi/Yehat match-ups for every fight. The stealth shooter was also a pretty dumb ship design (Xchagger goes without saying).

Dak, Ova, and LK were all reasonable, but the design wasn't very original.

K'Tang is what I'm talking about, that thing is a monster. It's mines were too strong, but otherwise a pretty well-balanced ship. Lower Crew/Batt than a dreadnought but slightly higher damage output.

Vyro-Ingo was the best overall ship to come out of that game. This baby was SC2 worthy as is. Nothing like pinning a chmmr's wings with the wells...

[Dabir]

I found it disappointing that early on, I was encountering all these neat races, but whenever they attacked me I just pointed my enhanced-turning Avatars at them and watched them toast. Boring. Also, if in Hypermelee you get into a fight where you control an Avatar and the computer has a Skiff, just manually quit the game. You can't quit from in a battle as far as I can tell and the Skiff will never come anywhere near you. Literally. You cannot catch it, you cannot tow it, it will hang around as far away as possible.

[Eth]

SC3 is a mediocre game.  I didn't enjoy it much, though there were a few good bits.  I was introduced to SC by SC1, so I don't have Scott's sentimental attachment to SC3 at all.  I remember how exciting it was when SC2 was released, and it was WAY awesomer than we could ever have hoped it would be.  SC3 was nothing like that.

[Megagun]

If you enjoy games where a critical plot location suddenly *vanishes*, then yes, Star Control 3 is the best game ever, as it has the capability of doing this in TWO places!

[chenjesuwizard]

Ive always wondered this and never really tried the game out. I know its not made by Toys for Bob, and ive seen mixed reviews, but Ive seen pictures of it and it looks like sometimes your talking to a mutilated Muppet, and also that they removed a lot of the races. so just curious if it is a good game or if it is as big of a dud as Duke a Nuke'm forever.

In my opinion, no.
It is nowhere as good as SC2 and is a huge dissapointing.
Space travel isn't as fun, bad graphics, fighting is boring, you don't do much, alot of waiting around and it has a bad plot.
I don't actually count it as a SC game.