The Mysterious Sector. Sector Unknown – a game where nearly everything is bad.
Recently, the indie developer released a role-playing game called Sector Unknown. The description states that it was inspired by nearly all well-known party RPGs. Judge for yourself:
Sector Unknown is an exciting isometric RPG inspired by classics such as Fallout 2, Knights of the Old Republic, and Fallout: New Vegas, as well as more modern projects including Wasteland 3, Encased, Colony Ship, Trudograd, and Pathfinder: Kingmaker.
Furthermore, having spent just over half a year in early access, the game has received "Very Positive" reviews, albeit based on only a couple of hundred reviews. This caught my interest.
The theater begins with a coat rack, and the game begins with the startup menu. And it's crooked. It seems to be a problem with the font used in the game.
Setting the English localization somewhat improves the situation...
Next, upon entering the settings, I noted their "minimalist" design. It was a struggle to get the game to set my desired resolution (1440p) – it resisted for some reason. I was pleased that the game has font size settings – playing with the standard size is difficult because it's very small.
We start the game by creating a character: the window has a minimal set of parameters for changing gender and appearance, you can also choose a backstory and a character trait that provides certain bonuses; allocate points for characteristics and attributes. Everything is quite standard for an indie RPG. The game has a funny bug: if you start creating a male character, cancel, and exit to the menu, the option to choose a mustache and beard remains when creating a female character in a new game.
We find ourselves in a prison spaceship cell with a cellmate who can become your companion. The task is to escape from the prison. By fighting, persuading, or using other methods (there are at least five options for sure), we solve the task while interacting with other inmates, stealing everything that isn’t nailed down (there are no limitations on weight or inventory size), and gathering the first clues about the situation, and so far, everything seems fine. The most important information we read from one of the computers - the Star Frontier corporation established several colonies in this sector, which were deeply unprofitable due to corruption, piracy, and stretched supply lines. A decision was made to leave the sector for regrouping. Of course, the evacuation was reported only to top management; the rest remained in the dark and began to suspect something only after a while when salaries stopped being paid and supplies ceased. Chaos reigned in the sector, people divided into factions – some tried to leave it as quickly as possible, others engaged in looting and smuggling, while others indulged fully while waiting for the "end of the world".
Later, a decision was made to return, but not just to return, but with the aim of destroying everything alive in the sector, as it interfered with effective exploitation. Yes, including all the remaining people. Thus, the protagonist's task is to prepare the planets for repelling the enemy.
Upon reaching the escape pods, we encounter an AI that informs us that it has initiated the ship's emergency self-destruction protocol; if we want to live, we must take a copy of its "consciousness" (one can't help but say – engrams) with us. No objections will be accepted.
On the pod, we land on a planet, which "unexpectedly" turns out to be habitable, with an abandoned mining and enrichment combine that we need to take back. This is the second and last intricately designed (in terms of role-playing) location in the game. Various creatures from the local fauna roam around, behaving somewhat like humans. I was pleasantly surprised that they could be intimidated or waited upon until they leave. Sure, it only happened in a couple of cases, but I haven’t seen such in other games. It’s just a pity that these features were not utilized in any of the subsequent locations.
In the combine, we establish a base. This is the resistance center. Why can’t we just escape from the sector or at least (unsuccessfully) try to do so – there are no answers to these questions.
We build the base; this requires science points and resources. The main task is to build a defense system on conquered or allied planets. We can also set up terminals to enhance planetary defense systems (5 levels for each type), crafting gear and consumables for the squad. There are also terminals for messages (essentially side quests) and witcher contracts for eliminating various scoundrels.
The better the planet is protected, the higher the chance of repelling an impending corporate attack. However, even playing far from optimally, I managed to achieve protection rates of 80-90% for each.
Furthermore, at the base, we can craft weapons, armor, and consumables: healing items and drugs that temporarily enhance attributes. I must say that what I found in the game and from the merchants was more than enough; by mid-game money was plentiful, and they were not needed for organizing defense. I used healing items only a few times, and drugs even fewer, by accident. So, the game clearly has balance issues.
Gameplay consists of two parts. Ground: we land on a planet and decide which of the two opposing sides to support, or we negotiate peace between them while completing various quests (often courier missions), and in the end, we must defeat the bad guys whom the locals couldn’t defeat. Voilà, the planet is under our control.
Space: we arrive in a system, usually containing a dozen planets, with only a couple being habitable. On uninhabited ones, we gather resources in a Mass Effect spirit: press scan (an unnecessary action!), press collect. That’s it.
Additionally, there are 2-3 ships scattered throughout the systems, one of which we can board, while we can fight the others (for experience and resources) or leave them alone.
There is no open world; we strictly move through known locations on the planet, and in space we cannot jump from one system to another without completing the main quest in the current one. After completing it, coordinates for jump gates to the next system are provided.
Fights. Neither ground nor space battles differ in variability, and neither require any tactics. Ground combat is turn-based: your crowd against the enemy's. No tricks here: here’s the initiative, here’s the weapon range. Cover? Flanking? Maneuvers? Ambushes? Resists? Immunities? Different damage types? Aimed shots? Hit points? None of this exists! The max allowed is to use various abilities unlocked during leveling and weapon features like shooting in bursts or switching hit chance for extra damage. Weapons in the game are of two types: melee (hammers, knives, swords) and ranged (shotguns, carbines, pistols). I still don’t understand how a sword differs from a dagger, or a carbine from a shotgun. They’re drawn almost identically. Damage is more heavily influenced by luck (there's such a character attribute) than by weapon skill. There’s also evasion, which in this game signifies the chance that damage will be considerably less than it should be. A direct analogy to “grazing” in Colony Ship.
Armor simply reduces damage and often provides a bonus to HP.
Space battles are even simpler, as you have one ship, a maximum of three enemies, and damage depends solely on piloting skill.
Role-playing aspect. Throughout the game, we encounter various checks on attributes (mainly strength and speed) and skills. Often, people can be talked out of a fight, thus avoiding combat, but you can’t get through completely without skirmishes. Luck possesses quite numerical characteristics in the game, with high luck increasing the chance to loot additional items from containers, hit enemies, and deal critical damage. The rest is standard: science grants more science points when studying information from datapads and computers, engineering yields more resources from planets, and finance enhances bargaining. The game’s problem is that of all the attributes, the most important one is intelligence. It directly affects the number of skill points gained during level-ups and the amount of earned experience. Furthermore, the relationship is linear – 1 intelligence = 1 point and the corresponding experience bonus. However, checks after the starter ship increase quickly and non-linearly, by a factor of 10! If the average check on the ship is 10-15, then on the first planet, it grows to 20-30. A dimwit with low intelligence has no chance of survival, as they will earn few points, fall behind in levels, and will be unable to develop properly in combat skills (although the relevance of those skills in this game is highly questionable!). Another additional effect of high intelligence is increased points for enhancing characteristics: every fifth level, the character earns additional points for characteristics, and the higher the characteristic, the more expensive the upgrade by one unit. No other attribute provides anything as useful.
There are no classes or anything similar in the game. Checks are passed by the companion with the highest attribute.
I was unpleasantly surprised that behind an innocent phrase from the protagonist, which you might perceive as a quip or at most a threat, an unarmed interlocutor could be killed. Even more surprising is that such a development can occur during a hacking skill check applied in dialogue (they probably forgot to separate skills into trickery and actual hacking).
Companions. You can take up to three more people in your squad, but there are many more companions. Among them, there are robots. Robots can hardly be equipped at all; however, they regain health after battle. The problem is that often in combat (on normal difficulty), a pair of critical hits can take down even a well-equipped fighter! Robots don’t wear armor at all, which reduces damage and grants extra lives, and there aren’t really any significant perks to melee combat. The arrangement of robot equipment is also chaotic – some can take weapons, others cannot. Any companion joins at a level roughly equal to the protagonist's level, with unallocated skill and attribute points. On one hand – it's a plus – everything can be set up independently; on the other – a minus – the dummies differ from each other only by portrait. Each companion has a personal quest, but it's singular. Companions do not react to events. They don’t comment, get angry, or show joy. In a word – dummies. They can be replaced with other similar dummies at any time outside combat. It seems they are needed just because it is how a role-playing game is supposed to be.
Graphics and performance. Indie games aren’t required to have super graphics: if you can’t get the graphics right, go for style. This game has neither. Many locations look like copy-pasted identical tiles. Even the rarity of items is not marked. A colored outline around an item in the inventory – was it so hard to make?
Moreover, I’m already used to AMD graphics cards (this is the second Radeon with the same problems) showing too dark images in many games, but in this game, the "darkness" exceeded all "expectations," and there are no brightness settings in the game. Performance is also very poor. Initially, I played in 1440p on ultra with weather enabled. The FPS dropped to an indecent 26 frames; after disabling the weather and lowering the settings to just high, I achieved 57 frames. For comparison, Witcher 3 HD, Cyberpunk 2077, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle provided above 70 frames on high settings without ray tracing.
To sum up. The game feels like a student graduation project. A well-conceived plot is poorly executed – creativity quickly fades. There’s no enjoyable role-playing experience or tactical battles within the game. The graphics and gameplay do not impress. Although the developer releases patches one after another almost daily, they will only fix the technical part and slightly improve gameplay. The base will remain the same, therefore, it’s not worth spending time on this game at all.