Star Nomad (PC) Review

By Ian Soltes 20.03.2015

Review for Star Nomad on PC

An annoyingly tedious game that could have been much better with only a few minor tweaks, is how Star Nomad is best described, unfortunately. More time will be wasted in mindless repetition only to lose it all because of a minor scuffle. What is it about the appeal of trading games that has made them so popular of late, though? Spending time repeating the same route over and over again to upgrade a ship? The risk of losing it all to a bad turn of events? Or a desire for boredom? Either way Star Nomad is willing to oblige, and Cubed3 begins its voyage to find out the answer.

Developed and published by Huy Phan, Star Nomad is, honestly, one of the most boring games around. Take on the exciting role of a space trader! Spend hours flying along the same route! Master combat in a matter of minutes because it's largely automated, only to have it not matter because of a terrible friend vs. foe combat system that can waste hours of hard-earned credits for no reason! What could possibly go wrong?

Star Nomad is a fairly simple game to understand. Taking on the role of a small trade-ship operator, the player is tasked with trying to earn credits to upgrade their ship while progressing through a story to recover their memories. The gameplay is basic and clearly designed for use on a touch screen. Tap to move the ship about to reach the various ports, tap on the items in the inventory to buy/sell, tap to activate abilities, and so on and so forth. Learning the game isn't that hard at all.

Screenshot for Star Nomad on PC

The real problem of the game is that It won't take long to figure out a route between two planets that give a good return on credits. When such a route is found, though, gamers will end up repeating it for hours upon hours because the routes yield so little cash in comparison to the expensive weaponry and ship upgrades. With weaponry and ship upgrades for combat that simply are not enough to compare with the sheer random chance of being caught in crossfire and getting blown up before there is any chance to escape or even properly defend against the barrage of laser cannons and missiles, it leads to frustrations that shouldn't exist.

To make it worse, since there are no saves, dying even once can result in hours' worth of setbacks fiscally, having to potentially buy new ships and weapons only to lose it all again in yet another bout of crossfire for the exact same reason. However, dying at the hands of 'allied' fire is infinitely more likely than death to the many pirates in the game which are, comparatively, easy to beat. The result is a title that involves flying back and forth for several hours on end, likely putting on a movie on another computer, easily defeating whatever pirates appear, before losing it all because the computer decided to get nasty.

Screenshot for Star Nomad on PC

Cubed3 Rating

4/10
Rated 4 out of 10

Subpar

While Star Nomad has plenty of downsides - boredom being the most glaring - it also doesn't really mess up outside of it. However, the few people that will enjoy the repetitive space trade action might indeed get enjoyment from this… before they end up caught between a battle cruiser and the opposing fleet that fire off a salvo of shots before shields can be properly raised, or on the receiving end of the fire from people supposed to be their allies. With some cheat codes or some simple fixes, Star Nomad could be good, possibly even reaching the dizzying heights of 'basically okay,' but without that it's little more than office work followed by an abrupt death, at which point the paperwork piles up in the office and needs to be sorted through upon the player's eventual reincarnation.

Developer

Huy Phan

Publisher

Huy Phan

Genre

Strategy

Players

1

C3 Score

Rated $score out of 10  4/10

Reader Score

Rated $score out of 10  0 (0 Votes)

European release date Out now   North America release date Out now   Japan release date None   Australian release date Out now   

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