Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander (PC) Review

Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander is a lot like a roller coaster: sometimes it is really good, other times it is really bad, but usually there's a lot of waiting around in line. The easiest way to describe the game is a blend between X-COM and the old Heroes of Might and Magic series and setting it in space. There is base building, resource management, RPG elements and an interesting premise to the story.

The story starts off when the human space fleet finds God, and is wiped out by the monster, leaving behind the remains of an alien artefact: the Halcyon 6 base. The beginning of the game revolves around visiting all the colonies in the galaxy, finding most of them in ruins and convincing the rest to continue to mine in the face of the swarming alien fleet- the ever present 'evacuate facility' option is a good touch to the tension.

At this point, despite the pixel graphics, which could be a turn-off for many, the atmosphere setup is great. The whole galaxy is unexplored and little skull symbols of ruined colonies start slowly populating the map and in the distance the oncoming alien fleet all combine for great atmosphere.

For the first couple of hours the game is great, and it feels like it could easily be a sleeper hit. There is a lot to do, such as exploring the various classes, checking out new skills and building new ships or tech. All this is cast against a backdrop of the aliens, before other races come in and pirates raid the colonies.

The problems start to creep in on the edges. The visit of the colonies has to happen repeatedly, as it is the only way to get the resources. This needs to be explained a bit further, as it becomes a major source of grind. Pick a colony, choose which fleet to send and watch them move in, select 'gather resources', skip evacuation (cool thematic idea, completely impractical), leave, pick a new colony and repeat the process again. A major source of the first 10+ hours of the game is spent doing this.

The other part of the game is combat, and early on it is pretty cool. It is turned based 3v3, and with each turn a special move from the ship is picked. There are three classes of ships and three types of officers: they are the 'tactical' 'engineering' and 'science' disciplines with the ships generally mirroring the officers. The Tacticians focus on doing a lot of straight damage, though ironically they seem a bit underpowered. The Engineers have two major abilities: they heal and they do 'damage over time' (DOT) attacks, and are easily the best class. Lastly are the Scientists, who focus on defence and disabling the enemy ships and they are an average class.

Early in the game, the battles are intense, while a single disable shot can make a big difference, and healing is insanely overpowered. Healing is the single most important thing in the game as there is a lot of combat, and ships quickly die without it. The problem is, after a few hours the good moves become obvious (healing, damage over times, disables) and every battle becomes the same continuous grind.

Despite the existence of a skill tree, each ship has different moves, and each officer has random moves. Even getting new ships is more of the same, and a new move is either a good one, or forgettable. There is just so much time wasted visiting colonies and clicking 'heal' in combat that it never feels like anything is accomplished. Even when a new ship becomes available it usually takes an hour or so of farming resources to be able to build them, and as such, getting a similar randomised ship becomes a trying process.

Pretty soon the aliens are left in the dust when the good cycle of moves is figured out. The random spikes of difficulty feel cheap rather than providing a good challenge. There are so many stories that could be told, and a range of aliens to learn about.

To be clear the game isn't bad, there is actually a lot of good humour and touches across the game that show the developer cares. Unfortunately, the grind is too painful to recommend to those except the most masochistic out there. It is sad to see, because the ideas are great; however, all of it is just stomped out by endless hours of resource gathering and repetitive combat. Even the entire story of fighting the God is never touched on again, despite how cool of an idea it is.