Starpoint Gemini Warlords Review for Xbox One

Starpoint Gemini Warlords is a space shooter/strategy game by Little Green Men Games. In it you captain a spaceship and control a space station and the ships it produces as you deal with other factions throughout the galaxy.

Combat in the game is, for lack of a better word, frustrating. When you are by yourself against two or more ships (a scenario the campaign forces upon you every now and again), you have to move around constantly so as to avoid being killed. Luckily, the game includes a “fire at will” command which makes the ship automatically shoot light weapons at nearby enemies (or at an enemy you’ve marked) so as to make it that you don’t need to manually aim yourself while frantically running about. When you have allied ships with you, then combat becomes a bit easier as you can command the ships to work together with you to quickly take down enemies.

The strategy side is where the game gets interesting. Like most strategy games, you can build up your base (the space station you command), build units and structures, and research upgrades. Units you create can be bonded together to make a “fleet” which can then be directed via the map (known as the starchart). You can open up the starchart and direct fleets to go to certain areas on the map, to follow you (something I highly recommend), or to merge with other fleets, but that is about as far as your control over them extends. They will automatically fire at hostile units and structures, but you can’t direct them more specifically unless your ship is in the area as well.

Aside from other ships and starship upgrades, you can also buy commodities such as ice, blasters, rice, etc. from your own space station as well as the space stations of other factions. You can also get these commodities as loot from destroyed enemy ships. From what I can tell, the buying and selling price for these commodities is different from station to station, with some commodities even being illegal at certain stations. I’m guessing that by exploiting this you can make a profit, but I never looked into it very much.

You can earn money in the game by exploiting the buy/sell system and by performing tasks found on a space station’s job board. These tasks include: hunting down a rogue enemy/fleet, defending a structure, attacking a structure, raiding an enemy convoy, salvaging a wreckage, mining asteroids, and investigating an area. I stuck to the combat tasks as the non-combat tasks require you to have certain items with you. These tasks pay a lot and I found myself using them as my primary source of income.

Everything in the map is spread out rather far, which can make traveling to certain areas long and annoying. I understand the purpose of this is so you can’t summon a huge number of reinforcements from halfway across the galaxy and have it come to you in mere minutes (as well as to keep the player from fleeing a disadvantageous situation), but I wish the player ship could move faster. To remedy this, you can buy “T-drives” to instantly warp the player ship to any spot in the galaxy. Also, every space station has a “T-gate” that the player ship can use to instantaneously travel to the T-gates of other space stations (although you need to research and build the T-gate for the space station you command).

Overall, I found the solo sections of the game very frustrating as I would continuously die over and over again from being overwhelmed. I found the game much more enjoyable when I had a fleet to back me up. I found the mix of action and strategy interesting and think a fair rating for this game would be 8/10.

Here is the Starpoint Gemini Warlords Xbox One Launch Trailer:

Jason Freedman

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I am a recent Computer Science/Game Development Programming Chapman University Graduate. I am a life long enthusiast of computer/video gaming and my favorite game genres are adventure, choice-driven stories, fighting, and racing. My favorite game/movie series include but aren't limited to 'Legend of Zelda'; 'Dragon Age'; 'Persona'; 'Sonic the Hedgehog'; 'Mario'; 'Metroid' ;'Megaman'; 'Naruto'; 'Batman'; 'Spiderman'; 'Star Wars'; and 'Star Trek.'

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