Space Rangers 2 is a deep and innovative strategy game that allows you to venture through the galaxy, battling enemies, exploring new worlds and embarking on exciting quests! At first glance the title might seem like one of many other strategy games, however once you give it a chance you’ll discover a game unlike any other!

200 years after the events of the first Space Rangers, a new and even more dangerous enemy has arisen, the Dominators! It all started when a key planet producing war androids became self aware and began a conquest of the galaxy. As a Space Ranger, it’s your job to protect the galaxy and help end the threat of the Dominators! Of course, there’s more to the game than that. You need to watch out for yourself too, so you’ll be trying to earn money, upgrade your ship and increasing your stats, all while working on getting rid of those pesky Dominators.

You’ll start the game off by choosing a race and an occupation. This will influence things such as your starting funds, your relations with other races, and the power of your ship. There are five different races to choose from, as well as five different occupations in each, so you’ve got plenty of choices. It also adds some replay value if you feel like going through with a different race or occupation.

The basic premise of the game is to try and move up the ranks, gain new technology and equipment, and help defeat the vile Dominators. This largely involves flying through space, battling enemies, and completing hundreds of missions. The game features a lot of different locations, from planets to space stations. These serve different purposes, such as trading, purchasing new items, repairing your ship, and getting upgrades. Occasionally you’ll find something of value floating around in space, a ship in need of aide or some pirates who are just dying to steal your cargo. To move on to further areas of the game, you simply need to purchase a map. The map in the game is fairly large, including many different planets and solar systems. Best of all, the galaxy is randomly generated, so no two games will be quite the same!

Not only does the game feature a large amount of side quests to keep you busy, but the variety of these quests is enormous! Everything from the actual goal that you need to achieve to the actual gameplay can be totally different from mission to mission. Sometimes you’ll get straightforward missions like “deliver this medicine” or “destroy this ship.” Other times you’ll be surprised by less traditional missions, like managing a ski resort in an attempt to increase profit, or trying to impress some alien royalty.

Some of the most interesting missions are like little “choose your own adventure” mini-games. In these missions you select from a variety of choices, each of which determine the outcome of the mission. From time to time you’ll encounter missions that involve you participating in ground battles, using an army of robots to do battle. These battles can be enjoyable, but aren’t particularly deep in strategy. Basically, you just build robots in order to kill other robots. On route you’ll need to capture factories in order to keep your resources flowing. You can customize the robots you build in a variety of ways, from their chasis to weapons. It’s cool, but very often a necessity to win. One thing that did stand out during this mode was the ability to take direct control of a single unit and lead it throughout the battle, actively controlling its attack and movement. While this may have made some of the missions a little too easy, it brought a little innovation to the ground battles. Although the ground battles are a cool addition to the game that gives players a break from flying around space, the low level of strategy isn’t going to impress RTS fans.

Not all of the side quests are particularly enjoyable, though, and it might not take long before you get a little bit tired of jumping from planet to planet. However, for every dull side quest, there’s at least one worthwhile quest awaiting you! And any mission can be turned down if you don’t feel like wasting your time with it.

Completing these quests will result in great rewards, including gold, valuable equipment, and experience. Aside from gold and items, completing quests will earn you experience, which you can use to upgrade your stats, including charisma, mobility, leadership, and more. You’ll receive handy little notes at the bottom of your screen that will keep you informed about the status of your current missions. You can even land on nearby planets in order to conduct research to help you get on the right track!

The game can be very text-heavy at times. The mission descriptions are very long, and the “choose your own adventure” missions sometimes involve so much reading that I would often just give up rather than waste the time to read. Even the tutorial requires massive amounts of reading, which means the game has an awfully slow start. This wouldn’t be so bad if the translation were a little bit better, but as it is you’re faced with a lot of poorly translated reading!

There is VERY little direction in the game, which could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on the individual. Ideally, you’re supposed to battle the Dominators, free the oppressed solar systems, and defeat each of the Dominator bosses. However, you don’t really have to do any of that if you don’t want to. Instead, you can just strike it rich as a successful trader or pirate. It’s all up to you! You’re never really told what to do, which can really make things confusing when you first start out.

Considering the huge map, large amounts of reading, the lack of direction, variety in gameplay, and the hundreds of missions, the learning curve in this game is pretty big, which might turn some gamers away immediately. If you give it some time, though, you’ll probably enjoy it!

Throughout the game you’ll receive updates about the war with the Dominators, helping you stay informed about what’s going on in the galaxy. However, as I said before, you don’t really need to pay attention to that unless you want to. I didn’t even encounter my first Dominator until around 4 hours into the game!

When you finally do encounter the Dominators, though, be prepared for a fight! Dominators will constantly be attacking different Solar Systems, and there’s a constant struggle to keep them at bay! The space combat is fairly dry, without a lot of strategy involved. Basically, the only real strategy is to beg the other ships to come to your aid, and pray that the rival ship is weaker than you. It pretty much comes down to who has the toughest ship, meaning that you can be in some serious trouble if you get attacked by a strong enemy and aren’t near a planet to land on.

The game features a lot of different items and equipment for you to take advantage of. The hull of your ship is probably the most important item, because it determines how much weight your ship can carry. However, due to its high cost, it’s probably not something you’ll be replacing very often. Your ship is highly customizable with weapons, radar, engines, and more. This equipment may be purchased from stores all across the galaxy or received as a reward for completing a mission. Each individual item has weight to it, and since your hull can only carry so much, you need to balance out the advantages and disadvantages of each in order to create the best ship possible. If you plan on going on doing a lot of fighting, then you might want to make sure your weapons and armor are strong. If you plan on transporting cargo, you’ll probably want to make sure your ship is fast enough.

Speaking of speed, events in the game take place in a series of turns that take a number of days to complete based on the speed of your ship. If you have a slow ship, flying from planet to planet might take 10 days, but with a faster ship you can accomplish it in a few days. You give your ship commands to perform, then once you hit the “end turn” button, all of the commands are carried out. Making sure you have a fast ship is probably a good idea. Not only will it save you from having to sit around and stare at the screen as your ship slowly moves throughout space, but it’ll come in very handy if you need to escape from some pirates or Dominators.

Graphically, Space Rangers 2 isn’t groundbreaking, but some of the space environments have a certain beauty to them. For the most part, it's not exactly impressive, but not painful either. There isn’t much for animation, which makes all of the characters pretty boring. The music has a fair variety, with some decent tunes that add an up-beat tempo to the game. There isn’t any voice acting, so the music is all that you’re going to hear. The lack of voice acting isn’t a big deal, but it could have prevented gamers from having to read so much.

As I mentioned several times before, there’s a lot to do in this game and enough freedom that you can pretty much go on forever, so the replay value is huge if you like the game. If that wasn’t enough, the game also comes packaged with the original Space Rangers. What a deal!

If you like games with a lot to do and are willing to give Space Rangers 2 a fair shot, then you’ll more than likely find something of value here. While it’s not without some flaws, Space Rangers 2 is a lengthy, innovative experience that offers gamers the freedom to play the game the way they want to play it.

Final Grade: 83%