Star Shift Origins tells the story of the first Crew of the Dauntless. Trapped in an alternate reality and on the run, the crew desperately searches for answers while being hunted by the relentless Earth Systems Alliance (ESA).
Very Positive
32 Steam reviews
| LANGUAGE | AUDIO | SUBTITLES | INTERFACE |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | — | Y | Y |
| Chinese (Simplified) | — | Y | Y |
| Chinese (Traditional) | — | Y | Y |
| Japanese | — | Y | Y |
| Russian | — | Y | Y |
I am one of the ones who originally bought this when this came out back during 2021 and played through it ( Though sadly got half-way through due to getting bored during an point in the game. ) ( Twice ) I've previously played the Star Shift Legacy demo that this game is a side-story to. Being about an 5-6 hour adventure depending on your skill-level, it was an interesting experience. While I have been waiting for Star Shift Legacy to release last year before it got pushed back to the end of the year, which is sad to see but still game-development is a pain sometimes. With the release of Rebellion and the announcement of Freelancer ( A fan-project that the developers decided to bring aboard to hold the release date of the main game ) I decided to play this again after Rebellion's release to catch up with the setting again, ( Though this was while a semi-interesting experience ; though a little old-dated ; discussing the reason that the game went Free due to the developers getting better at learning about the engine and plugin collections and not feeling it was up to their standards. )
The game is really sadly unpolished with several switches and variable checks that don't exist or don't work. Several assets clash with each other though it is understandable for such a small development team. However it can be distracting to see assets you've used in the past with the engine. They should stick with the mix between 1 - 3 artist and not a mix between 4 - 5 + RPG Maker asset packs. The assets are a mix bag though it that is understandable as it is reused form the base game and are more recolors with new assets. The skill system I hope is heavily improved to have more skills in the base game and more. The tactical combat sections also suffer as it is unpolished with enemy hitboxes for AOE attacks and depending on what happens, your ship can randomly take damage. Plus, while the final town you visit is interesting location, you will be walking through corridors that were randomly generated through RPG Maker engine itself sadly. Wish the tower had several floors that you could explore to access a computer to unlock the next floor. And not have the same blob drone designed to waste your time for 3 hours ( Literally ) . And the temple or ( Old City ) could have been ancient roads with abandoned houses that hold the stones and not the same generated hallways that last another hour at worst.
One thing I noticed is that if you equip a item that has a skill connected to it, it is included as a gained skill in the skill-tree, resulting in skipping skills that I don't need. And that several skill just don't feel worth getting even with the bloated experience game. And surprisingly, the double-attack when leveled up to max was still pretty disappointing. I only had one major crash during a battle and a few graphical errors when playing.
Since it's free now, you should at least give it a try. But when you had to pay money for it, I would say it wasn't worth it. Hopefully, the developer will continue to improve and to grow even if this game is surpassed by Star Shift Rebellion's release.
To the developer's health and hopefully Star Shift legacy is as amazing as when I originally play the demo and moreso.
This game had a promising start and I hope the other games in the series are excellent. But I repeatedly encounter a crash in the last boss fight and was unable to complete it.
A persistent, repeated bug at the very end of the game demands a negative review. Aside from that, the combat was fun and the setting was interesting. There were some questionable gameplay decisions in the form of tedious mazes.
best sci-fi rpg i've played in a looooong while
love the setting, the world building, the different kinds of battles, everything, just wish it was longer!
Short game but the writing was really good which is what usually sells me on these sorts of things. As someone who loves cryptic space stories this was right up my alley, and I'm excited for the next entry in the series!
Worth the buy!
I got this game on sale for 40% off, $3.83 at the time and for the money, I did enjoy my time, but it felt extremely short. As mentioned in other comments, the game felt like a demo of a full game.
Why you may ask ? In my initial play through, this is my impression -
- you see other solar sytems to travel to, but you only go to a few places
- you barely scratch the surface on your abilities by the time you finish, I think i put points in like 5% of them (guesstimate)
- i got gear maybe twice for characters?
I did find the story to be interesting, but it was very bare bones at the start , but you could tell it was building up to a grand plot, but by the time it started getting legs, the game was over (another reason it felt like a demo).
My only other issue is that the fights felt a bit slow paced, of all types.
Overall - Not bad for the price I got it for, definitely left me wanting more. Just felt like a demo of a main game.
Absolutely excellent game.
Major Points-
-Wonderful sprites and graphics.
-Menu is top-notch.
-The skill that has gone into this is excellent.
-Music absorbs you into the game.
-Love the character designs.
-For the price it's at, it's a steal.
-So much content I can already see only so far in.
-I LOOOOVE the battle system :)
So far, I can easily see myself investing lots of hours into this and I'm already buying the other games before I continue.
10/10.
Star Shift Origins is a true scifi RPG with everything you’d expect: space travel, messed up timelines, spaceships, all sorts of races. It’s was fun for me to play all the way through, the story kept me going.
The atmosphere is very good, the music supports that very well.
The battles were fun for the most part, especially since there are 3 different types of battles:
- normal turnbased battles
- spaceship battles
- and one battle with tiny armys and tanks
The spaceship battles reminded me a bit of Skies of Arcadia. It’s just a bit of a bummer there were only 2 of them.
The normal turnbased battles were well balanced, it just seemed there was not very much tactical potential in them, so they were getting a bit monotous after a while.
The skill tree seems to be complex at first, but the game isn’t actually long enough for you to learn much in it. I quickly found certain AOE skills that would make my life much easier and that became like a bit of an OP strategy I feel.
Traveling throught different solar systems, super clusters etc. was pretty cool. I’m looking forward to do that more freely in the upcoming games, because here it was kind of restricted where you could go.
The graphics are probably the part you could criticize the most. I would describe the style as mixed to naivish to a bit trashy at times. But it’s consistent at that and it works and you mostly know what you’re looking at. This might now work for everyone, but I had my fun talking to every single NPC because I wanted to see their facesets, because some of the edits are quite funny. You don’t see a red dinosaur with a green ponytail all the time.
It’s a good game and it’s fun, if you into scifi and don’t mind a bit of a rough mixed graphics style, give this one a shot!
Is this a GAME or is this a MOVIE? Either way, I loved it!
It has some Star Trek, Mass Effect, and Chrono Trigger vibes.
Im going to check out the other Star Shift Games too!
I did not get very far in this game. The beginning of the game throws you into a battle with no context of what is going on or why you should care. Now I could probably deal with that and push on if the game wasn't puking numbers at me. I find it very frustrating when games like this start our characters off with 600 health and attacks do 200 to 300 damage. All the stats are in the hundreds as well. I feel like I have no way to know what gear to equip or how good it will be since everything is just big numbers going up and down. Is it ok if I lose 200 strength and gain 100 power attack? I don't know. I think the beginning could be better paced and explained along with making the stat numbers more manageable.
Вполне неплохая тема, учитывая, что игра на РПГ мейкере.
Исполнение и визуал конечно не назвать шедевром, кривенько и однообразно, но всё таки в этом есть свой шарм. Саундтрек неплохой, атмосфера присутствует. Диалоги не особо сложные, я плохо знаю английский, но всё же понял суть и смысл. Тут кто-то назвал игру выкидышем Масс Эффекта, но я скажу, что это совсем не так. Сюжетный короткий приквел, где игроку предстоит погулять по парочке планет да и только.
Понравилась разношёрстность команды - фурри всякие, крокодилы, люди, пришельцы. Да ещё и каждый персонаж со своим классовым древом навыков, что вполне хорошо, каждый примерно соответствует своей роли.
Из минусов - СЛИШКОМ скучные лабиринты, вообще не понимаю зачем их было добавлять, тягомотина.
Рекомендую адептам рпг-мейкера, любителям всякой индюшни и тяготеющим к космическим квестам.
nice story, looking forward for the upcoming series :D
First and foremost, this game is incredibly short. It took me literally 2 sessions to beat it, and I took my time. This isn't really a demo, it's more like a Prologue chapter to a larger game. Which is why I do recommend the game, but HIGHLY suggest you wait for a sale of some kind, or suggest the devs lower the price. At $7 US, that's still asking for too much for how little there is here to play.
With that out of the way, I did like the game and wish there was more/am excited for the next game release from these devs (as well as the game this is a prologue for in November this year).
Let's get the bad stuff out of the way:
- No explanations or tutorials save for the ship combat explanation that attacking from behind deals extra damage. Tbf, it's not a HUGE deal, since most of the mechanics are things you'll have seen in other RPGs, but it did lead to me not fully understanding stats, taking some time to figure out how to level and a few other things that, in all honesty, might have taken longer to fully explain.
- The length of animations is really too long. The first time you see someone teleport to melee attack, it's cool, but after the first 5 times, the animation is actually annoyingly long. And some of them are funny, like the way the pistols get whipped out and fired is actually unintentionally funny. I don't want to make it seem like this is a big deal, I understand it's a small indie studio and it doesn't really detract from the game in any major way. It's just a shame because the game is, otherwise, quite well done visually.
- The way the dialogue is delivered in this start, pause, continue, pause manner is very irritating. If the it's done so slow readers can keep up, then put in dialogue speed options, but it would actually make me stop playing the game in a more standard length RPG.
The "I'm not sure" stuff:
* The skills/leveling system is weird. I like the idea of earning points towards the skill trees, but without traditional levels, you're relying on a few select skills and then entirely otherwise equipment to level stats, and I'm not sure how that would work in a traditional length game. And I like when games try interesting twists on standard concepts, but I think this one needs a LITTLE more work. Cool idea, just needs something else to go with it, like deeper skill trees, or ways to use the points on stats specifically (or both!).
* The combat is also a hit and miss. It's standard turn based RPG stuff, but in this day and age, I feel like that doesn't cut it anymore. The skills are cool, but I found a select few skills to be just superior options for several characters because they didn't use a resource but dealt significantly more damage that even some of the other resource burning skills.
* The UI is both a hit and a miss as well. The artwork is good, and the info inside the menu options are clear and concise, but too much screen is wasted on nothing. When in the general menu, the bars for health, energy, and charge take up like 4/5 of the screen, and then numbers are on the opposite side of the screen from the menu. If the shrank the bars to take up half that space, it would not only look better but be WAY easier to read, imo.
The good:
++ The soundtrack! I cannot sing enough praises here. The music not only sets the mood, but it slaps, too!
+ The audio effects are also great. The sound of attacks and deaths and effects are almost all spot on. There's a couple that I felt missed, but maybe 2 out of the literally dozens of sounds in the game.
+ Story: It's hard to write a good story, and fit a game around that, and so I'm usually pretty easy-going on game's stories, but this one is pretty good. Nothing groundbreaking, nor terribly interesting, but they do a pretty good job of building a literal universe in a really short amount of time, without overexplaining or underexplaining anything.
+ Character design: same as with the story, there's nothing here that will make this game stand above the crowd, but their well-made, and despite how short the game is, you get a pretty clear sense of who everyone is and their goals.
In summary, it's a good game, could use some more polish in specific areas, but the visual and sound design are fantastic, even if the game is super short. Which is why I do recommend the game, but suggest anyone interested wait for a sale, or for the devs to lower the price, since it's not even 1 $/hr of game even if you go slow.
Cool game! A couple of bugs but nothing that made me want to cry. Art looks great, music sounds great, can't complain about that. Characters are unique in skillset and design. Early battles can be tough but once you get more party members it becomes more manageable. I haven't really got super far yet but based on my first impressions it is pretty neat:
https://youtu.be/xFlDWgU9Wpw
I enjoyed playing this and at first it gave me major Star Trek: Dark Mirror vibes with a dash of time travel displacement and I plan to play this again to see if I missed anything since I saw the question mark in another system but chose to go with the main objective with who I thought were the good guys...
I also learned sometimes good and evil are only perspectives and hope when Star Shift come out the crew from the former universe gets to settle old accounts with a past host who I felt made a very bad call.
With that said I would recommend it and the other upcoming games soon to come out this year.
Major props to the development team!
This is a very interesting game with a cool premise and interesting plot lines and combat in it. The game is fairly simple in many ways which lends to it being so easy to get into. Everything is fairly self explanatory and if you've played RPG's alot, learning this game won't be that hard. If you haven't played many RPG's this game might take a bit to get used to due to a lack of a tutorial to explain the bare bone basics.
A big annoyance with the game is the number of very simple bugs in the game that leaves me wondering how they made it past playtesting at all. We're talking about items or skills that are supposed to restore 50%, they instead restore just 50. It's not a huge deal, but is an irritation that can make some skills overpowered, and other skills and items just completely worthless. You could beat the game without buying any new equipment at all, and even if you did buy upgraded gear, they're so expensive you wouldn't be able to buy better gear for everyone. It is nice to see something new to RPG games, but with the number of bugs present make it hard to really enjoy and get into as much as I want to with how long this game is.
Which brings me to my biggest problem. This is a very short game, to the point it ends up feeling like a demo for the actual game. The Tactical battle system for space or army combat is cool, in theory. The problem is it is so simple and bland they almost take more out of the game instead of adding to it. You only really experience one good fight on space and ground tactics and that's it. There's so much more there that seems like they're supposed to be more complex, but they're just not in this game.
In summary this is a fun and interesting game that promises a lot of interesting mechanics that are ultimately left feeling incomplete or unpolished. The length of the game is artificially padded with large maze like areas with extremely repetitive fights that begin to wear on your enjoyment of the game on top of how rushed everything feels. Instead of feeling excited or happy with the game by the time I finished it, I was left disappointed with how little it ultimately showed you. All of this is compounded with how little is spend really fleshing out the characters. Archer feels like he's supposed to be the main character but you soon find the ship captain is the main character who ends up feeling like the most bland and unlikable character in the game.
I cannot recommend this game in its current state. It's advertised as a full experience when in reality this is just a quick and simple demo for the actual game set to come out later this year.
A space-faring vessel, the [i]Dauntless[/i], has come under attack! While the ship temporarily evades the pursuing craft, an enemy boarding party has infiltrated the ship, and it's up to a team up of to 7 to deal with the intruders! After that is taken care of, the [i]Dauntless[/i] uses an asteroid as cover to lick it's wounds, and is able to hold out for a while before it's found by one of the pursuing craft. The [i]Dauntless[/i] emerges victorious, and escapes to a space station owned and operated by the enemies of the faction they were being chased by. There, the player learns that the crew of the [i]Dauntless[/i] have somehow entered into alternate reality. At this point, the game feels like it could run into a gameplay loop of mission-break-mission.
I say "could", because, as of this writing, I've yet to complete the first mission, even after about 6 hours of gameplay. I'll admit that some of that time may have been accrued with the game being open, and needing to refer to various points, while taking notes for this [strike]mess of a[/strike] review.
Among the first things I noticed when I took control of the game is the equip screens.
[url=https://rpgmaker.net/media/content/users/8200/locker/starshiftorigins_equipscreen1.png]Example 1[/url]
[url=https://rpgmaker.net/media/content/users/8200/locker/starshiftorigins_equipscreen2.png]Example 2[/url]
While I'm uncertain as to why the display is so different between characters, or if this is a random fluke on my end, my personal preference would be the second example shown.
At any rate, the first hour and a half or so of gameplay is devoted to crew combat, so lemme talk about that for a bit. The game uses a [i]Grandia[/i]-like system. Which is to say that it's an ATB that pauses when a player-controlled unit's turn comes up, with various abilities having a charge time after they are inputted before they are pulled off. With [i]Grandia[/i], the charge times leave a window of possible attacks of opportunity, and certain attacks having the ability to outright cancel the action that would have been performed. This game does not seem to have any effects that cancel incoming attacks that I've noticed, with actions pretty much happening instantly after being inputted, with only few instances where enemies got off their action first. If there was a way to cancel an action, it might involve stunning, paralysis, or death of the unit. Having experienced the multiple, [b]multiple[/b] headaches induced by implementing multi-user attacks for one my my own projects, I can forgive there being no cancel effects.
Outside of the standard HP to indicate how much damage a unit can take before dying, the game uses Power (standing in for MP), and Charge (standing in for TP) that are used for various abilities. While Power can be restored by using batteries on your units, Charge can be generated through attacking, guarding, or taking damage. I really like this detail, even if I totally recognize (or can reasonably guess) what's really going on behind the screen.
At some point, I started noticing that some skills have a display such as "Graviton Burst \i[313]", or the like, in the combat log in the upper-right portion of the screen. I take this to mean one of two things. One is that there is an "\\" escape character (which translates to printing the "\" character). The other is that the battle log uses a function that doesn't process escape characters at all. Of course, I also have no idea what plug-ins this game uses, or how the text for these skills are formatted, so I cannot comment further on this point.
As characters fight, they earn Intelligence. This can be spend to learn skills, both passive, and active. Most skill trees are the same between crew members, however, there is a tree available based on a unit's race, and sometimes, their class. Personally, I favored the "Healing" and "Tech" trees, as skills in those trees seemed to work in a chain to turn Charge into Power into HP, and generally keeping the team alive without relying on items.
However, some of the descriptions for skills could be clearer. For example, there is a passive skill called Charge Cell Efficiency, which includes in it's description, "Charge Cell Regeneration: +15%". Now, "regeneration" might indicate that a unit's Charge increases over time. My suspicion is that it's actually generating 15% more Charge when it is otherwise generated. In this case, I feel an appropriate term to use could be "Charge Gain: +15%"?
This issue of terminology extends to Charge Cell Regeneration and Power Cell Regeneration. They have a description that includes "Charge Cell Regeneration: 30%" and "Power Cell Regeneration: 30%", respectively. These are one-shot restoration skills. Since the game already uses the term "HP Recovery" to indicate a one-shot restoration of HP, I would recommend "Power Recovery: 30%" or "Charge Recovery: 30%" to make these skills a little clearer in what they do.
Further experimentation found a flaw with some of these skills. Charge Cell Regeneration and Remote Charge. The skills purport themselves to cost Power to restore Charge, but, they don't appear to do that. From what I can tell, Charge Cell Regeneration recovers Power, whereas Remote Charge decreases Power beyond the initial cost. The amount of recovery/damage in either case is incredibly small. I'd almost be willing to bet that the values being shown is what should be restored to Charge.
Later on in the game, the player is introduced to ship combat, and a later scenario introduces army-battles. They both use the same tactical grid-based combat in a vein similar to that of [i]Fire Emblem[/i], [i]Shining Force[/i], and their ilk. I've two issues here. One is that while players have control of allied units during the army-battles, during ship battles, they only have control of the [i]Dauntless[/i]. I suppose there is an amount of story-sense with this decision, but, that doesn't mean I enjoy watching the game playing itself. The second sticking point is that while the turn order is on a per-unit basis, the way it usually pans out feels like it should be phase-based instead. For example, the typical battle round has one enemy unit getting a turn, then one of your allies get a turn, then the remaining enemies get their turns, then the remaining allies get theirs.
However, on the plus side, I will note that the game does not limit players to only being able to move then attack, or just attack before a unit's turn ends automatically. Here, players have the ability to move, attack, then move again with whatever movement range the unit had remaining. It's kinda neat to be able to jump out of cover, attack, then get as far out of range as possible.
As mentioned earlier, players are tasked to perform missions, which means traveling on the [strike]world[/strike] galactic map. The presentation of the star clusters reminds of [i]Star Control 2[/i]'s areas of influences, and getting from place to place reminds me of [i]Mass Effect[/i] with how each star cluster had it's own sub-map to traverse before zooming into a star's system map, and then navigating that to get to the planet that has the mission.
The game implements a touch-encounter system, with enemies that chase you if they see you. In my experience, this usually translates to being bogged down by incessant battles. This game is no exception to this experience, and ultimately the least enjoyable part of the game for me.
Despite the complaints, I think this game shows some promise. There are rough edges to be found to be sure, but, if they can be smoothed out, this game would be well worth the asking price, even without a sale.
I hope the main game will be as good as Origins indicate it could be.
Bought this on a whim and I'm pleasantly surprised.
It's a neat sci fi spin on classic JRPGs with a pretty good story, decent world building and a battle system that is interesting enough to dig into, and no 'endless/random' battles which is a deal breaker for me and the JRPG formula.
That said, it isn't perfect. The tactical battle system is good, but not as good as the designer thinks it is, and even though the battles aren't random there are A LOT of them so combat does become a chore like almost every JRPG. You'll find yourself crawling through long corridors of THE SAME ENEMIES doing the SAME THING. OVER and OVER and OVER. The hostile environments are *just* big enough that navigating them saps the fun out of exploration. If the game were longer, or the story less interesting it could easily be the sort of thing I lose interest in, but as it is (6 bucks for 10-15 hours of effort) was satisfying and the story kept moving.
I'll keep my eye out for the next installment. The sci fi setting was refreshing and the ship to ship battle system good enough to keep my interest. I hope they scale back the amount of dungeon crawling but that seems to be inseperable from 'classic' JRPGs.
[i] Can't Daunt the Dauntless [/i]
It's a great game and series.
- Good sci-fi synth and alternative jam music
- Cool and unique characters and races
- Very star-trek feel with some of the technology and star systems travel
- It does not use a level system but uses a JP skill tree system, very unique and I enjoyed it
- Interesting story with many twists and turns
This is a very nice party turn-based jrpg.
Space opera. I can call it like... younger brother [Mass Effect] in pixels.
Really nice story, nice soundtrack, nice graphic design with many details, lots of interesting mechanics. This game will not let you get bored. 7 character party mode, strategy mode, space mode. There was also supposed to be a craft... which I never saw (workbench was on the ship, but there were no recipes), and planet exploration that I have not reached.
Everything was very pleasant. I was looking forward to at least 20-30 hours of a good story, and a certain amount of grinding, visiting planets, collecting resources, etc. I'm not asking too much = this is [statistically average] timing for jrpg game on [RPG maker] engine. Everything was very good!!!... until after 7 hours... the game suddenly ended. As if game plot had just been [rigidly cut off]...
Just... WHY?! Why is it so SMALL?! Is it just early access?
I have seen many locations on the galactic map, many planets and objects.
It's just one big carrot! It was shown and you were simply deceived...
This is a damn shame, because this game has been in my bookmarks for over a year.
Everything that I played in these 7 hours looks like the beginning of a story, 1-2 acts.
In any case, I did not regret the time spent, as it became clear why the price is small. This game is well worth its money, but [PREPARE] to be disappointed with how quickly it ends.
Купил чтобы поддержать разработчика. Иногда смотрю его стримы, видно что он в одиночку очень старается и у него это хорошо получается. Так держать!
Star Shift Origins - это отличная в плане механик и сюжета тактическая стратегия, которая является прологом к более длинному сюжетному исполнению игры в научно-фантастическом мире.
Захватывающая история погружает вас на несколько часов игры, учитывая,что игру сделал 1 человек. В игре нас ждут тактические сражения, механики изучений и живучести своего корабля, что придают игре особое прохождение. Стилистика игры и звуковое сопровождение исполнено на 100% в тему.
the best game. I assure you the feeling of nostalgia will be above all, play!
This is the first time I've come across such a genre of a game. The first impressions of the game are good, but I did not think that it would be able to drag me into its world. Space is implemented well, and the gameplay is not difficult.
Nice music sticks in the head, which gives a pleasant feeling after a long game.
The game is interesting and has a nice visual style, I advise all fans of the genre to try.
Star Shift Origins is a fun space game with beautiful special graphics. I liked the skill system the most. The soundtrack deserves a special mention. It is just wonderful in this game, it perfectly suits this game. I liked the game, so will you!
I like to play strategies and this game is no exception, at first glance it may seem that it is simple, but here there are beautifully drawn levels and you also need to think, you can also improve yourself in the game through the skill tree
Достойная ролевая игра, стилизованная под космос в графике игровых приставок нулевых годов, чем она меня собственно и зацепила (я человек уже не молодой, те времена помню хорошо, и, иногда, очень хочется понастольгировать)). Саунд приятный, не напрягающий, геймплей тоже из нулевых и мне естественно понравился) Однозначно рекомендую!
Quite a colorful and interesting game. A good and addictive plot will not let you get bored. A well-developed character development system without any annoying levels. The outcome of the battle depends not only on the level of your skills, but also on the strategy.
I recommend it, it's a very cool game.
Прикольная космическая приключенческая игра! В игре имеется интересная система прокачки и классная как для такой игры графика. Всем советую данную игру для покупки.
Отличный проект в жанре пошаговой рпг с потрясным саундтреком. Сама игра выглядит неплохо, не смотря на пиксельную графику, а тематика космоса, как никак подходит к такому виду рисовки. Однозначно рекомендую!
В целом довольно интересная игра, которую я взял с 20% скидкой. Если вам нравятся космические приключения, то стоит обратить внимание на данный проект. Стилизация своеобразная, саундтрек потрясающий. В общем, к покупке рекомендуется!
