Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters: Game Review

Player: ‘I could talk all day, but I really must go.’

Unusual Alien@: ‘Yes! We do! Goodbye is the *Game*. Hello!! I am only joke. It is funny enough. Do not forget to *enjoy the sauce*!!!’

Note: @ is not actually called unusual alien in the game.

Formerly known as Star Control 2, a direct sequel to the excellent Star Control..., this game is available for free on Steam right now, with the original creators' blessing and endorsement. I’ve personally beaten this game several times and have dumped many hours into the arcade combat ‘Super Melee’ mode as well. This game is that good, even all these years later, and I felt it needed to have a look here on Doux Reviews as it’s a full-blown space opera.

Originally released in 1992, this game took the idea of the original Star Control, i.e., humans meet aliens that are locked in a bitter war, and join the Alliance of Free Stars to fight the Ur-Quan Hierarchy, and instead of another strategy game with arcade spaceship combat like the original, they made it a space opera RPG, but kept the combat from the first game. I got the original game on my Sega Genesis and played it a ton. When I saw that the sequel looked so good when I was perusing games at Babbage’s, I made it my quest to get a PC to play it. At the time I only had consoles and my aging Commodore 64, and I had so much fun with the first game that getting that sequel was an absolute must for 23-year-old me.

Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford are the brains behind this beauty. Both worked on video games separately before becoming the team that would create this game series. Paul Reiche III was involved with aspects of the physical version of Dungeons and Dragons that I first encountered way back in the early 80s in grade school and also worked on classics like Mail-Order Monsters and Archon. This series was their first team up, but they worked together so well that they would eventually create the studio known as Toys for Bob, which made many other games until they left that company and founded Pistol Shrimp Games to be independent again.

This game has a far-reaching story, new species to uncover, and lots of exploration, so I will do my best to explain why the game is still pure gold to this day, while avoiding spoiling anything. One thing that you learn immediately is that things don’t seem right. Unzervalt, the isolated planet where an expedition was investigating rumors of Precursor technology, and where you have spent all your young life, has lost contact with Earth and the rest of the Alliance. Your character is the protagonist since you have an intrinsic understanding of the Precursor technology that was indeed found on and under the planet, and you command the giant, but incomplete, vessel that leads the expedition home to Earth. The game is driven by you playing that character and both the decisions you make and the speed at which you make them. You lead with that huge precursor vessel, but you also have an Earthling cruiser to start with, and this fleet can be expanded upon as you play, both by upgrading your main ship and by adding other vessels to your fleet.

A simple starting premise to be sure, but what happens on this journey is what makes this game such a joy to play. On your voyage, which will take several hours, you will meet old acquaintances and make new ones, not always with friendly results of course. You will mine planets for resources to build up your fleet and improve your flagship, solve ancient mysteries, and uncover just what happened all those years ago, and the ramifications from not just the war, but from the ancient past that echo through to the current day. This combination of discovery, diplomacy, resource management, and combat, all done interestingly and with humor, are brilliant, and it’s no wonder that this game still being talked about and played to this day.

Exploring a planet with our lander, this planet shows fire on the surface, and is just one danger your lander faces when exploring planets.

The game has several screens you’ll use to navigate, fight, converse, and explore. You’ll be flying through hyperspace to travel to new star systems, navigate in those systems to reach planets, moons, and other solar objects, hail and be hailed by alien worlds and ships, scan and land on planets to mine, seek relics, and deal with local flora and fauna, and increase your knowledge about the state of the galaxy to ascertain what has happened, and what you must do now. Some of this info can be exposition heavy as aliens’ dialog is used to fill folks in, especially if you haven’t played the first game, as they want to get you up to speed, but it works here better than such information dumps tend to do. The way aliens present this info is as diverse as they are, with some being forthright, others can be cryptic, some are gruff and combative, others mewling and cowardly, and some are just friendly. It’s a wondrous array of beings and cultures to encounter.

As you travel throughout the galaxy and encounter the myriads of beings that inhabit the game’s setting, one thing you’ll notice is the amazing music. Not only does the game feature unique music for each alien, but also for flying through hyperspace, normal space, and of course combat. Each ship has its own victory ditty that plays when it wins a fight too and reflects the alien species that commands that ship well. I originally had filled up every single save slot just so I could load up a different piece of alien music whenever I wanted, but with YouTube having a plethora of videos on the game, that’s not necessary anymore. There are even some altered and upgraded versions of the soundtrack by the Precursors that are also on YouTube that one can peruse and enjoy.

Dialog options are often plentiful. Not all of them are great choices, though

The combat is very much rooted in arcade classics like Asteroids. All combat takes place on a wraparound arena with the nearest planet in the center and various asteroids careening all over the place. Interestingly, all combat is broken down into duels, and when you have two or more ships on a side, they enter combat only after the prior ship has been lost, while the victorious ship retains any damage or other conditions it has already suffered so far. Each ship plays differently, but all have some kind of main weapon and at least one special device to use, as well as varying characteristics for maneuvering it, how much damage it can take, and how its energy for using its weapons and systems works. You can also flee battles, but this costs fuel, and the enemy can attack you while you’re warming up your escape jump, so fleeing isn’t generally a great option, but it can be the better option at times.

The Spathi Eluder is not in a great spot here as the Ur-Quan Dreadnought's main weapon is very powerful, and easy to hit with at this angle and range.

There’s also a Super Melee mode where there is a fleet of 1 to 14 ships per side that just battle it out in a series of duels that mimic the main game’s combat. Each ship has a value so you can use that to balance games with your friend, but you don’t have to, which allows you to try some extremely unfair matchups. You can load the prebuilt fleets as well as create and save your own as well. While the main draw of this game is the story mode, this mode gave us a lot of fun back in the mid-90s. It’s also great to practice certain ships to make the story game a bit easier. Some combos of ships are very skewed, although generally if their points are similar, they should be competitive, and one can take pride in beating some of the big ships with some of the tinier ones.

So many different options to fly.

I can’t heap enough praise on this game. The only real negatives I can think of are that it can be a bit rough for new people, especially if they don’t realize the game has a timer and if you move too slowly, you will outright lose. Some may not be fans of how the Syreen are depicted, as they are dressed in very ‘pulp’ era skimpy costumes. The optional voices that were ported from the 3DO to the newer PC version, as the PC version originally did not have audio for the aliens speaking, are mostly excellent but two of my personal favorite species (the Spathi and the Utwig) have voices that can grate on one’s ears at times. Some may not like the very arcade style combat, although I’m a fan since I grew up playing arcade shoot’em’ups as a kid, but you can have the CPU operate your ships in combat if you wish and can swap this back and forth during play. The last thing which I’ve seen some state as a negative is that the planet exploration is rather basic and can get repetitive, which I’d agree with to a point, as few planets have unique encounters, but I never found it outright bad. The last thing is that your character is assumed to be a particular young man, so no character customization here, not that you see yourself much beyond some cut scenes anyway, but it’s not ideal. None of that really brings this game down from being one of the best video games ever made. It’s on ‘best of’ lists all these years later for very good reasons, and if you like space opera games with some humorous twists, play this game!

Five energetic games of Frungy out of four. My math may not be great here, but this game is that good.

-Frungy is of course the sport of kings. When asked how one plays this game, the devs replied jokingly, ‘With gusto!’ Only the aliens that mention the game know how it’s played at this time. We puny Earthlings are still ignorant of its majesty.

-The good ending cutscene is amazing, and something that must be experienced to get the full effect of your success and the humor.

-There are two books written by Tommi Salminen, Groombridge Log and Eternal Doctrine, that follow the game’s story and are fun reads to boot.

-There’s also a book titled Interbellum that claims it’s a Star Control book. This book, which I do own, is hot garbage. I cannot stress enough how unfaithful to the source material this is, and how hard it was to read. I highly recommend never even attempting to read this waste of paper. Reading the ingredients on a box of crackers is more entertaining and well-written than this ‘book.’

-We don’t talk about Star Control 3 that much. It’s not as bad as some say, but it’s a massive letdown after this game. Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford did not work on this sequel, and it shows.

-A spinoff game called Star Control: Origins, which is fairly recent, is also not done by the original team, and follows this game’s plot a little too closely, if I’m honest. It’s not outright bad, but it feels like it’s trying to copy this masterpiece, and it just can’t live up to it. This game’s existence leans into the next point.

-The legal red tape involved with this series is one reason why I really hate capitalism at times. It’s damaged so many fun IPs and caused issues where people can’t work on their own creations, such as George Fan and my beloved Plants vs. Zombies, and why this game had to change its name.

-The original team, with some extra help, is making a long-awaited sequel; Free Stars: Children of Infinity. I backed it on Kickstarter, and I look forward to seeing what it brings to the universe.

-Many game developers have credited this game with inspiring their own creations. Games such as Mass Effect, Fallout, and Stellaris are perhaps the most well-known of such games.

-A lot of the art for both original Star Control games come from Erol Otus, an artist that worked on DnD with Reiche in the past.

-This is a rare PC game that is best played with controller, mostly due to the combat with its traditional arcade game control scheme. It’s actually one of the main reasons I have an Xbox style controller for my PC in the first place.

Morella is a Gen Xer who likes strange things a bit too much.

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