I finally got around to trying this after however many years. I haven't played Freelancer, so I don't have a point of reference, but I like the lore and the setting.
First thing I did was spend all my money on a picture of Todd Howard, but I'm not sure where the picture went.
I played the first campaign chapter + the drinks with Karbelle scene. I took some mental notes (skipping over the things that seem like placeholders or that obviously need polish):
- Perhaps input should be frozen after you click on a fast travel button? It feels funny to select "warp to cargo trader" but to still be able to move your view around. You can also click on another fast travel destination while the screen is fading out, if you're quick enough.
- Will the whole game have voiced dialogue? If not, maybe the text should read out typewriter-style instead of appearing all at once. It can be tempting to skip large walls of text when they appear all at once.
- For a similar reason, the tutorial for docking is a bit chunky. I don't mind it, but that's because I know it's a demo. I feel like the average person on Steam will skip the tutorials and then get confused.
- Design-wise, the game really overloads you with options at the beginning. This could be good or bad, but it's something to be aware of. There's so much to buy and so many menus on the planet that you can get overwhelmed before you even step into the spaceship. Being overwhelmed when flying around is a good thing IMO, but being exposed to all of the shops/upgrades at the very beginning of the game is a bit much.
- Dialogue could benefit from some polish to slow things down and help you digest what's happening (eg a sound effect and a pause each time Karbelle pours a drink; otherwise it feels like you're just clicking through text, and you forget that you're hammering down 4 shots of rye in a span of 10 minutes).
- Dialogue also needs a bit of editing, but that's something generic I mention to everyone. The big picture seems cool, but on a micro level, just watch out for comma splices and run-on sentences.
And now a few things that stood out to me in a positive way:
- The sense of scale when you're flying around is really cool. I like that it actually takes a while to get anywhere. And that the highways are part of one big map, rather than putting the player through a loading screen for each area.
- Combat is intuitive and fun.
- There's enough content, both in terms of game systems and lore, to keep the player invested. Way more than most indie games that I've played.
Good work!