Crying Suns Review

Do you remember this little indie game that came out back in 2012 called FTL? Its a fun game even still (booted it up last fall) and one of the all time greats. So when I saw Crying Suns advertised on Imgur I checked it out and was intrigued by what I saw as it reminded me of the former game.

Its described as thus:

Crying Suns is a tactical rogue-lite that puts you in the role of a space fleet commander as you explore a mysteriously fallen empire. In this story rich experience inspired by Dune and Foundation, each successful run will uncover the truth about the Empire... and yourself as well.

I was trying to find one image to capture the game but it was difficult.

Basically you are an Admiral revived from stasis to find the empire you were once part of fallen apart and in chaos. Your goal is to travel from the outer rim to the empire's former center to find out what happened and what you can do to fix it.

The game play is broken into two parts: the first is travelling from solar system to solar system and planet to planet having encounters n which, if successful, you can glean more resources for your ship such as upgrades, repairs, officers, equipment, scrap (used as currency in the fallen empire), or information about what happened and/or what's going on. The second part is ship to ship combat with weapons and squadrons.

I'm about half way through. The game has 6 chapters and each chapter has 3 sectors of planets to run through with a boss at the end. I'm in Chapter 3, sector 3, about to fight the chapter boss. (And I'm playing on Easy, so sue me.)

The variety of encounters is impressive. The game claims 300 unique encounters and I believe them. And some encounters can have different outcomes based on what officers you've recruited along the way. The sectors you travel though have real decision points, as in do I go this route and visit a station that sells and repairs my squadrons, or this route with more opportunities for encounters to build up my resources?

And the space combat... it took me a few tries to figure it out but once I got the hang of it I really enjoy it. Its not simple but its not twitch based or super complicated. There is a lot of variety of ship weapons and squadrons and upgrades so it takes the right amount of thought to win a fight without being frustrating.

Overall I'm really enjoying this game and its totally worth the $28 dollars I spent on it.

4.5 / 5 Stars