Crying Suns: Chapters 1-3
Feb. 1st, 2021 09:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
primeidealA couple weeks ago, someone posted in the FTL subreddit that "Crying Suns," a similar roguelike, was free for a short time, so I nabbed it and have so far played through the first two "chapters" (levels).
Much like FTL, each level consists of three "sectors" where you can "jump" between "adjacent" stars on a map at the cost of one "fuel." (Unlike FTL, each star has multiple planets you can also jump between.) Each sector ends with an increasingly difficult boss. If you beat all three, you unlock a new chapter and a new model of spaceship you can use for future runs.
The battles are more spatial than FTL--you have mini "squadrons" of fighter ships that attack others, as well as the enemy ships. You usually can't escape (occasionally the opponents will offer a surrender deal), so you have to be able to fight through. Sometimes you find opportunities to repair hull damage afterward, sometimes you don't.
The IC justification for the repeated runs is that you're a clone of a famous admiral, accompanied by a snarky robot. So every time you die/start a new chapter, it's a new clone, and your officers are similarly regenerated. There are many sorts of encounters you can find at the stars, and also like FTL, there are special "blue options" unlocked by having an officer with the right kind of skills. Some of the encounters have humor like "an old advertisement plays: 'all pirates must pay your union dues, else you may be...pirated.' Pirates have unions?!"
And there's also an IC sense of it being a roguelike, because the bosses will say things like "you again, didn't we just kill you?" or the robot snarker will say "cool, we added a quest marker to the next sector. In the event we survive to reach it, which given your track record is not high, we can complete the quest there."
The plot, such as it is, is "the mighty robots that sustained the Empire were turned off, you need to journey to turn them back on." So sector 1 is a sector ruled by a pirate, and you keep asking her underlings, "she did it, right?" When you find her, she's like "it wasn't me, it was those religious zealots." Sector 2 is fighting the religious zealots, "it was totally your boss who turned off the robots, right?" "It wasn't me, it was probably the companies who stood to gain financially." Sector 3 (which I have yet to beat) is the corporations.
I have no evidence for this but just based on how it's been going so far I expect the last level to be "the original guy you're a clone of is actually the one one who disabled the robots, what now?!"
The music is, alas, much much worse than FTL, I usually have a mix of my own music (...which is a large percentage of musical theater bootlegs) playing instead.
Edit: forgot to mention that there are "commandos" with a very cosmopolitan mix of names. But sometimes you will see two Yangs, or a Sarah and a Sara, on the same expedition.
Much like FTL, each level consists of three "sectors" where you can "jump" between "adjacent" stars on a map at the cost of one "fuel." (Unlike FTL, each star has multiple planets you can also jump between.) Each sector ends with an increasingly difficult boss. If you beat all three, you unlock a new chapter and a new model of spaceship you can use for future runs.
The battles are more spatial than FTL--you have mini "squadrons" of fighter ships that attack others, as well as the enemy ships. You usually can't escape (occasionally the opponents will offer a surrender deal), so you have to be able to fight through. Sometimes you find opportunities to repair hull damage afterward, sometimes you don't.
The IC justification for the repeated runs is that you're a clone of a famous admiral, accompanied by a snarky robot. So every time you die/start a new chapter, it's a new clone, and your officers are similarly regenerated. There are many sorts of encounters you can find at the stars, and also like FTL, there are special "blue options" unlocked by having an officer with the right kind of skills. Some of the encounters have humor like "an old advertisement plays: 'all pirates must pay your union dues, else you may be...pirated.' Pirates have unions?!"
And there's also an IC sense of it being a roguelike, because the bosses will say things like "you again, didn't we just kill you?" or the robot snarker will say "cool, we added a quest marker to the next sector. In the event we survive to reach it, which given your track record is not high, we can complete the quest there."
The plot, such as it is, is "the mighty robots that sustained the Empire were turned off, you need to journey to turn them back on." So sector 1 is a sector ruled by a pirate, and you keep asking her underlings, "she did it, right?" When you find her, she's like "it wasn't me, it was those religious zealots." Sector 2 is fighting the religious zealots, "it was totally your boss who turned off the robots, right?" "It wasn't me, it was probably the companies who stood to gain financially." Sector 3 (which I have yet to beat) is the corporations.
I have no evidence for this but just based on how it's been going so far I expect the last level to be "the original guy you're a clone of is actually the one one who disabled the robots, what now?!"
The music is, alas, much much worse than FTL, I usually have a mix of my own music (...which is a large percentage of musical theater bootlegs) playing instead.
Edit: forgot to mention that there are "commandos" with a very cosmopolitan mix of names. But sometimes you will see two Yangs, or a Sarah and a Sara, on the same expedition.
