Information
- Title: Star Valor
- Developer: Rafael Burgos
- Publisher: Rafael Burgos
- Genre: Sandbox Space RPG
- Platform(s): PC
- Players: Single-Player Only
- Price: 20,99€
- Review Copy: Supplied by Developer
- Review Platform: PC, (Steam)
- Total Play Time: ~10 hours
Intro:
Star Valor is an exploration sandbox space adventure where you control and manage your own fleet of ships. You can choose to take bounties, become a raider, build a fleet and help one of the faction’s armies gain territory. It’s up to you! The game is developed and published by a one man team!
Gameplay
Controls: 8/10
– The ships do feel nice to control, perhaps a bit sluggish. I know the larger ships should be more difficult to drive but they still feel a bit too heavy.
Quests, Progression, Story: 7/10
– There are a lot of repetitive quests to begin with but this nothing new to the genre.
Enjoyability: 8/10
– It has the base of everything you could want from a space adventure RPG. You’ve got your trading, ship customization and more
The adventure starts with a tutorial to get you used to the game mechanics
Star Valor thrusts you into a world of faction warfare for you to discover and join into. When you first start your game you will be guided through a small tutorial showing you the basics of the game. You will get to borrow a ship and go on a few small quests with the help of your trusty sidekick.
You control your ship using a mouse and keyboard. You can choose two different steering methods for getting around. One will have you completely control where you drive and look with the keyboard, and with the other method you use your keyboard to navigate and mouse to steer.
Basically you will fly around from galaxy to galaxy choosing your own way. You can decide to build up a mining spaceship and destroy asteroids to process and sell the ores within them, trade items from space station to station or decide to be a bounty hunter, taking down the most notorious criminals in the galaxy. It is completely up to you the type of game you want Star Valor to be.
The customization options for the ships are pretty good too. You can decide which types of weapons you wish to place and even the location of each weapon. The ability to assign each weapon to a hotkey is also fantastic. This helps you from depleting your energy reserves by allowing you to choose which weapon to fire at any given time. You won’t be able to just slam the biggest gun on any ship however. As you gain more money you will be able to purchase larger ships with more energy reserves, allowing you to expand your weaponry and items.
The game also has some crafting which allows you to create your own custom weapons using scavenged materials. While I didn’t go too deep into the weapon crafting system I did manage to craft myself a pretty cool looking heavy purple laser.
The one thing I do kind of gripe with in terms of gameplay is the controls feel a little sluggish with my ship. Of course I could pick a lighter ship which can navigate a little more freely but the ship is have isn’t particularly tough in regards to how slow it turns. It feels like the AI with similar sized ships, are able to get around a lot easier than myself. (Maybe it’s just a skill issue).
Graphics & Design
World Design: 8/10
– The very very vast world of Star Valor allows you to travel to almost limitless different star systems.
Characters & Objects: 9/10
– The spaceships look fantastic, the weapons are beautiful and everything you could expect from a space RPG.
UI and Menus: 9/10
– The overall design of the UI and menus are very intuitive and are easy to navigate.
One of the major high points of Star Valor’s experience is the graphical design of the game. There are such a large number of different styles of ship for the player to unlock and pilot. One of the most important things for me personally when playing a sandbox game is enough different choices that make me want to go back and try the game in a different play style.
Star Valor brings many different classes of ship and many different types which all look fantastic. The one thing that is fairly lacking in the design department is that a lot of the other things in the game look very repetitive. All of the space stations look pretty similar throughout the whole game and the rest is well, space.
Space is just pretty boring in general. Planets floating in the background and asteroid fields are just plain boring. Not that there is too much that could be done with them but perhaps different systems could at least have a different overall color scheme to make them appear a little bit different? Maybe this is the case later in the game but most of the areas I witnessed in my time looked pretty repetitive.
Sound
Combat & Ships: 9/10
– Lazers sound like lazers. I don’t know what to say.
Music & Ambience: 8/10
– The music is quite nice and the ambient noise works quite well to set the mood
Sound Effects: 9/10
– The sound effects for all stages of the game are great. Although I would recommend turning down the music as it can drown out the sound effects.
Another high point for the game is the sound design. The ships sound great blasting through the universe and the guns make really satisfying sounds. Some of the nicest parts of the game some from exploding your enemies into a fireball and flying through it.
The music is nice to have in the background when you are exploring and gets quite intense in battle scenarios but in general I found the mix to be a bit off. This isn’t really a problem due to the fact there are sliders seperating sound effects and music and I would recommend turning the Music down a lot otherwise you will miss most of the subtle sound effects the game has to offer.
The UI warning sounds feel nice and space-shipy and work well with the overall UI theme. You can generally guess what is going on around you with the sounds in the game. Far-off battles can be heard before you can see them and the game gets really intense when the big battles are taking place.
I personally had a really cool experience where I was checking out a space station when an enemy fleet warped into the sector to take it over. When this happens, a large fleet will attack a space station while the faction that owns it tries to defend it. This was definitely one of the coolest experiences in my time playing the game and the sound of about 20 different lasers and cannons going off on each other was really neat.
Summary
Totals
Gameplay: 23/30
Graphics: 26/30
Sound: 26/30
Overall
75/90
Star Valor is an incredible achievement for a solo developer. While the game may be a little repetitive at times with the quest design there isn’t really any way it couldn’t be with such a large map. The game works incredibly well as a lite sandbox space RPG and it follows a great little grindy formula where you are really left wanting to reach that next level and buy the next ship.
The customization the game offers is fantastic and everything I look for in a sandbox experience. The ability to control you own fleet and have AI come with you as a personal fleet or mercenary is also a great touch.
The one thing the game could benefit from and I could see improving its longevity by a lot is adding the ability to mod the game and having steam workshop inclusion. That being said, you are getting a lot of game at its current state already which will keep space-sim fans occupied for many hours.
Hey there. Just want to mention that the medium and large ships become much less sluggish once you find nice equipments for them. They can actually become agile, and the small ones become kinda broken in terms of maneuverability.
That’s good to know! I thought they would remain a big slow tank but cool to hear you can get them going fast as well. It might be time to trade in my little speedy guy after all.