Galaxy Reavers 2, both free and engaging with well decorated artwork and decent graphics is a fun game available as a downloadable app for Android. It's a typical space combat game where you direct your growing fleet of starships to destroy the enemy as you travel from star system to star system.
The game being the sequel to Galaxy Reavers that came out a year or so ago is markedly improved upon. They've greatly expanded the online community and mini game options that now include arena style battles against other players, joining clans where you fight cooperatively and even ways to share or gift weapons and components needed for upgrading ypur starship. They have allowed messaging to other players on the server. And although there is a market where you can purchase items using real money the campaign is definitely not pay to play as I've been able to get fairly far along in the last few days suping up my fleet and upgrading its weapons armor and shields with just in-game rewards.
One thing they've vastly improved on in Galaxy Reavers 2 is mostly eliminating the grind that one would have to do in the original to work up enough materials to upgrade. There is now minimal grind as they give you many opportunities to seek materials through various sub plots and activities. Nevermind following the dialogue for the actual plot as it's horribly translated chinese to english and makes no sense anyways.
Above is the main menu once the game loads. In it you can navigate around all the options the game has including the online community, market, rewards and areas like the dock where you upgrade your starship fleet. I think it was a nice addition that on the top menu screen they show your current battery life, time and wifi signal strength. In many other android games I constantly have to back out temporarily to check on things like that. Now I can easily monitor that by glancing at the top of the menu. One thing about the game is that it's much larger than the original. It took me two days of playing before i explored all the tabs and areas on the menu. Happily i found achievement rewards and bonuses to collect I never even knew I had. And the rewards were substantial and helpful. So it's definitely worth taking the time to explore all the things you can click n here on the menu screen.
Above is the dock. Its where you upgrade your starship and select which weapons available to you that you want to place on the starship. Turns out there was a lot more ways to upgrade the starship than I initially thought, although some of the upgrade options dont become available until you level up a bit. This here is my cruiser, which I just recently acquired. In the game there are fpur factions you can choose and mix and match your starship fleet from. This here is the Federal cruiser. Sleek and modern looking. There are Imperial faction starships which look more military and offensive looking. Space Pirates that have weird organic looking starships and Some sort of alien looking Bio-mechanic starships. I'm going federal for now but from the prior game I know I'll want some Imperial battleships and Carriers eventually.
This here is my Destroyer. Its not as strong or maneuverable as the smaller frigate but it has decent armor. I'm getting to the stage though where I want to consider replacing it with more cruisers. Which have the same speed but considerably more armor.
This is the frigate. Its a versatile, fast little ship and what you start out with in the game. I keep the little guy around because it's quick and maneuverable. It also can be upgraded a lot rather quickly. Mine has the same armor, shielding and amount of weapons as one of my destroyers but its twice as nimble. Eventually thpugh I'll want more firepower and will try, once I've gotten enough in game credits and materials to build a battle ship, replace it.
Here's a shot of the sub menu in the dock where you can change up your starships weapons load out. You'll notice on the bottom right two boxes with what looks like a swarm of missiles and another with a torpedo. These are called by the game "tactical weapons." They are much more powerful than the normal assortment of particle beams, lasers, cannons missiles and torpedos. But they are limited to three or four shots per battle and they have a several second cool down period. And your starship only has three slots in which to put a tactical weapon. They're well worth ot though and there are several different types that have various strengths and weaknesses that you can find or make as you progress. The missile swarms are fast, have long range and are great in the opening salvos of the battle to knock out and weaken many of the smaller ships, as you make ypur way towards one of the enemies cruisers or battle ships where you'll wanna converge fire to take them out before they get you. Another handy thing about the missile swarms is that you can use them to kick in the shins a larger vessel as you are temporarily fleeing to a distance out of their range of fire while you try to recharge your shield or to do a finishing blow on an enemy starship that is just barely limping along and holding on to a thread.
The torpedos are slower and dont home on the target so theyre best used against slower moving vessels that can't out maneuver them, and from fairly close up. They do a lot of damage though when they connect. My cruiser just got outfitted with a tactical nuke torpedo and when it connects it'll drop a cruiser or battle ships shields or armor in half.
Here's the screen where you can check out and upgrade the individual weapons systems you have. It's worth upgrading your individual weapons as they can greatly increase your battle rating allowing you to beat up stronger foes.
If you click on the Fighting tab this is the menu that comes up. Here you'll find a few options of what kind of battle you want to do. I've dabbled in the Challenge mode a little, but the Drills are something you'll want to check out. I'll wrote a bit about that in a bit as they are very useful.
So here I've clicked on the main storyline button, and it's taken me to a solar system that I'm currently exploring and fighting my way through. The planets are the big battles and tend to be harder than the smaller battles which appear as blue icons. The travel is linear as you go from stage to stage. However, they do have little side trips here and there to fight alien fleets or find wreckage you can loot for quick supplies. Warning the random aliens are usually much stronger than you and will require some skill to take out. But they usually reward you with a rare component or weapon you can make good use of.
Once you've clicked on a battle the screen. You get a rundown of how hard the enemy's fleet will be and what sorta opposition you'll be facing. I've found that the game likes to throw is more starships then they show on this screen. But if the battle looks hard you can always back out at no penalty before going on to battle and look for ways to upgrade your fleet or do something else.
The battle starts with a cut scene showing the enemy formation. You can see for a free app game the graphics are pretty good. And the backgrounds are varied and well done too. Sometimes it'll be a planet in the back ground. A nebula. Spacec wreckage or even an astroid field.
They give you twenty seconds before the battle starts to, much like a football quarterback, direct what you initially want your fleet to do maneuver wise and who you want to target with your opening salvos. Once the battle starts you can actively direct each ship individually if you want. Eventually you'll need to manage them in such a way to keep your fleet efficiently fighting or to micromanage a ship thats gotten it's self into a bit of trouble and needs to do some fancy flying to get it's self out of a pickle.
Here thev enemy fleet in red is unleashing a bunch of missiles at me. There are no turns in the battle. Its a melee with both sides sending a plethora of weapons back and forth at the same time.
Here's a battle where I'm escorting a friendly carrier or troop transport to a wormhole. The enemy battle ship is bent on preventing the carrier from escaping.
With the enemy battle ships cronies destroyed im now converging on the enemy battle ship and will eliminate it so that it can't take out the ship I'm escorting.
The battle rages on. Most battles in this game are fast and ferocious and are over in less than a minute.
Here's the drill tab once you click on it. There are four different types of drills and each rewards you very handsomely with a bonanza of specific types of components and supplies. You can only do two of each drill type a day. But I've found that when combined with all the other daily achievement rewards and bonuses you have enough loot to keep you busy for at least an hour upgrading ypur ships before you even need to go into another battle, which is one of the ways the game limits as much as possible having to grind it out for loot. It's kinda nice actually. You can play for a good two hours straight a day before you run out of options that reset daily and need to go into grind mode. And by that time you should probably be moving on with your day anyways.
All in all I think this is a fun, free game thats both semi addicting and offers a lot for what it is. It's much improved over the original and it seems like the developers actually listened to the players suggestions while developing it. It's also nice that so far I have run into zero walls where i would need to shell out money to win. That may change in the later stages of the game. I don't know, but so far I can progress just fine by doing all the side activities to get the components I need and without having to deal with another person on line.
If you're looking for a fun free game and you like this sort of combat it's worth downloading. It requires about 500 megs of space however. But if storage isn't an issue I say go for it.
Next I'll be reviewing another free android app game that is the Stellaris' entry to mobile gaming. I loved Stellaris a space exploration and strategy game for the PC. I've only glanced at it, and the game is pretty different from the PC version, but its got all the same style artwork, graphics and music from the original. Its new artwork and music but you can tell its from the same team of designers. So it's not skimping on that. Its 1gb of stuff to download so its fairly large and the UI interface is very complex. Its gunna take me a week to get the hang of it enough to do a review, so stay tuned for that. In the meantime here's a screen shot I nabbed quickly of the Android Stellaris. The quality is there. Whether it's a hit or a miss I'll let you guys know in my forthcoming review.
All pictures are screenshots taken by hidave
