EPT
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Game Review: Faster Than Light
I'm generally a big fan of roguelike games, I like sci-fi, and I in particular like space travel sci-fi. As an eternal fan of Star Trek and an avid gamer, when I saw FTL on sale for like $5 on Steam, I jumped on the opportunity to take this game for a spin. I found myself well entertained and sunk dozens of hours into the game, making it well worth the low price. I'm going to start off with a bit of background about roguelikes, and then talk about what I like and don't like about FTL.
So, a lot of gamers who aren't familiar with roguelikes will be confused (or even frustrated) about a few of the game design choices in FTL. The main traits of a roguelike are: psuedo-random level generation, no grinding/farming, and no respawning or reverting to earlier saves. Roguelikes like Dungeon Crawl or Angband involve descending through a dungeon and clearing randomly generated floors. The roguelike experience is unique and interesting, and makes for a lot of replayability value if done right.
As your character fights monsters and progresses towards his ultimate goal (in Crawl, it's acquiring the all-powerful Orb of Zot), he becomes more powerful and gains spells, items, and abilities he didn't have before. Although you can go back to earlier dungeon levels you've already explored, since they're empty of monsters you have no reason to. You definitely can't stay on the first dungeon level forever to get really strong, and the endless levels (The Abyss and the Halls of Pandemonium) give you very little for staying in them for a long time. You don't farm, you progress.
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In Dungeon Crawl, you typically do not turn back.
In addition to the no-farming rule, you only get one life on a character. When you're dead, you're dead, and you start again from the beginning. You can't make backup saves and revert to them after a bad fight-- your character is unique. Normally, a feature like this would be unbelievably annoying, but roguelikes also have random generation of levels-- when you start anew, your new character is exploring a new world and fighting new enemies. Although certain things (the depth of the dungeon, what levels are like in broad strokes) are the same, if your character dies 3 levels in, you can start a new character and have new unique challenges from the get-go.
The roguelike traits fit together precisely to make a game that you can, and in fact must, play over and over again to win and be well entertained. Every experience is related, yet distinct due to the psuedo-random level generation. Depending on what character (or for FTL, ship) you start with, you face different challenges, and depending on what you find, the choices you make give you different strengths and weaknesses throughout the game. FTL doesn't let you have backup saves, and when you die you have to start anew-- these are features, not bugs.
All that being said, I actually have some mixed thoughts on this game. To begin with, I find the story, the art, and the general idea behind this game very compelling. Whether you're 3 humans aboard the tough but small Kestrel, or you're a heterogenous group of Federation officers flying an Osprey Cruiser outfitted with an integrated hull mounted, shield-piercing artillery beam, there's an interesting story that's implied. You're constantly being harried by the Rebels as you race against time and the Rebel Mothership to reach the Federation HQ before the final battle. Your data on the Rebel's secret weapon could well make the difference between the Federation surviving for another thousand years and humanity fragmenting into chaos. When the Federation fleet clashes with the Rebel fleet to buy time for you and make an opening to get to the mothership, it's a real nerd-chill moment. A lot of the storyline is implied and only exists between the lines of the brief dialogues, but it feels real.
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You explore each sector using your FTL drive and the beacon map.
I had a lot of fun with FTL and really the fact that there aren't other games to directly compare this to is a shame. Roguelikes that aren't in ascii or made with relatively simple sprites, and especially roguelikes with real-time combat, are rare. As far as I know, FTL doesn't have any direction competition to compare to, though I could of course be wrong. They do a good job of adapting the roguelike structure to a realtime game. Your move from encounter to encounter using your FTL drive, at the end of each sector you use your FTL drive to move to the next sector-- no turning back. Each encounter is self-contained, but sometimes you'll have a mission to transport colonists or pick up cargo, linking two encounters together via quest. Any damage accrued or crew lost is permanent-- though you can repair your ship and hire new crew.
The actual combat system, despite being real-time, involves tactics and strategy more than it does micro-- befitting for a roguelike game. You can pause whenever you'd like to issue new commands to your crew, designate new targets for your weapons, or reroute power to needed systems. That being said, there's almost always an optimal choice in any given situation. How able you are to deal with threats is almost entirely reliant on what equipment you have (or have found) beforehand, and assuming you follow an optimal strategy in combat and travel the right routes, you can maximize your chances of victory.
I consider this the curse of the young roguelike: RNG determining how well you do because there is always optimal decision. The reason RNG determines your game outcome, rather than your own choices and decisions, is that when there's a tactically optimal way to play, there's nothing left for you to do. Strategic choices (like missiles versus guns, or drones vs teleporter) are actually relatively rare, and even then often once choice is obviously better. Of your inputs into the game (luck, tactics, and strategy), two of those are basically fixed at an optimal value, leaving just luck to determine how you do.
This is really my long-winded way of saying that FTL has a relatively low skill ceiling. This doesn't make it a bad game at all-- in fact, there's still plenty of replayability since there are challenges available for each ship (like never upgrading your primary weapons system on the Osprey and instead using only artillery) and it's quite fun to unlock and play through the game with each of the unique ships you can use. It's also worth noting that it does take some time to learn how to play FTL optimally, and get quick and familiar with the UI. Once you've unlocked and won with every ship, though, there's nothing left to do. Game over.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/PeHca0yl.jpg?1)
Once you learn the optimal way to play, the game peters out pretty quickly.
That being said, up until that point, the game was very enjoyable. I can't really blame such an inexpensive game for lacking replayability, and collecting all the ships and doing the challenges for them is actually pretty entertaining. I got a good 40 hours out of this game, and enjoyed it fully until I stopped enjoying it. If you're bad at figuring out how to optimize your play, you'll enjoy this game for much longer than I did-- and if you're better than me, you'll get less play time out of it. Also, I consider all of the 40 hours I spent on this game to be worthwhile. There is no farming, no grinding, no spamming quests to get my EXP up on my character.
Every moment of play my crew and I are pushing forwards, jumping from beacon to beacon, trading and scavenging when we can and fighting when we have to. There is no time to stop and do repetitive actions designed to inflate play time-- the Rebels are upon us, and the Federation needs our help. We press, quickly, ever onwards into the darkness of space.
FTL may be flawed, but it's flawed like a roguelike.
I'm glad I bought it.
