Space Commander: War and Trade

Genre: Combat Flight Sim / Simulation

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This review has been directly sponsored by a kind donation from Jamie and His Cats. Thanks again for your generous contribution!)

Space Commander: War and Trade, released in 2020 on PC and mobile devices and ported in 2021 to Nintendo Switch, is a game that combines Combat Flight Simulation gameplay with Trade Simulation mechanics. You’ll start with a single ship but eventually build up a fleet to transport cargo and take out threats in space.

The presentation here is decent, with 3D ships looking interesting and combat flowing at a steady pace, in areas that range from asteroid fields in space to fights in the skies of a grassy planet. This is joined by cinematic music that’s not particularly memorable, but works well enough to highlight the action.

The combination of the two genres present in this game is a fun mix, but unfortunately each side of that formula ends up being somewhat lacking. On the combat side of things, your attacks are really ineffective unless you lock on, and once you do that it just becomes a matter of whittling down the enemy’s shields and armor, running on autopilot. What’s more, while you can speed up your ship briefly, you can’t slow it down, so when enemy ships slow to a crawl it forces you to break your lock and circle around for another run, and in that time their shields will have recharged some. It’s an unfortunate combination of repetitive and tedious.

When it comes to the trade side of things, you first need to contend with the issue that the game’s menus are often unhelpful and clunky, not providing you with information you might need when you’re looking for it. For example, in cargo shops, it will tell you when you’re getting a better-than-average price on an item… but only after you select an item and are about to buy it. Oh, and want to look around the galaxy and see where you’re best off selling said item? Well, for that you need to exit out of buying the item, leave the shop, leave the station you’re parked at, and open the map menu.

On top of this, the menus themselves function in an odd and counter-intuitive way. Select an item to buy and then change your mind? If you instinctively press the cancel button, you’ll leave the shop entirely and have to re-enter. Change the speed of a charted trip through space to save fuel, but change your mind and want to make it a tad speedier? You need to press and hold the D-Pad or analog stick in the direction to move the slider because if you tap it you move the cursor to another selection. Stuff like this makes it feel like you’re constantly fighting the menus.

On top of this, there’s the issue that both the PC and mobile releases of the game were free-to-play, where this version is $10 on Nintendo Switch. While you could argue that this is a tradeoff to not have to deal with the microtransactions from those other versions, the game is still balanced as if those microtransactions were present, meaning you’ll find yourself fighting an uphill battle at times to turn a profit in the game.

Despite its flaws, I still found Space Commander to be an enjoyable game, and the idea of gradually building up your small fleet of ships to be increasingly profitable can be genuinely fun. But far too often it feels like you’re fighting against questionable game design choices to get to that fun.

tl;dr – Space Commander is a Combat Flight Sim that has players controlling spacecraft in combat with enemies while also building up your small fleet of ships in a Trade Simulation. While it’s a fun blending of elements, both sides of that formula have problems, with repetitive combat, clunky menu design, and balance issues leftover from microtransaction-ridden design from other platforms. It can still be enjoyable, but only if you put up with far too many poor design choices.

Grade: C

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^{This month’s sponsors are Jamie and His Cats, Ben, Ilya Zverev, Andy Miller, Johannes, Jaka, Jared Wark, Gabriel Coronad-Medina, Francis Obst, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}