[Imnotaquadman]

Are you looking for an exciting space theme moo to roleplay in to create and or engage in deep stories about a world rebuilding itself after a savage alien attack? Or perhaps be a part of the resistance against them? You're not going to find it here. Are you looking for a Moo that has some pretty swanky game mechanics, a mediocre story that has an even more cartoon villain version of President Trump as an antagonist in a galaxy filled with space lesbians? This is the game for you.

I rolled into this game on a recommendation from a friend and while I was planning on posting this review elsewhere, it turns out they don't really accept player reviews. Normally, I wouldn't hold this against a game or a team as game developers tend to shy to the side of sensitive, however in this situation I have kind of come around to think that they're likely better off not accepting reviews. Bear this in mind as I only have experienced a couple weeks into the game and even while I might come off as a little harsh in places, I am putting in a bit of effort as to not be as critical of it as I would if I was writing this for a game I had been playing for year plus. I'll break down this review into chunks: the good the bad and the overall.

The Good!

The overall mechanics/starting off

From starting as a cadet for your faction it's easy and very accessible with the offering of newbie loans, the mentor system, and the wealth of knowledge contained in game books, and faction comms to get a hold of your first ship and take off to the stars. It is amazingly satisfying to take your first jump into space and see the grid, learn the games movement, eventually pay off your starting loans, get yourself a new ship and or an upgrade or two. If I wasn't going over everything or if there was a game with just all the things here that make it right. I would instantly give it a ten out of ten and scream praises to the heavens itself.

The staff involvement

The staffs Admins or hosts actually do put effort forth in interacting with the game world. A lot of what they do make it feel as if your actions can help mold the game grid. Even though their current game plots are about as engaging and thrilling as a chipotle enema. The hosts seem to do their best to make it as engaging as they can which despite what they're currently working with is notably cool.

Cons

The current storyline

Admittedly, it's not what I expected. I kinda expected from all documentation I could pull prior to rolling in was a world recovering from a large war with a really deadly nemesis that the players namedrop frequently enough. However, instead what you get here is a storyline where the factions seemed to be rallying against the AEU (pretty much modeled after the US. Their ships get lasers and where we all rolled in initially because lasers are cool.) President Eric Best who is a cartoon villain parody of Trump with the outsiders as the greatest threat to humanity downgraded to a mcguffin. Now, this isn't strictly bad within itself but it's so seriously one sided and clear where the hosts have their focus on. To which the player-base seems almost conditioned to accept and stay locked onto. It causes a disorienting feeling where you could end up with overly liberal space lesbians and co going off about how they fought the outsiders with very non-existent connections to the discussions had. Which, for the record being a new player and being able to reduce long time players whose experienced likely everything the game has to offer and then watch them pull the six year old retort is beyond satisfying. However, to sum up their plot it just screams of the staff being in a panic after massive metaplot completion and going "OH, crap, what do we do?!?!" then going with the first thing that comes to mind and not putting much thought into it after that. In the very least the hosts seem to be trying to make the most out of the direction they want to take with it but it's nowhere near enough to be anything worthwhile for anyone with any sense of standards.

The profile system

The basic post your history before you can do X type of deal. Before a character is approved by the hosts they start at the point of "cadet" status. This limited you in points you may have and the ships you may attain. It's fairly standard in most games which the only thing that is worth noting is it's pre-approval concept system to which a user gets a sentience to describe their characters. Now, admittedly, when I went in it was with a group of five people and out of the five of us only one failed to get their concept approved. I did have a bit of a back and forth with Staff before I had my approved. From which they did ask pretty decent questions. However, ultimately answered by the time I actually submitted my profile answering everything raised it was fairly unnecessary as a road block and frankly I think the hosts MAY be forgetting that you literally get less characters then a twitter reply when doing the initial concept.

Ultimately, it led the individual who did not get approved to decide to leave the game and most of us followed suit. In my case it set me up for this ideal at these folks actually have quite a bit of depth. That idealism was quickly tossed out an airlock and shot. I think I had heard from their newbie channel that they brought in concepts to help reduce the staff work load, which for volunteer work that while I understand is a pain in the ass, it doesn't do much to change the entry gate to being able to even submit their profile and only really serves as a rather lazy entry gate that needs selective wording for a pass-code. Especially when you bear in mind that while in my initial couple of denials provided feedback that if I had walked into this game without much of an idea for a character would of been good food for thought the person in question who did not get approved only got really vague feedback over multiple attempts with rather non-specific reasoning.

The player-base

This part I had to scale back. Bare in mind, for everything I say I genuinely think I met some people with good intentions. However, when most of the player pop seems to be carbon copies of annoying liberal cliche with a dash of sociopath tendencies with the biggest differences being bust size, gender, and sexual orientation it really causes one to question the whole battles over concepts bit. A lot of them just feel like abused spouses at the hands of the staff. Trying their hardest to get resolution on a plot that has been going on for a little too long. Otherwise, most of the players tend to be statue like moving from their day to day tasks. A lot of them are pretty friendly on first contact and I am sure the players behind their characters are the same.

The Game's documentation problem

The game DOES have a large selection of player made documentation. With some basic help-files on mechanical things behind the game. Things like your alliance laws, treaties and important events are pretty much summed up with yeah they happened and word of mouth. Which does lead to some pretty hilariously bad situations that new players wouldn't have any real ability to know better. Not all games are great with their documentation to give them a little bit of slack but the lack of foresight to at least give the character a bit easier access to knowledge in a help file of information their character REALLY should know is very lazy on the end of the host and unfortunately most of the games current plot state is more the hosts being bad at documentation to their game instead of epic storytelling.

Overall

If you're looking for a mechanically sound game where you get to fly in space and aren't big on a good story. I would FULLY recommend this game to you. If you're looking for something else and you give it a go be ready to reach that point when you take a step back and look over it and just feel frustrated for what it is as even though it's aged it has amazing potential to be so much better. Outside of realizing that space stereotypical republicans are an actual thing and having a bit of fun with that it quickly died to how lack luster it all really is.

In the end. 07 Star Conquest, I really tried to enjoy you. Since the cons outweighed the pros a lot more then I expected before I took time to go through this game. I am going to go ahead and leave a shout out to the good players I ran into. These folks really deserve your time of day if you try it and enjoy them!

In no order a shout out for:

Morris
Cataleya
Kim (For letting us know space republicans are a thing.)
Shule
Lily
Elise