Salvation Prophecy

Stands differenciated among other similar games... it's worth buying (...and, of course, playing!)

It's okay for what it is. I remember when this came out, I was immediately intrigued by it. It gave off KOTOR vibes as well as Maelstrom and Kingdom Under Fire vibes. If you see this on sale and want to try out a hybrid RTS/RPG/Action game, it's not half bad. Keep in mind, it was made by a one-man-team (to my knowledge) and his community actively participated in suggestions and help. That's what drew a lot of early-purchasers when this was released.

I enjoyed this game at first but it quickly became too frustrating/irritating and repetitive to continue.

For example; I've just accepted a mission, talked to the boss, jumped into my ship and then the space station is attacked, so I then have to spend ten minutes awkwardly defending it, then I have to go through the whole docking procedure, buy more ammo/stims, get a different mission (because I lost the one I just got) and do that all over again because the station is being attacked yet again!

The war strategies don't make sense either. Why attack a faction/planet located at the other side of the galaxy when you have a space station right above a planet home to an enemy colony? At one point the "Free Nations" had just three locations on the map. Why not focus on wiping them off the map so they can't rebuild?

The developer did a good job for sure. It's identical in quality to many great, early 2000's games but I just can't recommend it, unless you have a lot of time and patience.

EDIT: I plan on giving it another chance at some point and will see it through to completion...

Ambitious, epic space opera indie game

Very nice game. There's a three-fold progression.

First the tutorial, which takes you through the basics of the game: moving and shooting.

Next comes the progression to commander, where you take missions to gain ranks, either invading a planet, attacking a space station, defending a space station or bounty hunting. In addition to spending money on upgrading your ship and your soldier, you also gain skill points and partake in the Prophecy missions.

Finally, once you attain the rank of commander, YOU decide what YOUR faction will do next. You can exterminate another faction's colony to build your own, which earns you resources, or attack another faction's space station to make room for your own. This has a 4x feel to it.

Once you get into the game, it becomes difficult to stop playing.

I must say, Salvation Prophecy has surprised me in one of the best ways possible. At the first glance, one might expect a rather clunky game, and the graphics aren't exactly top-notch, but so far playing the game has given me great entertainment. Sure, the tutorial can be a bit tedious, but even that part of the game was amusing in my opinion. Furthermore, as soon as I was able to actually leave the space station behind me - for as long as I didn't need to invade anything - I was truly captivated by the atmosphere. And all that combined with the nice main story?

Sure, the game has it's flaws. The tutorial is, as I said, tedious, and the final part of the game can be so, too, yet I think it might be meant to be that way, but all in all, I can only find one word to describe my opinion of Salvation Prophecy.

Beautiful.

I really want to like Salvation Prophecy. It has an amazing concept, a really good storyline with two distinct endings, and plenty of great lore. However, I can't like it. The beginning of the game? Awful. It's mostly grindy, you feel very not powerful, and the like. The middle? Amazingly fun, complex tactical simulation. The ending? Tedious, and even more grindy than the beginning. Without spoiling anything, you can spend the entire game carefully building up an entire empire only to watch it be tore down, with little you can do. Some of the most fun I've had in recent gaming history has been in the middle section of this game, but I honestly don't feel like I can recommend it.

In addition to my other hesitations, the game is very glitchy. There are also missions exclusive to sections of the game, with know way of knowing in advance which missions will vanish. I had to replay the campign just to get some achievements that I missed because I didn't realize the missions would be inaccessible later. The graphics are also wanting, with absolutely no customization available -- and it definitely feels like it's missing.

Overall, Salvation Prophecy is an amazing attempt. I feel like if it had been given the funding it needed, it could have become an amazing game, similar in caliber to the other space epics but distinct, bringing its own unique perspective on the space sim. But it wasn't. It felt far too much like an indie game that desperately wanted to become something mainstream, it just needed the funding.

Salvation Prophecy is an enjoyable space game that starts out as an action game with slight RPG elements but at some point suddenly becomes a strategy survival (kind of) game.

For the content this game packs, it can be played through fairly quickly (took me about 12 hours, although I mostly neglected bounty hunting that run). Still, however, some parts of the game become repetitive quickly, and it is especially annoying that later in the game you still have to partake in the same kinds of missions you take on in the beginning. The only difference then basically is that you're in control of where these missions take place, but delegating (as you would expect to be able in a commanding position) is not a thing here.

Story-wise the game is very linear and simple, but that's okay. The only irks I have with the storyline are that towards the end it often takes longer than necessary for the next story mission to show up.

TL;DR: All in all, this game is quite enjoyable overall. It's certainly got its share of shortcomings, so I wouldn't recommend it for full price, but at any discount you're getting yourself a solid game woth spending some time with.

Welcome to Star Trek Online minus the ability to dodge. It will drive you nuts but not nuts enough to not buy the game (for a sale price of course :).

The tutorial first and fore most is great. Absolutely, it will walk the gamer through everything you need to know and will even politely say where to go next.

As stated, this game is essentially STO. You are able to walk around your station (and other planets) and participate in raids or a take over of a planet. There are two aspects to the game : 3rd person over the shoulder and controlling a spaceship. The spaceship aspect is pretty cool as you get to be in control of space jumps. There will be missions where the player will need to travel quite a distance in a short period of time. This is done by initiating wormholes or the jump drive. This in itself is a mini-game that could potentially make the game better, or drive someone nuts. The player is also able to take part in major fleet missions involving destroying another rivals space station. This game is very controller friendly and make navigating through wormholes and warp jumps easy. This game does a good job allowing you to control exactly where you go - however some may find wormholes and the warp jumps annoying. Armor, stim packs, and even weapons for your character become modifiable. You are also able to choose between 4 races.

I got this game as a gift and would likely only buy on sale. I would rather play Star Trek Online though as I feel it has more depth to it. This game tries but that little extra freedom of being able to walk around your own ship or wherever is not there. The gameplay itself (movement and action) is alright at best. A lot more could have been done in these regards. I mean cmon, you get to invade a planet!


RATING : 7/10


[table]
[tr]
[td]Gameplay[/td]
[td]B-[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Story / Campaign[/td]
[td]B[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Visuals / User Interface[/td]
[td]B-[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Sounds / Music[/td]
[td]B-[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Replay-ability[/td]
[td]C+[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Overall [/td]
[td]B-[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]

I've only played the game for about 15 hours but I absolutely love it. I imagine certain aspects of the game would get repeatative if that's what you focused on but the real beauty of the game is the diversity of play. I've had a good mix of gameplay so far. Huge land battles assaulting enemy ground installations, space battles assaulting space stations, exploring alien planets on foot, and hunting down dangerous pirates in space.

Most recently I've achieved the highest rank and opened up some of the 4X style gameplay. I'm now able to allocate resources towards colony and fleet building as well as dictate where and when my faction will strike next. THIS is where the game truly gets awesome.

Early on I enjoyed the diverse missions but got a little frustrated with how stupidly my faction would chose targets. We lost a lot of ground that way. We'd lose colonies, lose space stations while I was on other missions. It did however add to a sense of urgency to the gameplay.

At first I didn't like that galactic events happened realtime, but after putting in a number of hours it's become one of the better features in my opinion. It adds life to the game; if you sit on your hands and do nothing, your faction's holdings will be crushed. I get to really see my contribution in a way no other game I've played is able to show.

Overall I gotta say it's an amazing game. I wish there were more games like it, but as far as I've seen, it is the only of its kind.

The Thought
I try, trust me, I try to love this game, but the repetitive nature of it but my fun at a stop. The fact that the game was developed by only one guy merit my money and the 6 hours I got out of it I did not regret, BUT I would not recommend this game for the general mass, I think you really need to know with what you messing with. If the budget where there and a team would have work on it it could have been a masterpiece but for now is just a great game made by a single person.

The Good

• For a solo job, you can only admired the result.
  
• 3 Faction, TPS, space battle, RPG element, RTS element.
  
• The ambiance is great.
  

• Look dated.
  
• Redundant gameplay.
  
• Weird twist on the difficulty.
  
[*]Almost no difference between the 3 faction.

Got it for 5 bucks, not really hoping a great game...

I was wrong, this game is awesome, reminds me of Star Wars : Battlefront 2, with no vehicles but with strategy and open world

Whenever it's on sale, don't even hesitate, it will be worth every dollar

This game is a flawed gem. It's definitely unpolished, but unique and interesting in it's own way. If you're looking for a really smoooth, AAA title, you might want to look elsewhere, but I had a lot of fun with Salvation.

The game is basically a war game. You choose to play as a soldier in one of four factions, but the gameplay structure is the same for all four. Starting out in a space station that functions as a shop / hangar / communication hub, you get missions that fall in to one of two types: on foot, or in space. The "on foot" missions are pretty simplistic third person shooting sections where you run around a field and blow up buildings and enemies. Each race has three weapons: a melee weapon, a ranged weapon, and a special weapon (like an energy shield or a bomb launcher). Space missions put you in the cockpit of your space fighter, and generally play like a simplified version of a space shooter, similar to something like Rogue Squadron or Strike Suit Zero.

The game is technically open world in that you can go anywhere, land on any planet and walk around, but since there's a war happening in real-time in the background, there's not a lot of time to explore. Completing missions gets you rank points (which give you promotions to advance your career) and money, which you use to upgrade your gear for the "on foot" sections and your spaceship. You can also get skill points to level up your character. However, there isn't a lot of customization here. Each faction has only one character model, which you can't change (humans can choose a few different skin tones), and one spaceship model, which also never changes. You can't even change your name, as far as I could find, even though it's just a text string. And while you can level up your character, you'll generally get all the upgrades in the game in one playthrough. This isn't inherently a bad thing, just bear in mind that you won't be able to, say, play a stealthy commando one run and a patient sniper the next or anything.

Moment to moment gameplay tends to be pretty shallow. The "on foot" sections are pretty straightforward, just move the cursor over the enemy, hold the trigger, and use a healing item when you get low on health. Space combat is pretty similar, although movement is slightly more complicated, you're still just pounding on enemy shields and popping a shield recharging item when yours get low. Annoyingly, enemies also get health/shield restoring items, meaning that a lot of fights tend to be drawn out affairs where you beat an enemy down to five or ten percent health and he pops a potion and heals back to 100, so you beat him down to five or ten percent again and he pops a potion and heals back to 100, so you beat him down again, and so on, until he runs out of regen items. It's pretty basic stuff, but it does get the job done.

Once you get to max rank, you become your faction's leader, and can direct where you want attacks to focus on, as well as what buildings to build on colonies and so on. This isn't as game changing as it sounds, though, because you can't really control if you win or lose a battle except by going there and killing everyone yourself, and since you can't have more than one attack going at once, you may as well join in on the battle anyway. However, enemies can still attack your bases while you're out, so progress tends to be irregular. You may get back from conquering one planet only to find you've lost two somewhere else. Or, sometimes, none, since the AI's decision making seems to be random instead of adhering to a specific strategy or anything. The endgame does get a bit annoying, too. Story events basically negate the progress you made in the game up to that point, and the challenge ramps up, except "challenge" in this game means massive waves of enemies with titanic health pools that take forever to burn through.

But I don't want to exaggerate the negatives, this game is a lot of fun, especially early on. You advance in rank fast, earning new abilities and upgrades fairly quickly, but never so quickly that you feel overwhelmed. The UI is clunky and ugly, but straightforward and easy to learn. And one of the really great things this game does is gives a sense of scale: you're usually going in to combat with 20 other allies, so you feel like a small part of a large team, rather than some unbeatable lone wolf, which is a neat feeling. On those occasions when you do have to do something solo, that aspect always made it feel special to me, making that jump without a swarm of allies around me felt more dramatic and tense because of their absence.

In terms of graphics and sound, this game is pretty inconsistent, as indie titles often are. There are a few good bits, a lot of the models look fairly nice. But as a whole, the art direction is hit and miss, there are issues with lighting and materials, the environments are very low detail, and so on. Outer space is full of asteroids and fights take place at point-blank range, making the galaxy feel small and cramped, while ground fighting is almost all on a slightly hilly outdoor map with few decorations or geological features making it feel barren and empty. The UI, as I mentioned above, is functional, but clunky to use (especially if you have to use it in combat) requiring a lot of extra clicks and wasting a lot of space. Animations are inconsistent, with some of them being fairly good (the sexy swagger of a Salvation officer) some of them being really bad (the derpy run cycle of a Drone Unity soldier) and a lot of them being flat out missing (like any kind of forward diagonal movement animation, your character just animates like he's running straight forward and drifts to the side). The audio is serviceable, but doesn't really stand out. The game does run at a nice framerate, though, and never crashed or ran in to any other technical problems during my playthrough.

Overall, this is almost a poster child for indie titles. The lacklustre graphics and shallow gameplay are made up for by the fact that this game tries to produce an experience that's mostly fun and unique. It's full of issues that a larger studio could probably have fixed, but the quirky nature of it's core gameplay produces an experience that a more polished title probably wouldn't match. Overall, I can't recommend it to everyone, but I definitely had a lot of fun with this game.

One of the best games i played here, i must admit. Simplistic yet very fascinating.
Beat it 4 times on full hard\autaims off, 2 more - spared the final couple hours for the nearest future to avoid killing the final bunch of bots too often, and at least two more times are about to happen soon.
And all done by now only took about 2\3 of time on my record. Yet i wouldn't say it's too short, it's just about optimal time expenditure.
There are 4 diffirent competing playable factions(differed by weapons and skills), one major enemy showing up at the end. All gameplay is nice tough fast-paced action on land and in space(on fightercraft). Completing missions and helping allies brings cash and exp. points(both depending in rate on how well you perform) to develop your skills, improve your space fighter ship and buy better weapons. Minimum dialogues and other waste of time. The story is simple yet rather abstract than dull, and you actually don't care about it, waiting or looking for the next bunch of enemies to deal with.
Besides, flying spacecraft includes two mini-game-like processes when moving at long distances.
All this game's missing i'll easily find in many others yet i can't even remember a game to compare with what it possesses of. It's rather meditation than just a gameplay.
The game's very well made. Nice picture, nice controls, no bugs, nice balance on full hard.
Strongly recommended to anyone aware of the true value of the above mentioned features, 10\10 and screw any cavils of its simplicity.
PS to developpers. Thanks for the nice game! And if you ever think about crafting the SP2, please mark retaining the SP1's gameplay pace as your top priority!)

This game tries to do a whole lot, but accomplishes none of it.

Now I admit, I was hooked at first and the idea and concept of it was amazing to me that you could work your way up from a grunt to faction commander. So amazed that I immediately spent my money on it blindly, just hoping I would get something good out of it atleast. For a good while I most certainly did. However, the game becomes too simple and boring very quickly: There is one gun type, one soldier type, and one spaceship type, and thats it. There is no variation in this game at all. The only variation are the different races which all are basically the same thing with the same progression, but different abilites, statistics, and some different models. There is just no substance at all to this game, and it leaves you wanting so much more to every single aspect of it.

All the ground battles are essentially the same ground battle with varied models, and sometimes they just reuse the same models for different things. Space combat is the same thing essentially, though I admit it is fun for awhile because its got some neat mechanics. Theres somewhat of a fake sense of progression to it that bases get upgrades and ships get upgrades but once all the upgrades are upgraded it is once again just bland. The epic story-line makes it exciting for awhile but then once you get past all the prophecy nonsense its just this really bland game with terrible animations and it just feels half-baked. I'm not the kind of person who cares much about graphics either, its better to have great gameplay and terrible graphics I always say, but this game doesnt have either. The only thing interesting about the gameplay like I said was the prophecy story-line which has a bunch of puzzles, and a nice little sense of discovery that made you feel like you were unearthing something nobody ever knew about, but all it ammounts to is some more half-baked abilities to aid ground battles.

Once you get past the main gimic of the ranking system and you make it to faction-commander you realize just how boring this game is: Being faction commander is not really any different than being the lowest on the totem pole. You don't get to create or leave your own mark on anything in this game, you dont get to customize your character, you dont get to build bases, or try different strategies in battle. Nope. The only thing you get to do as faction commander is tell your guys where to have their next monotonous ground or space battle, which you still have to go fight and essentially win for them by yourself. You dont even get to make a larger fleet of troops or ships, nope just what you've always been fighting with, that or less, which why on earth would you ever want to do that? You dont even get to command your troops in battle, except for telling them to make a retreat.

No customer service what-so-ever either, no updates, nope this is considered a "finished product" though it doesnt feel finished at all. You won't be getting any more out of your 20 bucks than the crap thats already on the table with this one.

My opinion? Don't waste your money. You can take in all this game has to offer from the screenshots above, and actually playing it wont get you very much more out of it.

K for an indie game this is well made. good controler support, decent textures, models and animations, some are a bit wooden lookin but its nothing that will slow you down much. The tutorial is quick, detailed and leave syou able to run play away without thinkin hang on what the hell am i ment to do with that. The ground battles are fun enough, reminds me of a slimmed down and less grindy (thankfully) version of the old star wars battle front games. space combat is pretty fun, fast enough to not be dull and not to slow and grindy to be boring, having an equipment screen and more weapons and gear is nice, adds a little more flavour to fighting, same with kitting out your ship.

The bad for me nothing, some people may not like the graphics as there not AAA standard, again this is an indie game, so expecting AAA quiality graphics is just dumb.

To the creator/s nice job and good luck with future games.

in all its a good fun, decent game, thats well worth a look at and defo worth a play

***WARNING SPOILER ALERT***

When I first started playing this game I thought it would be the game I had long waited for. A space type game where you both command and fight, both in space and land. Although it wasn't quite what I had hoped it to be after playing for a little while, I still enjoyed the concept, and enjoyed playing it. When I became the faction leader I proceeded to concentrate on expanding my Empire while gradually destroying my enemies. I was doing really good, and then came the alien invasion. From that point forward it was a full time struggle just to survive and rebuild against their attacks while waiting for the storyline to continue. But I thought to myself, "Well, once I destroy the alien invasion I can go back to finishing the game by defeating my opponents", and decided to see the alien invasion as a good late game variable as it did cause powers to shift, and even allow one faction that was all but destroyed to make a comeback. So I procedeed to follow the storyline which led to the solo attack against the alien mothership, which took about 4 attempts, then landed on the alien homeworld and defeated the "Boss" alien. And then the game ended, apparently with me sacraficing my life to destroy the alien homeworld. So really, once the alien invasion occured, the only objective left in the game is to survive long enough to defeat the alien mothership and Boss on the alien homeworld. Because of this, I was left very disapointed, since the game turned from a changing dynamic of a power struggle to defeat everybody else, to a very narrow storyline of survive long enough for the final battle that ends the game. Overall, would not recomend this game.

Salvation Prophecy seems to me to be the reaction of a programmer saying "You know what needs to be redone and improved? Star Wars: Battlefront 2's sandbox mode." In this persuit there were some successes and some failures.

Successes:
In general, the game does a good job of making you feel like an important piece in your army, but not necessarily the whole army. If you work with your units rather than doing your own thing you'll be more successful, but it also seems at the end of every battle (especially land battles) that had you not been there, the odds of winning would have been zero.

The game takes a while to get warmed up, but once you reach "Faction Commander" status, some strategy elements become highly entertaining, Managing resources to create well-placed armies and defences is interesting, and working with or against the other factions is the best part of the game, in my opinion.

Space battles are fun, and upgrades for your ship really feel important and obvious (rather than some games where upgrades make such a minor difference you can hardly tell they've been installed). While the space battle system isn't completely intuitive to veteran space simulator pilots, its fairly easy to learn the new rules and becomes a new and interesting challenge. Furthermore, piloting your craft through wormholes and hyperspace turns out to be an important skill, though I do wish that computer players coming out of hyperspace would exhibit some amount of damage, as you often do.

Failures:
The biggest failure of this game are the land battles which are incredibly repetitive. After finishing a battle you will likely need to take 5 minutes for your trigger finger to relax after it had been held down non-stop for 15 minutes or so. While the factions are each unique, each member of a faction plays practically identically, but perhaps with different skill levels. The game could have added significantly more depth with different weapons (other than "Standard Blaster, Melee, and Faction-Specific).

Some factions are simply better than others. The Salvation, after which the game is named, have an ability to heal themselves, and also have an ability to throw up a reflecting shield making a skilled human player practically invincible. Meanwhile, the amusing Wyr are large targets with almost no defensive capabilities.

The main plot of the game is fairly unimaginative. Factions fighting in space, check, prophesy and chosen one, check, inexplicable and inevitable galactic doom, check. I didn't feel like I was very invested in the plot, and the only reason I was motivated to finish it was that if I spent any more time not finishing it, I would have eventually lost.

The worst part about the plot was that it was carried through by plot-specific missions which mostly involved you trudging around alien planets toward a puzzle solution. There are alien beasts on these planets, but solo combat basically involves standing there, holding down the "fire" button, and waiting. You'll always win, so the monsters seem less like a tactical roadblock and more like a waste of time. I think these missions could have easily been shortened to just the puzzle sections to be much more effective.

Some of the mechanisms of the game are also broken. If another faction destroys a third faction's base, its totally within your power to build a new base there instantly, as it is within your power to instantly rebuild any base destroyed by your enemies. This makes losing battles more of a bother than a tactical setback, and it makes winning seem awfully easy. If you're like me, by the time you unlock diplomacy, two of the factions have already been reduced to one or 2 bases, and their surrender is easy to coax.

I hesitate to reccomend this game because the issues do keep parts of the game from being fun (especially by the end of your campaign when the last thing you want to do is another damn land battle), but there's also so much good in this game. I would love to see a sequel with some more depth, and maybe a little more production value.

If this game is on sale, it is probably worth checking out.

It's nothing super fancy, but I enjoyed the ride. Considering the size of the team (Which you should look up, it's surprising!) it was a great job. Perhaps a sequel with a bigger budget will come eventually, which'd be amazing based on this.

The combat is clunky on the ground but in space it's good and once you reach the rank of your faction commander that's where the real fun starts as a Sci-Fi Epic simulator. You get to make the missions from the space station your on to attack an enemey station or planet colony and you also have to keep tabs on your stations and colonys to make sure to go and spend your resources wisely.

Salvation Prophecy is a good example of how the whole can be greater than its parts. Or something like that. This is an Indy Game made by a person who wanted to create a space game that explored galactic conflict in a way AAA titles wont. The vastly different types of gameplay mean that none are as detailed as a game would be that concentrates on that one aspect. But every part of the game is enjoyable and together made for a fun package. So while the third person shooter part has been done way better in other games, I will still run to the dropship to support the rest of the Salvation troops in the planetary invasion of a Drone colony. And I will join the rest of the Salvation fleet to defend our space station from the Wyr. And having to navigate hyperjumps and wormholes add that unexpected depth.
Yes the graphics are dated. Then again, we don't play indy games for the graphics but for the innovation.
So while this game isn't for everyone, those who want this game may just realize it is exactly the game they want ;)