Sierra Ops - Space Strategy Visual Novel

still waiting for the updates :(

game play: kinda cool
story: kinda generic anime troupe so far
would recommend: i dunno
would play: most definitely

Only did a single run so far since it's incomplete so kinda not interested in doing all routes but overall, not a bad space opera game, pretty good even if you're easily immersed and absorbed to Interactive semi-VN kind of games.

But for the love of all gods in existence, I'm already growing gray hairs. I'd really love to finish this game before going to my death bed please.

I occasionally see moments where what this was supposed to be shine through, but overall the writing could use an aggressive editing pass to allow it to capture the excitement of a space opera by tightening up the interpersonal stuff. I usually love this stuff when its concise, but the relationship drama comes across as bloated and ends up sinking the whole experience. An hour and a half of half vague meandering disengaged me for the cool declaration of war moments. Even longer until the game properly starts. It did grab me once or twice but mostly I found myself skipping and it still felt long.
The gameplay is neat enough to begin with, enough to get me to the halfway mark but only having two possible other small ships in your controllable battle group kinda kills the exciting strategy and large scale warfare the premise promised.
The more mechanics it ads the worse it plays unfortunately. Mostly because the mecha can't be ordered and must be actively controlled, destroying the gameplay flow.
I also encountered a broken feature for the long range bombardment at the start of the third chapter where it only worked once. The only youtube playthrough that got that far had the same issue but never noticed.

Story: 10/10
The characters feel very much alive and most particularly the MC, whose personal flaws he himself acknowledge and struggle with it throughout the story. MC's interaction with the other key characters are pretty good too, that you can really tell that whoever did the story writing is really skilled and talented at what they do

Gameplay: 9/10
This is not your typical Visual Novel that only comes with the story and the usual choice selection involvement in gameplay. There's a simple yet engaging and fun real-time combat system involved in this game and I love it! Very few VNs actually manage to pull off implementing really good gameplay that sets them apart from other VNs.

Art: 9.5/10
Art is wonderfully drawn and fleshed out. Go play the game and see for yourself.

Music: 8.5/10
This game surprised me with an engaging soundtrack and while certain parts of the game feel like it should've had a BGM playing on it, it didn't really bother me all that much. Execution of playing a certain BGM according to the flow of the story and combat is well-done and I commend this game for it.

Overall: 9.3/10
Story is not as involved as something like Baldr Sky that's for sure and I can say the same for gameplay comparing it to that same game. However, I give it to them that this game blows! It's one of those games that you can get sucked into and manage to finish the first playthrough in a single sitting all the while feeling great satisfaction! To me at least, it probably could've sucked at some parts had I not have had extensive experience with RTS and Action games but it's well worth striving for imo.

This game is RTSxTPS btw. Please, give this game a chance to take you into a wild ride!

What a great story and a fun gameplay mechanic, with the ship battles / mecha control. High production value, the music is great, the graphics/videos are spot on; I very much enjoyed playing Sierra Ops, or rather, what there is of it.

It's a rotten shame the game hasn't been updated in a year, with no news on either Steam or their Trello. Best to avoid this title until there's significant activity, since you're pretty much left on an absurd cliffhanger. The two episodes included in Sierra Ops are short, too, about 6 hours, so there ultimately isn't a lot of meat on this bone to begin with.

It is a very ambitious game, combining a Visual Novel, a star ship fleet command game, and a twin stick shooter. This very wide net may not appeal to everyone, but combined with its replayability and the option of either playing it purely as a visual novel or as an arcade game gives wide options.

I will point out it took me nearly 8 hours to complete a single run through. At the time of this review there are two episodes, comprising a intro and around four chapters of story. Because of a limited number of actions you can take during phases means there were many pieces of content i have not seen yet, both on the relationship side and the combat side.

It is a bit of a slog for those who are here for combat and play it on the normal mode, I think it took around two hours of novel to get to the arcade portion of the game. I was streaming the game so it is very likely i was not doing it with haste, i am however a fast reader so take that as you will.

There is a loyal base that follows this, and if you do enjoy please support the developers, This is not abandon-ware, but 2022 has not been kind to anyone.

Note: Sierra Ops is, at time of writing, unfinished - this review is for the prologue along with Episodes 1 & 2

Sierra Ops is much more of a visual novel than it is a strategy game, but what's there in terms of gameplay is adequate if not extraordinary while the story and characters are quite well done. The choices you make (particularly once you've made it from Venus to Earth, a point at which I'd recommend saving your game) end up making a big difference in where the story ends up along with the tone the story takes - one particular route felt more like a traditional war story while another seemed to give more time to personal character drama and exploration, though I should note that since this is primarily a VN the character drama is never entirely gone regardless of what you choose. All in all I'd give Sierra Ops a strong recommendation and I'm looking forward to more.

It was almost like playing/reading a Gundam story.
And I mean it in a positive way.

I hope the future episodes continue with this level of quality.

P.s. my playtime seems to be a little off. Probably because I was partly offline during my playtime. I played around 6-7hours so far.

Nice VN with some 2D spaceship combat. I really enjoy the few hours it take to finish the two episode. Replaybility is high but I have not yet explored every route as I am waiting for the full release for that.

The game is yet two episode long.

To the inevitable comparaison with Sunrider. While this game's writting is a bit better (not ecchi) the combat system lack the genious of Sunrider battles.

On a technical note, this game use to fully support linux as it was Ren'py. Official support was droped with the game engine change to unreal. It played ok on proton with some stability problem that I don't think are Linux related.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT. this game is an absolute banger. ONCE AGAIN sekai project delivers us another space game and it not only sticks the landing IT NAILS IT IN EXECUTION. i went into this after playing sunrider and i was disappointing from the first hour of the game but DO NOT LET THAT FIRST HOUR DECEIVE YOU this game has a epic story with secrets hidden from you characters motivations unfolding in your arms on-top of a space ship customization system that I WISH was in other space games.

Liked the story and the gameplay is nice big + that you can build up your ships weapons etc.

Love these kinda novels and games about space battles, really liked how the story proceeds and that your choices actually seems to matters, the mechs looked nice, can't wait to see more and that it's Earth fighting Mars gave me a little nostalgia to watch The Expanse again.

Actually spent 6 whole hours playing because i couldn't stop being emerged with the story 10/10 For being a good novel with seemingly "your choice matters" IMO at least.

A solid start to an interesting story. Always good to see VN combined with gameplay. Here's to episodes 3 and 4.

A sci-fi Visual Novel and Real time strategic, together make for a compelling game, while still all the episode not release at the time of this review, the story is quite good and likely that the rest when release be as good.

Stumbled upon this Early Access Game by accident (Steam listed it rather high when searching for "Gundam") and got intrigued by the "a better version of Sunrider if you ask me" review.

I only finished one Playthrough so far (arround 11 hours) so I very possible didn't see all currently available options, especially as i never checked up on my engineer when i had the option to visit someone else instead.

The Game is a Visual Novel first , so it's like reading a Book with corresponding (sometimes slightly animated) Pictures added that allows for several, story impacting choices at various points.

And a Mini-RTS second. As in having a Handful Missions (some more that you only see in different Playthroughs as they are choice dependend) in Which you control (at this point of development, there are slots for possible more lateron) up to 3 Units in a Moba/RTS Style Combat: Your Main Customizeable Mainship (Options are rather limited at the moment but the Framework shows possible future additions), one of currently two aviable Escort Ships, and your Mecha that if selected is controlled manualy like a topdown shooter (basic controls are WASD for movement, Mouse for aiming and shooting, additional Buttons for special stuff like changing striker packs of which only one seems to be available at this point)


Having Sunrider as my only other Hybrid Visual Novel (prefer lightnovels so i only played a handful visual novels in total) The combatgameplay felt less challenging even though Sunrider is round based Strategy vs real time in this one...
But on the other Hand the way you handled the mission itself and which ones you chose seemed to have a higher impact on the story (as it was my first playthrough i can't be certain of this though) and being in Early Access at the point of this Review with alot of content still missing let me hope for many improvements in this regard while i didn't play Sunrider before its full release.
On the Visual Novel side Sunrider choices felt more focused on the players "love interest" than on actually Story impact while here it seems the other way arround (This one also does not feature any H-Scenes) with more player influence how the War goes on.

Overall I enjoyed my first playthrough and plan to start my next one in a few days when the next content patch is up for release and hope that the further game development does not hit to many roadblocks.

This game is not bad.
I don't want to comment overly much on the plot of the visual novel since it is not done. The world and characters are good, though.
The gameplay is odd. It can be very boring because you wait for things to happen. I feel it could be improved upon but it would require making a choice to commit towards a certain style. The current setup seems torn in several directions. It's not a bad start but it is lacking and I'm interested in seeing how it develops.

I would describe this as a bit of a hidden gem. It's fun and I'm looking forward to the next chapter to be released.
Not many indie games can give a strong RTS game or a well developed visual novel style story with branching paths let alone combine them to work off of each other. There are options to only play the RTS or the visual novel if that is your preference.

This game succeeds at what it sets out to do. It may not be a AAA game but the graphics are good, the gameplay is fun, and the story has me diving down each branch to see what I missed. And more importantly, to find the rest of the puzzle pieces fitting together into an overarching story. And I always keep the sound on for the sci-fi music adding ambiance.

In short, I recommend this game to the sci-fi/visual-novel fans out there.

For me this game just hits an area that I really enjoy so I am going to start with listing out why it just grabs me. Note that this game isn't perfect, but a lot of these things I believe can be improved upon with time. I don't really want to spoil so I am going to try and not name any of the characters or get too specific.

1. The concept: I am a sucker for syfi and space in general, I love the ideas and scale that it comes with and to me the game captures that part pretty well. Its a a very solid space drama in my eyes.

2. The World: I feel like I am in a believable alternate universe that had its own things going on before I entered it and will have things going on after I interact with it. The team does a good job setting up the world to feel alive through the characters and interactions between them. For lore nerds they also have a compendium of terms and history summaries about events that happen in the world, characters and even the technology. This feature reminds me of the codex in Mass Effect which I loved.

3. Uniqueness: The only other game that I have played or know about tackling this specific type of genre is the Sunrider games, I for one think this format is very under utilized. Like a space visual novel with rpg and rts elements, really hits all the genres of games I enjoy playing.

3. I like the developers: I don't know them personally or anything but if there is one thing I have learned through the development of this game is that they don't give up easily. They should be proud of that.

4. Impact: The thing this game does best is present you with a load of choices that you have to make that have an actual impact on how things go. Especially as it picks up in episode two their is a lot of considerations you have to make in your decision making. For example, your companions at least in the second episode are decided entirely on what you decide to do at the end of episode one. That leaves a lot of room for replay ability as well. You can easily play this game as three separate save files and experience enough unique content to not feel like they are to samey

5. Characters: I personally like all the characters so far, they are well written and have stuff going on in their lives. There are a few of course (and by few i mean like 2-3) that are a little cliche and they have there tropes that kind of stand out as weird or slightly illogical. But like what game or visual novel doesn't. Plus that doesn't matter as long as they are utilized well in the story, and so far I would say all but one fulfill that goal. Plus the one character I am thinking of doesn't really get much screen time to make an impact yet anyway.

6. Potential: I want to get this one clear that this is a far more personal one, everyone judges value and worth differently but especially after the release of episode two I firmly believe there is enough there to be worth the 15 dollars. Not only that but the improvements the team has made and the communicative stance that the devs are taking makes me really endeared to this games development. Like if I was rich I would probably fund this game personally just so that I could play the end product quicker. I have embraced this game flaws and all because I have judged the good to far outweigh the bad. Plus the bad to me is more a symptom of being new developers than a genuinely unfixable problem. You can improve the combat, you can fix bugs, and you can improve the U.I. Sometimes all it takes is a bit of feedback and experience. No one starts perfect but I believe they have started genuinely better than most. Plus as long the attitude and passion that the developers have stay where it is now I firmly believe they will release the full product and that it will be pretty damn good.

Sierra Ops is a mix of a combat, visual novel, and RPG meeting together in space to create an interesting story that has taken the time needed to construct some much-needed world building to establish the world you, the player, are inhabiting, the reasons behind the conflict that erupts, and you're forced into.

In Sierra Ops, you are Junius Fahrenheit trying to overcome a traumatic moment from your past while leading the latest developed vessel into an unexpected war that Sierra itself wasn't built for. Despite the strength and power of the vessel you're given, can you win a war, stay true to your ideals, and overcome the chains of your past that keep Junius closed off to others?

Sierra Ops' combat feels decent. You're able to customize the weapons your ship, Sierra, has and even design new weaponry depending on what blueprints you acquire. This has the potential to give the player multiple options on how to develop their Sierra and the actual combat feels fun to me. Having double speed is good and allows players to cut down on time in battle, especially when you're closing the distance or cleaning up to finish the battle. You're also able to take on a wingman ship that will level up after enough combat, so try to keep them alive yeah?

The visual novel aspect sees you deciding who to hang out with during free time in order to better your relationship with them. It sees you deciding who the first few people on your ship will be with one of the first destination choices in the game, opening several paths of replayability with their own pieces of world building and stories to uncover. I found it quite enojoyable when one character pointed out an important person on the enemy side from past history that not only did some world building, but made me go "I know that guy!" when I saw him later on in another path. It was an enjoyable moment where I was able to use information acquired from one character on a side mission to realize the identity of an enemy before the characters themselves realized it due to being on a different path.

The RPG aspect is a mix of the previous two with your choices impacting the war. It might not seem like it at first glance, but in order to win this war for the UTV your mission choices matter. Whichever missions you choose can impact the war to various degrees that aren't immediately clear. Some missions have larger impact than others, but all do impact main missions you partake in. You cannot do every side mission per segment and thus you'll need to weigh your options on which is more important to you. A mission that could better your relationship with a certain character? A difficult, but valuable supply mission that will surely impact the war and the view of your peers? Your options are limited, Captain, but you must make a decision. You could also choose to forgo the side missions entirely, at your own peril.

Personally I've enjoyed Sierra Ops so far and bought the Season Pass quite some time ago. Although I need to play more and finish some paths up to their current completion, I've enjoyed the story and missions I've played so far. They're actively updating the game with bug fixes, some additions, and updates for the next two bigger episodes. Can't wait for their release!

This game is fun and has a lot of replay value. As an RTS/visaul novel hybrid, this game delivers on satisfying the itch for both kinds of games. The experience itself is unique and the characters are well written and lovable. Story line of futuristic Terran vs Martian is well thought out and I can't wait for more episodes to come out.
My only complaint is the MC's inner dialogue, when they literally repeat themselves 3-4 times in a row. That gets old quick.
Other than that, if you're looking for something new and fun, this is the game you've been looking for.

Good Visual Novel style Space Opera with action-focused combat. Even though the Space Opera setting has been done in many places, you can feel the world building at play, with all the elements working with or against other parts. If you're big into sci-fi world building, there's a lot to like here. The characters do feel like they've lived in the world for awhile. Fair warning: the story is a bit of a slow burn. While it does start off with a critical moment, it takes awhile for it to be put in context and for the story to get going proper.

The strategy action bits are pretty fun with each mission being crafted to have different objectives, though I wish there were a free-play mode where you can play the action games freely. At this time there doesn't feel like a whole lot of enemy variety, though I suspect it will get fleshed out more over time.

All in all, purchase this if you enjoy:
-Visual Novel elements
-Varied character archetypes
-Space Operas with good world-building
-Space strategy-action games (smaller scale of a typical RTS, more small-unit tactics)

Terra aeternum.

Don't buy this, I have purchased the season pass on the 30th of August 2020, to this day the devs have not provided any updates. On the 24. May 2020 they posted that Episode 2 demo is almost ready, on the 11. January 2021 they posted that Episode 2 is nearly done. Today is the 05. April 2021 and nada. none of the content promised in the season pass DLC is available for play because it doesn't exist and it looks to me like it never will.

The content of Episode 1 can be casually played through in 10 minutes if you don't focus on the dialogue and if you do, the writing is really trash.