Ancient Frontier

Not exactly bad - but unfortunately not good, either.

And they want 23€ for this admittedly gorgeous, albeit oversimplistic shit!!

Not bad as a tactical space game. It's unclear if there are any significant choices to make - it seems like you can focus on capital ships, dabble in fighters, and completely ignore escorts, and have a winning fleet.

But, oh, boy, the plotting! The writing makes all the characters unsympathetic, but it's the plot of the campaign that makes me want to flip the table here. The storyteller is not playing fair with the characters, and cancels their work - it's essentially a "negadungeon", where the most winning outcome is not playing at all.

A solid science fiction turn based strategy rpg. The development of the ships is intriguing, the story is basic but engaging and the battles are satisfying. The energy dynamic is a good check on overly large fleets. Use too much energy on easier missions and you might not be able to really unleash your might on that tough foray just round the bend. Impressive that it was done by a two man team.

EDITED 15/02/2021
EDITED 26/02/2021

I'm going to give this a "Not Recommended" simply because there is no "Meh" option. The game is not a _bad_ TBS mechanically, but it is very basic and has a lot of minor frustrations and the storyline is entirely forgettable. Only pick it up if it's on steep sale ($10 or less USD). It's highly unlikely I will ever actually finish this game, I got bored and stopped playing around halfway through Sector 3 after something like 12 hours of gameplay.

Pros:
- Turn-based spaceship tactics which isn't terrible to look at and is decent mechanically.
- Resource management and ship customization adds some actual between-mission decisions, between buying new ships or buying equipment/officers or researching upgrades that affect entire ship classes.
- Story missions are at least hand-crafted, so they tend to each be unique and interesting in one way or another.
- Not bad for a budget game if you're craving spaceship combat and you've played almost everything else that's available.

Cons:
- So. Many. Loading. Screens. Pick a mission? Loading screen. Want to go back and fix a ship first? Loading screen. I can understand loading screens between the mission itself and the HQ menus, but why are there loading screens in between HQ menus?
- Enemy AI only cares about individual ships, so it's relatively easy to keep your own fleet bunched up and steamroll groups of 2-3 enemy ships at a time while other enemy ships that can't see you will just stay in one spot. Also makes it stupidly annoying sometimes to track down the last couple of enemy ships if the primary mission is to destroy all enemies and a few are literally in the corner of the map. This also seems to happen on "defend outpost" missions, which makes even less sense since most enemies don't go anywhere near the outpost they're supposedly attacking and thus there's no real way to actually lose that type of mission by the outpost being destroyed.
- There's no way to preview ship abilities before buying, so all you have to go by are the basic stats and the flavour text. The flavour text can also be misleading. Example: the Predator Corvette says it has 3 sets of twin pulse lasers giving it the anti-fighter capability of an entire battlegroup, so I assumed it would get to fire its pulse guns for free once per turn or its pulse lasers would deal 2-3x normal damage or something similar. Nope, it has exactly the same twin pulse guns as the frigate or destroyer, so you might as well just save your money and invest in one of the bigger ships.
- Neither the number of spaces a ship can move using one move action, nor the sensor range of a ship, are listed anywhere on the ship's stats.
- Mines only detonate when your ships are nearby, unless manually detonated by AOE attacks - so not only do they pose a danger to your own ships, they actively provide cover for enemy ships. Not sure if this is because the AI isn't smart enough to avoid them so was just programmed to not trigger them, or if there's some lore reason why every minefield (even those near your own faction's stations?) is controlled by the enemy.
- There is no real meaningful ship specialization or fleet composition. The starting ship roster, barring the scout fighters, are basically just upgrades on each other so there's no point buying anything other than Destroyers after picking up a couple of scout fighters. Example: the Destroyer has anti-fighter twin pulse lasers, an anti-shield ion cannon, more powerful main guns, a railgun, can still boost its engines every 2 turns, and only costs 2x as much to buy (4x to deploy) as a crappy Manta fighter. It also has 1 move and 3 actions, so when upgraded to 2 moves and 4 actions (1000 data for research) it's easily the best ship out of the entire starting roster and can perform the same roles as the corvette or fighter or frigate but better. The only consideration is the deployment energy cost, but tbh you can use the money you saved buying just 3 Destroyers instead of a bunch of fighters and corvettes and frigates to buy more energy. And then once you get battleships, start buying and upgrading them instead.
- There is no way to see what mission you picked when selecting your fleet, so if you forget the difficulty or what kind of mission it was you have to go back to the Missions screen. This would be a slightly smaller annoyance if there wasn't a loading screen between the Missions screen and selecting your fleet for deployment. As a minor addendum, mission variety and enemy composition variety are lacking.
- The same type of mission could have a different set of objectives, so for instance a convoy escort mission could end up with your primary objective being to eliminate all enemies or just getting a single ship to the destination beacon. Realistically you should know exactly what at least your primary objective will be, which means you could then actually make meaningful decisions about fleet composition other than "assume you'll have to kill all enemies". Also really annoying when you end up in a timed mission that you had no idea was going to be timed, especially if the primary objective is unexpected.
- Backup saves are pointless, they all seem to be exactly the same as the primary save so why bother having backup saves. I assumed the backup saves would be like the last 5 saves for that save slot, but no it's literally all backup copies of your latest save. If this is to counter-act save file corruption, (1) why not just keep multiple copies of the save under the hood and try to load the next backup in sequence if the main one is corrupted and (2) if it's that easy to corrupt saves I think there are bigger issues.
- Grindy as hell. There are like 30 missions per campaign plus you can do 3-4 side missions between each mission. So if you wanted to complete a single campaign you're looking at 30-120 missions, or 60-240 for the entire game. At maybe 30 minutes per mission (including time spent in fleet management between missions), that's anywhere from 15-120 hours. Normally this would be a good thing, however before you've even finished 10 story missions you will have seen essentially everything the game has to offer, and as such the way you play the game won't really change or become more interesting. Combined with the fact that the storyline and dialog is horribly cheesy and forgettable, the game starts to feel more like a chore than something keeping the player engaged.

I really want to like this game. Starting out, its great. I laughed my way through the tutorial and the hammy flirtations. They were excellent. The basic game play is solid, the story is decent, and the voice acting is better than good enough. The reason I can't recommend it is because the gameplay is very repetitive. The formula is story mission then 3 side missions, repeat. That may not be bad, except that the gameplay is the same and the mission objectives have little practical variation. There is not a practical variety of units. Given how upgrades work and the lack of specialization outside of scouts, you really just focus on one or two ship types for the entire thing, Because there is little variation in the units you use or face (though when a change happens, like fighting the Vor for the first time, it is a breath of fresh air), it becomes highly repetitive. This repetitive gameplay just led to me putting the game down out of boredom. That means its not a game I can recommend, even though it has a lot going for it otherwise.

Oh and you can't remap the keys. Come on people. Remapping keys should be super basic by now. Why is it always forgotten?

TLDR: If you’re looking for a decent tactical space combat game with some strategy and RPG elements, this game might be for you, despite some shortcomings that prevent it from being great.

+ Small but decent selection of space vessels to choose from
+ Lots of skills and equipment upgrades for vessels available
+ Selection of crew adds nice bonuses to vessels
+ Overarching campaign from 2 different factions allows for several hours of gameplay
+ Turn-based tactical combat is decent, making use of cover, environment and LOS
+ Persistent XP allows vessels to level up and carry over to the next mission
+ Combat missions and simulator missions allow you to gain valuable resources & XP

- Terrible voice acting. It would have been better to eliminate this completely
- RPG elements could have been better. Only the main characters have “personalities.” The
crew have none. There is no way to
improve crew stats except through combat
- After a point, it can get grindy -- you need to level your ships through combat, otherwise the
missions may be too difficult
- Space combat is 2D (a little strange, but understandable), hex-based and table-top like
- Not much of a story, weak plot and characters you don’t really care about

Ancient Frontier serves its purpose if all you’re looking for is a decent space combat campaign to pass the time. I typically skip the dialogue cutscenes since they add nothing to the story and the voice acting is excruciating. Seriously. The game would have been better without it, and run on captions instead. Interactive choices during dialogue that affect the game would have been a nice touch too.

Building your small flotilla of specialized ships can be fun, as is upgrading them and deploying them in combat with crew members you recruit. This is AF’s main saving grace.

Ancient Frontier makes the grade, but just barely. If you aren’t good at tactical combat, this game isn’t for you.

5.0/10.0

I bought this game because I like turn-based sci-fi strategy games. The story and graphics looked good, so I went ahead and tried it out.
Boy, what a waste of money ! The mechanics of gradually building , equipping, crewing and upgrading a fleet work reasonably well , though not terribly original. But the battle maps all look the same, with lots of asteroid fields and space stations (without any function), which are used as cover to hide behind, jumping out to attack and jumping back into hiding again - not really typical spaceship movement. Facing or speed does not matter at all. Playing feels like an old Avalon Hill Boardgame. The ship "counters", while nicely designed, only move in straight lines, even right through otherwise deadly asteroid or mine fields (just be sure not to END your movement in one of those). The Opponent AI hardly deserves its name, enemy ships tend to move back and forth without reason until one of your ships come into range, which is when they close in to attack (often suicidally). They neither support each other nor retreat when badly damaged (all crewed by fanatical maniacs, it seems) and the only way for the game to be a challenge for a reasonably experienced player is to heavily stack the odds against him - enemy forces always seem to have many more ships or better equipment. Even so, battles become boring quite quickly, and they all feel the same, no matter if the opponents are pirates, militia or mercs. Between battles you get a few lines of dialogue from the main characters - good voice acting, I must admit, although the love affaire between the protagonist junior officer (male, of course) and his female CO seems strongly constructed to suit the ego of juvenile (male) players - and reeks more than a bit of sexism (she may be his CO, but she still falls into bed with him at every opportunity ? Come on !)
All in all, I am not going to waste any more time with this stuff - And I really cannot recommend it at all.

I am really loving it.

No matter how many missions there are, I will probably be a tad pee'd off there isnt more.

Its a great, simple but entertaining strategy game. Decent story. Nice animations. You can micromanage your fleet too with the many upgrades. But be careful you dont use upgrades that make your deployment costs sky rocket.

You must be careful you dont waste your 3 valuable resources, it costs 2 of those resources to deploy your fleet, so if you can keep the cost low, you will get enough resources over time to hire and buy better and better ships when they come available.

I found the Escorts rubbish and using the 3rd resource to upgrade them was a big waste - especially now I know you get much better ships to buy later on. That said, its still great, you dont need to be extra careful with your finances but it helps a lot.

I did have a problem on my mates PC where you couldnt load a game, something about the autosave according to the devs, but when I bought it for my PC there was and has been no problems at all, no bugs or anything like that.

All in all its great, some people might think its a bit too repetitive but there are different missions types and you can play as both the federation and the colonists where you can buy the alien ships and add them to your fleet.

A great game, and Im looking forward to finishing it, playing as the other side, and playing the add ons.

Entertaining TBS game set in space, in which being careful with resources is paramount and investing in research and crew seem to work a treat. Battles are fun, though some maps are so colourful and bright it's hard to see what's where and where's what. Linear story, only some side missions to keep you afloat in resources and a lot of cheesy dialogues, but good game overall.

The voice acting and storyline start off really really bad. But like a fungus it grows on you and now I'm quite liking it. I had originally complained of it being awful, but a few missions in, the dialogue between missions starts making sense in the style it's presented and after a while it comes into it's own and you start to appreciate these characters making the journey with you.

Botom line it's pretty fun. There's plenty of RPG elements, battle damage and mission consequences carry over from one mission to the next and there's a nice tech tree and progression for all things from ships to ship components to crew. I'm enjoying the ways I can use a few ships with tech and crew or just a large fleet to go about my missions. There's a lot of random elements that can happen so there's replayability too. You can go about the campaign mission a second time using different ships, techs and strategies and there looks to be a few unique mission choices that you can do differently.

It's surprisingly balanced. There's always this sense of urgency that you're not getting enough resources or tech to achieve what you want and so you start making tough choices. This is really the strongest part of the game, the struggle to match the increasing difficulty as it gradually scales upwards the further in the story you go. So there's always that threat somewhere along the line of a battle that can lose the war or making poor spending and tech choices that put you into a hole you can't get out of. There's not much slacking off in this game.

Thnigs I'd like to see, maybe more complexity like ships that have a turn radius and momentum to keep them from instantly changing direction. I think as tactical a game as it is, they could have thrown some newtonian movement into the mix to make it 'feel' more like a naval sim instead of having capital ships that can turn and move the same as fighters do. And the game would do well to have a Steam Workshop, but doesnt.

As it all stands, the game is fun, quick and easy to pick up, is on sale for $13 and for that is a no brainer, it's a steal that will give you 100+ hours of fun.

Edit: Don't play Ironman Save games. Trust me. You've been warned!

Bought this game early on and been playing it for over 150 hours now. I really like it, maybe im biased cause i love most turn based games, but spaceships istead of tanks is really refreshing.
Lets go into detail.

+ Many different ships that can be fitted individually with crew and gear
+ Two long campaigns with optional smaller assignments
+ Story is ok (imho) and has smaller tweaks
+ Factions have different playstyles
+ Devs are very dedicated, some bugs took long to find but they never gave up and constantly improve the game and answer very fast
+ Free DLCs

- AI is not the smartest, higher difficulty level only means more numbers
- Some maps are extremely laggy, especially with this wavering fog and many objects on it
- The optional missions are getting veeeery repetitive


What i'd like to see in this game:

- More different rewards for missions (maybe a small ship or a piece of superior equipment)
- The possibility to choose a crew member (i tend to get mostly fighter pilots and need capital)
- Escorts not being so useless
- More pics for crew members, editable and renamable


What i'd like to see in Ancient Frontier 2:

- Open world instead of linear missions. Choosing a faction and then moving fleets around the star map with spawning encounters and missions, global events a.s.o
- A bit more RPG approach. Hero and ship crew that can use their XP to learn and improve skills. One fleet commander with the choice of different traits (maybe a small attack, shield or move bonus for all ships in his fleet)
- Improved market funktions and more diversity in equipment (i.e. some special items like Aegis Shield, Starfire Rocket launcher aso. mabye buildable from artefacts found on planets or in space)
- Possibility for own ship designs


Thx for your efforts!

Every time i finish a mission all the menus are shown on screen at the same time, overlapping. Every time i quit the game, it crashes.
AI is dumb, missions are simple, and mission completion triggers won't wait for you to loot the map, you are either going to be dodging that last enemy or avoiding scanning last 2 hexes for several turns or you are going to miss out.

If its on sale and you really like the genre and REALLY want to turn the brain off for a while, go ahead and buy this, otherwise i cannot recommend this.

Positives: 1. Many different unit types, 2. Tons of equipment to customize the ships to your style of play, 3. Very long campaigns with lots of optional missions, 4. Both campaigns have different types of ships so it almost feels like 2 games, 5. I love all the research options ... you really need to think about which ships you want to use and focus on researcing cabilities, 6. Love the new crew DLC ... high level crew can really make your ships MUCH stronger.

Negatives: 1. The game would crash in the middle of some missions ... and all of the resources you applied to start that mission are lost. I actually had to stop a campaign when it did this to me 3 times in a row since I could no longer field any more ships, 2. There is some variation in the mission types ... but the game play started to feel repetitive to me,

Neutral: 1. There is a storyline if you like that in your games, but I thought the writing was a little cheesy (any time you hear someone call their boyfrient "Pookie" it seems amateur). But you can skip all the dialogue which is why I gave this a neutral.

It's a good time, a rogue like turn based space tactics sim, with very light rpg elements.
The story isn't super deep and the voice acting is kind of meh, but the game has great tactical battles.
With so many 4x games moving to take the battles away from you, this game serves to scratch the tactical battle itch.
The early game learning curve is moderately steep, but not random or punishing.
I like it.
Pew pew

Enjoying this a lot, a lot of fun... very similar to Warbanners which I picked up recently also. So there are turn-based space battles with different space ships in your fleet. After the battle you get resources which you can use to purchase new ships and/or new equipment, you can research upgrades to your different ships/equipment and the individual ships level up after battle. Different resources facilitate different things, money allows you to buy stuff, energy allows you to field ships and data lets you research upgrades. Then there are items that let you exchange the various resources to others, so you can purchase 75 money units by putting down 75 research units and so forth if you are out of a specific resource. I was in the Naval campaign and had upgraded and leved up my 3 destroyers so much that it really was not worth my credits and/or time to purchase battleships which were supposed to be superior to the destroyers... but my level 12 destroyer could easily beat the level one battleship. I hope all this makes sense, I love love love the progression of leveling up/buying better equipment and seeing the results in the next battle. They should make games like this with any kind of theme and I would buy it... :)

So this is a surprisingly good TBS RPG that does have a couple of issues. Overall I enjoyed my experience.

First off, I did play the original game by this company, which was a very different style of game but set in the same world. The store says that it continues the story of the first game but there was really almost no story in the first game.


So the game is split into two broad sections. First there are tactical combat missions. These are pretty fun and well done, as you move ships across the map to explore, pick up resources and blow up the bad guys. The controls are intuitive, and the initiative system has the combat feeling very fast paced for a turn based game and there is a nice difficulty curve as you make it deeper into the game. Like most turn based games the missions can get a little long, especially in the later game. Still overall they are well done. The camera can be a little janky, but the ships look good when you zoom in and there is a good variety of backgrounds through a campaign.

The second part of the game is where the real challenge seems to lie, in managing your fleet and resources. You have to manage three different resources... one to buy ships, one to deploy ships, and one to research upgrades for ships. You always want more of all three, which is well done, and so you are constantly making choices about what resources to collect and what to do. In addition you can buy and equip items, more ships, and research. The one problem in the early game is the tech tree sort of forces you to play with just one or two ship types, although by the end of the game you have enough research to have a lot of different ships.

The missions also follow a story that is fully voice acted. I thought the story started out very weak, but by about 10 missions in it had improved considerably, and the emotional hits late in the campaign really had some punch to them. On balance I think the story is well done, but you should be warned that it starts off weak and ends strong.


However this is not all roses. First off, the beginning story is weak. This is especially true in the tutorial which is overly long. The tutorial is really more like a manual that describes every little mechanic of the game. I think it is better used as a reference. I quit halfway through the tutorial and just played, and the game is intuitive enough I had no problem just jumping in and playing.

Second, the game is long, much longer than you would think. There are two campaigns included, and each campaign plays differently, with different units, different plot and different strategy. This really should have been split into two games. It is impressive that a small indie game would try and put out a game with so much content, but it is really too much unless you want to spend several weeks with the game. Just know this is not a game that you sit down and play for 10 hours.

Third, the late game can really start to bog down as you have hundreds of units going against each other. I'm not sure the system really scales as well as they think it did.


The base game is fun but overly long. I started off skipping the story, and then when it started to get good I was left hoping I hadn't skipped something important early. I would have rated the game 7/10. However, the developers have been great about listening to the community and providing patch support for bugs and balance improvements. Due to the strong developer interaction with the community I am adding one point to the overall rating.

8/10

May 4th 2018 Update

So having played the game after the new DLC I think the game deserves an updated score. The new Crew addition is fantastic, and adds a lot of depth to managing your fleet. Crew are expensive but powerful, allowing you to spend all your resources on making just a few super ships... or you can play the old way and build a lot of ships, or there is a middle path where you only use a few crew members.

The use of the hero ships early on also helps you to feel much more connected to the stories and the main character. Before the missions with the main characters seemed out of place when I was always just focused on my own units. And the additional optional deployment gives you even more options.

I just find the game a lot more addicting now, and I'm more connected to my units. Its weird, but the update was great. And the devs still deserve a shout out for putting so much effort in more than 6 months after the game was released.

New Score:
9 / 10

EDIT: One of my main gripes with the game, the enforced ironman mode on harder difficulty settings, has been resolved with an option to allow manual saves. However, you're limited to one save slot (so better don't forget about saving after each and every mission). WHich is quite nice from the devs!
Still, I don't really have any plans of picking this up again.

TL;DR: Only one saveslot per game, autosaves even if you ALT+F4. If that's fine by you, give it a shot I guess.

From what I've seen so far, this is a really nice game. It's sort of like Xcom2 in space (including "pods" that only start moving once you spotted them), with ships instead of soldiers. If that's what you want, you're gonna have a fun time. I, however, was hoping for some more traditional turn-based fun with RPG elements.

My main gripe, I think, is with the save system. There is only one save slot per campaign you start, and you can't load an earlier save of said slot. So if you lose a ship, that's it. The ship is gone. You can Alt+F4, but the game remembers it and sets you back to the mission select screen with all the damage and losses applied that you suffered during the mission.

Personally, I like to play on hard difficulties so I can learn the game, and then reload a mission again and again until I finish it in a satisfactory manner. Yes, I'm a savescumming bastard. Because I only have so many hours of free time per week and don't want to waste them on a savegame that's essentially stuck because all my good soldiers got blown up.

The devs, apparently, worked really hard to keep players like me from enjoying this game. And I'm going to reward their hard labour by refunding this huge disappointment.


This was an incredibly frustrating experience. I've been waiting for a game like this for YEARS, and then the developers seem to have taken insult from the mere idea of me playing it like I want to.

Ancient Frontier is a turn-based, semi-RPG tactical fleet space combat game which takes place on hexagonal maps - but you can tell more or less that from the store page. What you can't tell from the store page is how slickly done it all is, especially for a game from a very small company, or that it's fairly addicting and has some nice replay value.

Things that stand out to me as positive:
-Fleet development. Building up my fleet, losing ships permanently (think X-COM in space), researching the upgrades I want for the ships I like to use most - this means I get to play my way, and that every decision (e.g., whether to go on one more optional mission) has meaningful risk to it. I tend to fall into "just one more mission" mode, which is a good feeling.

-Graphics/sound/music. The game looks and sounds very good, closer to a game from a more established developer. It runs well on multiple machines (one pretty new, one six years old and getting a bit ragged) for me.

-Story. This may surprise you if you read a few reviews mentioning cheesy dialogue and voice acting. Yes, it's true - the early missions are lightweight, focusing on slightly saccharine relationships between a few characters. Ignore that. Blow past it. Once the real shooting starts, the story gets much richer, the enemies get more fun, and there's far more at stake.

Things that stand out less positive:

-FIXED by patch, 9/27.

-It's possible on certain escort/protect the civilians missions to lose on turn 1 before you can do much to save them. This is mostly a matter of bad luck, and it should be infrequent, but is a little annoying when it happens. Edit: Should happen less due to patch, 9/27.

Other notes:

- The two campaigns really play differently from the start. Strikingly so. Tactics that work with the Alliance don't work with the Federation, and vice versa.

- Small balance and quality of life changes and patching seems to be happening quickly right now (less than a week since release). Obviously that can't continue indefinitely, but it's nice to see things that needed a quick fix get it.

Turn-based tactical goodness... in SPACE!

For a game out of nowhere, Ancient Frontier offered me a highly pleasant surprise. Good turn-based tactical games are not overly abundant to start with, so I decided to bite the bullet and buy on a whim. Something I rarely do, but boy am I glad to have done so.

The game is all about the tactical missions. There are two main campaigns, which apparnetly can take around 100 hours to play through. No multiplayer or skirmish mode.

Missions bring you varying quantity of one of the three main resources ("material," "fuel," and "research"). The first allows is used to buy new ships or components and repair battle damage. Aside from being required as well to purchase new ships, the second resource is an all-important balancing mechanism. Since each ship class (and modifier components) alter the cost of deployment for each mission. Take too many expensive ships too often on missions, and you will run out... which will probably end your playthrough. The last allows investing in upgrades to each ship class, or to research new and more efficient modifier components.

There are five ship types to start with for both campaigns, with more unlocked as the game progresses. All the ships, for both factions, have their unique niches and abilities. While in general "bigger is better," if only from survivability point of view, the deployment costs favor using lighter ships if you are comfortable in their handling and performace. There is certainly plenty to pick from, as you will likely end up being able to afford much heavier force than what can be reasonably supplied with "fuel."

The ships themselves can be further modified by equipping additional components, though I have yet to find use for anything other than shield upgrades. The drawbacks to other equipment types seem counterproductive to my style of playing.

The missions are varied and randomized enough not to be overly repetitive, although there does not feel to be too many types of side missions. Luckily, all the campaign main missions are hand-crafted as to avoid tedium. I do have to agree with something another player pointed out - the side missions actually do detract from the pacing of the campaign. On the other hand, you will need the resources they bring... as long as you can afford the deployment costs.

In the end, it's all about the combat. Ships move in a semi-randomized order based on their Initiative. Unfortunately, as of my writing this review, there is no option to delay the use of a specific ship. It is a minor thing, but something that would have come in handy a few times.

The gameplay is fluid and entertaining. The small scale engagements mean each mission does not take too long to complete, which makes for a handly downtime title for work days evenings.

The graphics are crisp and readable, the sound is GREAT (excellent VO artists, and a kickass soundtrack along with plenty of satisfying combat sounds), and the gameplay engaging, with sufficient difficulty curve on Veteran to make things challenging.

Definitely recommended for anybody with a tactical space itch to scratch.

Edit: Something that apparently should be mentioned - the game uses "Ironman" save style to ensure ship losses are permanent. At least on higher difficulties. If that's not your thing... well, I'd still give it a go. There's always "Easy" difficulty where you lose no ships :)Edit 10.01.17- The most recent patch introduced manual save option, so the above no longer applies.

So it's hard for me to vote no, because it's a pretty solid turn based tactics game. They've got the framework for something great here...but the writing is awful. So. Freaking. Awful. There is no engaging lore or history to draw you in, just random references to temples and The Machine God. No one uses 'baby' that often in every conversation. It's like someone who doesn't know how to interact with people, attempted to simulate interactions between people.

What an unexpected pleasant surprise this turned out to be.

Solid hex based tactical combat, polished graphics, and almost the entire game is voiced as well. While the story has only been decent so far, leveling your ships and developing your space fleet have me hooked. I don't think I'm close to being through the first campaign after 20 hours so there's a ton of gameplay here.

I do wish you could take your heroes into bounty missions, and I wouldn't mine a bigger map variety. The gameplay is about the combat and army building though, and those parts are quite solid.

This is an amazing game for the price and will probably eat up way more time than I have to give.

For an indie developer this game has high production value with crisp graphics, peaceful music, voice acting and clear instructions with tooltips for everything. Play is fluid and you can fully rotate the map. Each unit only has a set number of abilities to use in each quest - ship repairs, boosts, missiles - so your tactics are important. This title is very enjoyable to play through and makes a great turn-based space combat sim.

Ancient Frontier is a well polished and pretty straightforward addition to the turn-based strategy genre. There are two different campaigns to play through, each with story missions, bonus missions, and training missions to choose from. The story missions are fully voiced with a lot of flavor in the banter between the different characters. Even the tutorial (which is completely optional and can be skipped entirely) is fully voiced and sets up the characters nicely.

The game offers three difficulty modes so it can appeal to veterans of the genre and newbies alike. I don't play many tactical turn-based games, so it's nice to see that I can ease into the game on easy mode while veterans can dive right in without having to wade through loads of too-simplistic missions from the get-go. The game does not have a manual save function, however, so any mistakes I make in a campaign I have to live with, without the safety net of a redo.

The story missions drive the campaigns forward, but players can choose up to two bonus or training missions inbetween each story mission to gain additional experience or resources. Training missions do not award any resources, but they will not have any lasting negative effects (like loss of ships) should they turn out poorly, and are useful for gaining experience.

There are plenty of ship types for players to choose for their fleet: some with high firepower, some with scouting abilities and little firepower, etc. Selecting the appropriate ship types to purchase and deploy is vital to the success of the missions. There is also equipment to add onto ships for further customization and better tactics.

The meat of the gameplay is pretty standard for a space map, turn-based strategy game with a few exceptions. Instead of the player taking a turn with all of his ships in whatever order he chooses and then the computer AI taking a turn with all of its ships, each individual ship gets its own turn in a randomized line-up each phase. The player can only act with the currently active ship, and the active ship rotation is different every turn. This adds an extra level of strategy required because the optimal turn line-up of a player's fleet probably isn't going to be an option. Also, space terrain (asteroids and the like) play an important roll in the strategy as positioning a ship near an asteroid for cover can be a key tactic in defeating an enemy fleet or become a hazard which can destroy a ship unit.

All in all, this is a nice solid entry in the tactical turn-based genre. There are plenty of choices for players to customize different strategies with. The game is well polished with detailed graphics and great voice work. And yet there are some key differences with other titles in the genre giving this game a unique feel all of its own to gameplay. It's more of the same great turn-based tactics, without just being more of the same.