Flotilla 2

A fun little puzzle-strategy game!

Very charming graphically, with a minimalist but pleasing presentation; and your typical "Blendo games style."

While it's not terribly deep, it is deceptively simple, each mission is it's own puzzle that must be solved with a limited fleet of ships, and they continue to mix it up and present you with unique challenges and maps; watching ships duke it out in the void never got old.

That said, you're probably gonna play through all the missions once and never touch it again, so replay value is limited; but it's worth grabbing on a good sale.

Simple but brilliant arena skirmish ala homeworld. Little VR gem

Neat as a proof of concept, but there's no possibility of the AI landing a shot in most scenarios. Needs a re-balance.

Fun, but unfinished and abandoned. Room-scale only, no way to reset your position. If your ship leaves the space of your room, you can no longer make any adjustments to it.

Elegant and charming execution, just like the first game. The visuals are made much more fun in VR, for the small price tag it's a good pickup

A calming strategic vr game; get to see the whole battlefield and control your fleet

Wish it was as good as the first, but with no camera control to speak of it just isn't.

Eh, feels like a good start but abandoned :(

Visuals are great and a good throw-back to Homeworld. Ship positioning is good and intuitive but selecting special abilities feels odd. Camera control bad to non-existing: you can only move up or down or wonky-teleport, making it impossible to play in standing area only. For example, some ships got catapulted *really* far away, probably due to a physics bug, and I was unable to reach them because they were located past the walls of my room.

There is also no menu or options to leave a mission. I don't get it, the VR controllers have a dozen buttons or so on them and displaying a menu on top of them is de-facto standard. This would solve all issues.

There are a 100 missions in this game and they seem well designed. However, this is more of a tactical puzzle game with only 2-5 ships per side. No campaign or similar.

Seems like a good concept that fits VR well and can be fun, however unfortunately it appears minimal effort was put into development.

The good:
-Can be quite fun, the gameplay fits VR very well.
-quite intuitive to just use your controller to adjust ship position in 3D as if you were placing toys
-No alternative in this VR niche that I am aware of
-Menu is nice and tactile

The bad:
-You can't move sideways in the map/main menu only up and down. If some button / ship / menu item happens to be outside your available play area, your only options are to recenter your play area in the steam options or move some furniture around.
-No tutorial
-Does not look nice. I do not understand why space is brown for example. However to be fair it looks a lot better in VR than on a flat screen, so this ends up being only a minor issue.

I'd gladly give this a positive review if a few things were fixed. I like the concept of positioning spaceships to protect weak points, and when the game works it's fun.

Unfortunately, it sometimes doesn't. The game was built with room-scale in mind, so your ships will always start off near you. However, your ships can be blasted out of range, putting them through your wall and impossible to command. You can adjust your view vertically, but, bizarrely, not horizontally. So that's a dead run. But you can't leave the mission, because there's no pause screen. So... Exit VR I guess. Game says no.

A few other questionable choices are:
Ship ability buttons can be similarly placed inside your walls even if the ship itself isn't.
Adjusting your view vertically hides entities that aren't directly in your eye-line (not great for when you're TRYING to get a better view)
Touching (not pressing) the Index controller counting as an input, making managing abilities difficult.
... Minor-key classical music during space battles. I would've gone with something a little less dirge-y, but that's just me.

Voting this down as I did not like the VR implementation, though it might be OK if it were not VR.

There are issues with the mission selection menu having strange cartridges you have to reach for, and you need to insert them in a system behind you to play. This is cumbersome.

There are limitations to movement while in-game that make it very difficult, requiring you to always physically face in the direction you are making strategic moves without turning the camera perspective.

Otherwise, it has similar simplified game mechanics as the first Flotilla, so if you liked the first one and don't mind some VR limitations, this is fine.

Got me hooked instantly

I haven't played the first Flotilla, but this one is great. Still, I want MOAR (with only 1 hour of play so far). MOAR ships. MOAR Dakka.

Flotilla 2 is one of those VR games that makes you realise we've been blinded by the restrictions of 2D for all these years. I suddenly can't imagine any other way to do a space-based strategy game that doesn't take advantage of VR.

Like other reviewers mentioned, it's very like Homeworld in style - an RTS that tried to do 3D combat but didn't quite do it for me. Flotilla 2 has the advantage there. The battleground is in front of you - beautiful battleships hanging in the deep, surrounded by wreckage and asteroids. You pick up and move your ships to command them to a new position, trying to flank your enemies and make use of your ships' special abilities. Need a different perspective? Just walk around the scene. I love how you have to "aim" down your spaceships to check if they can make a shot, or if they're in cover from the enemy.

It strikes exactly the right balance between simplicity and complexity. The base rules are really easy to pick up (point ship at enemy - hit sides and back - don't let them hit your sides or back) but the various ship types and special abilities are perfectly tuned to keep it interesting.

I hadn't heard of the first Flotilla, but this popped up for me and as a fan of Blendo Games I was eager to see what they could do in VR. I only loaded it up to try it out quickly, and suddenly I'd finished the first 10 missions... super addictive. I got it on sale, but I think it would still be a steal at full price.

What a delightful experience I had with this game, back in the day I enjoyed a lot Homeworld, it was in fact one of the PC games I played the most (not that I had that many but you know, had a great time) so when I saw that Blendo made a VR sequel to Flotilla I was really excited to try it out and here we are.

let's see, campaign is really great, it has some really tricky levels that will make you feel like you are commanding a real space battle, as a VR game the possibilities to see different angles and corners changes everything and the way you play.
There is also a level editor that lets you make your own battles and although I have only made one I can say is very intuitive and easy to use, was great.

Music is also really great because it makes you feel like you are in some kind of epic space odyssey that merges with the movement.

So yeah, if you have an HMD and you like strategy-space games Flotilla 2 is an amazing candidate to be your next favorite one (or at least to be in a really high position) so yeah, check it out, great developer that once again has made an amazing game, totally worth every penny. hopefully you will enjoy it as much as I'm enjoying it.

When a Blendo game appears, it's always worth to have a look at it.
I didn't have any VR at that time, so I was sad.
Now I have VR and now I'm happy, since this is a good tactical game
that scratches an itch I didn't exactly know I had:)

Recommended because it's a brilliant usage of VR and probably the closest thing to Homeworld VR we're going to get for a good long while.

BUT! There is a significant rendering bug with AMD cards. The colors and lighting are basically broken on AMD. I've tried three different cards (Vega64, 380x, and 290) on two different PCs, and have gotten the same results. It's not unplayable, but it doesn't look nearly as good as it does in the screenshots. If there is ever a fix, either with a new driver or an update to the game, I will update this review.

(I also wish there were a procedural story campaign like in the original Flotilla)

Really enjoying it so far. Bite sized battles that force you to think spatially in a way that I'm not used to in tactics games. It's so satisfying to watch a battle play out around you.

For me it's a step up over Flotilla 1, yeah you loose the FTL-like narrative, but you get many new types of ships, with abilities etc. Overall it's way more tactical than the first one (granted I played <1 hour for now).
Pros :
It works waaayyyy better in VR, in fact this type of games (like Lazerbait) is absolutely perfect for VR.
Well priced (for the content). I feel it could have been priced higher with more content or a more polished interface, but :
Workshop support, yay !
Classical music in spaaaaceeee.
Cons :
It feels a little like a demo I guess ? I mean there is a hundred levels, so at least 5h of gameplay, probably 8. And it feels like the kind of game you launch once in a while and play a level at random. But the interface/polish feels a bit demo-y.
Multiplayer would have been cool (even asynchronous!) But I understand it's hard to implement.

Overall, if you got a vive or rift and like space or tactical games, buy it !

If you played the first Flotilla and really enjoyed the combat mechanics this will totally be your jam. This is Flotilla, sans fleetbuilding and campaign. Instead we are presented with a good selection of pre-made scenarios and a scenario editor.

Being in VR adds a new dimension to this game and as a package it works really well. The mechanics are so simple to pick up that the game only needs one controller with one button to play and literally being able to walk through the combat area provides a whole new level of situational awareness.

If you're looking for story or some of the classic Blendo Games worldbuilding they've been come to be known for, you won't find much of it here. However, you will find a simple to learn yet complex to master tactical space combat simulator set to classical piano music. If that's your speed, you need to pick this up. I have, and I haven't regretted it for one second!

I see a lot of potential in this game honestly. It really does give you the Ender's Game-type of feeling I was hoping for but it feels really empty right now in terms of content.

It has a lot of pre-made missions but it gets old after probably the 10th. When and if workshop creators get on this game, then it will worth the price they are asking.

For me this is both a step down from the previous game and doesn't make good use of VR.

There's no campaign, just lots of individual preset missions you can choose from. There are a LOT of missions (100 I think) but the previous game had a campaign to link the fights together and made you more attached to your ships as they had to survive between fights.

The controls aren't clear - maybe there was a tutorial I missed but it looks like to give movement orders you click or hold (it doesn't seem consistent EDIT2: was a bug which occurred when using a Rift, now fixed) but all ships must target the same enemy per turn, at least that's what it looks like when you click an enemy. I can't even find a way to leave a mission except by winning or losing it. There doesn't appear to be any options menu or in-combat menu in the game. EDIT2: There's also no manual to explain how to play or what each ship type does.

The use of VR controllers makes it easier to position and orient your ships which is good.

You don't appear to be able to scale the game world and it's too 'zoomed in' for my liking. I'd like to be able to see and reach more of the map without panning around a lot (squeeze a grip button to pan/drag), and ideally the player should be able to scale up and down to suit the situation. Some missions start with your viewpoint clipping inside an obstacle in the play area.

There's a severe vignette when panning which was just unhelpful as it prevents you seeing the play area - I couldn't find a way to turn it off. EDIT2: the dev has added a command line option to turn the vignette off.

The game needlessly requires a 360 degree setup in the mission select area, making it harder for Rift users with front facing setups. You pick up a 'level' cartridge and place it in a slot behind you which could just have easily been in front of you.

I'm disappointed as the first Flotilla was an unusual but interesting and unique game. This unfortunately feels like a stripped down, poorly implemented VR port of that.

EDIT1: I first played on the Rift - having tried the game on the Vive it looks like it doesn't work properly on the Rift. The controls work consistently on the Vive (click to select ship, click to move, click to orient) and special actions for the ships appear, which I didn't see the first time I played. The special actions for the ships are things like flank speed, rapid fire, etc.