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Days of my life vanished thanks to FTL.

Since space opera games are my type of game to begin with, FTL was an obvious choice to play. What I hadn't expected was how ridiculously fun it was. The gameplay is excellent and filled with crowning moments of awesome (Survive despite shields being down, everything being on fire and missiles being fired at you!), especially the way the combat system is set up. I'm a horrible reviewer.

I do however have my fair share of complaints: the roguelike system makes it difficult to try new things, since 'what if I try this' usually ends in deadness. If it had a separate 'zen mode', or hell, an escape pod system that gives you a chance of surviving death with /something/ to carry over to the next game that would be just /shiny/. But it would defeat the point of a roguelike. Sigh.

Another problem is the writing: it's too darn dry. It breaks immersion to have an invisible GM calmly inform me that 'a rebel warship approaches. what do?' I can think of several different lines that could have been programmed into the game, not least on the part of the crew manning the ship: 'We've got rebel ships inbound! Engage evasive maneuvers!'

Related to that is the random pace of story development. I understand that being a roguelike, FTL can't devote much of its time to story when the goal is survival, but not even knowing what the Rebellion even was for until six playthroughs just doesn't make sense. 'What are you fighting for' seems to be a fairly important part of motivation in a game, that's all I'm saying.

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Not a complaint, but just an observation - when your luck goes bad, it goes pretty damn bad. Take for example this beauty:

SLIGHTLY BIG IMAGE no not really

This happened after I'd spent three sectors with my sensors completely dark and the middle of my ship a complete no-go zone because I'd parked next to a sun in my first sector, opened the doors to vent the flames, and had my door control destroyed by the same fire. It's only now that I've managed to get my sensors online, and I kind of wish I hadn't. And this is /after/ I extinguished the fires in the door control, medbay, and everything between it and the sensors. Literally EVERYTHING WAS ON FIRE.

Stupid Zoltan ship and your sensors all at the end of where no one uses it corner.

So to sum up FTL: EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE. AAAAAAAAAAAGHHH but fun.