Star Traders: Frontiers

Star Traders: Frontiers demands patience, because its best side is the steady management of a ship, a crew, trade, contracts, and the risks of moving through a hostile space. By our assessment, that mix of open-ended strategy and RPG systems is exactly what makes it stand out: there is room for route planning, faction choices, ship fitting, and a lot of reading the situation rather than twitch action. The downside is that the interfaces and all the bookkeeping can feel busy, and the game is not trying to hide its complexity. In practice it plays like a slow career more than a quick mission, with decisions piling up across a long run. Star Traders: Frontiers sits well above a bare-bones space skirmish and well below a hand-holding story game, and the ship screens are where much of the time goes.