Next to combat, the simple joy of splurging in-game cash on cool hardware is GPA’s greatest draw. Here again, however, some things that demand immediate explanations are learned the hard way. As an example, each piece of equipment may be applied only to certain ship classes as specified by an abbreviation on the purchase screen; not quite realizing what the abbreviations meant at first, I accidentally lunged for some sweet-looking lasers meant for the Destroyer class, and all I had at the time was a fleet full of puny Frigates. Even as a seasoned JRPG fan used to sifting through all sorts of statistics, I’m still a little hazy on what some of the stats associated with each piece of equipment do in GPA. Some kind of explanatory list would be wonderful to see in updates. We learned in our interview with the developer what each crew member’s Ability and Engineering stats do, so that’s one mystery solved at least!
GPA’s user interface is smoothly functioning over all, but I do have one complaint: the virtual buttons used for closing in and retreating from an enemy in battle have touch sensitivity areas that are a few millimeters shy of their graphic size. The player’s attention is focused more on indicators of what enemies are doing than on the flagship’s orientation, so there were a few instances where I thought I was pulling away, only to find I’d barely missed the virtual button and left my flagship a sitting duck for a few seconds. Some audio cue to reinforce the fact that the flagship has successfully switched direction might also prove helpful.
There’s no question that GPA is a beautiful-looking, and a beautiful-sounding, videogame. You can also trust the developer’s claim that it will last up to 40 hours — the list of storyline quests is lengthy to begin with, and the mercenary and trading side quests number many times greater!
iFanzine Verdict: Galaxy Pirate Adventure serves up tons of gameplay hours, an interesting real time combat system, and lots of micromanagement, which all translate into plenty of bang for the player’s buck. A weak story translation and lack of clear explanations for various minutiae do cut into its accessibility at release, however, leaving it in need of more polish to go along with all the flashy lasers and glossy spaceships. Action RPG and JRPG fans with a strong love of sci fi are most encouraged to apply.