This is where the game started to lose me, and the more I played on following the story, the more I actually realized combat is a pretty general third-person shooter that would make you wait a couple of seconds to pull a weapon out after getting out of your ship. Still, the added mechanic of the jetpack did enhance it. However, the camps and areas I would attack had anti-air weapons that didn’t seem to be able to be destroyed or disabled while you were attacking. They are also not bound by the same collisions that the player is, constantly shooting you through walls and buildings as you jetpack around. This seems in conflict with its own combat - use the jetpack to get around, but if you do, you get constantly blasted by these seemingly undestroyable turrets shooting unavoidable lasers at you. I don’t enjoy being punished as a player for using the tools at my disposal, and I feel like jetpack combat should become a thing - there is no use of guns while you fly around. This seems like it would make sense against melee enemies, but we are fighting other characters with guns, which means my being in the air should make me an easier target for the AI. After having had four crashes at the exact same quest location, I decided I couldn’t take playing any longer with the continuous stream of crashes I was getting. It was becoming infuriating. The lack of autosave meant I was basically stuck in this loop of trying to get through this mission to progress, but I simply couldn’t. This was the point I decided not to finish this game.

Spacebourne 2 is a behemoth of a game - with a myriad of mechanics and systems that feel like they need to respect the player’s time more. I felt about half of my time with this game was me holding W and making adjustments to my mouse to keep my ship on track since half the time I would try, I couldn’t lock onto and warp to areas, I would have to fly the few thousand km’s which shouldn’t seem far, but my ship with its humble upgrades only really felt like it was traveling at about 100 km/h, which felt like a real slap in the face considering I could boost up to space then cover 12AU in thirty seconds. Not to say this game is bad because of the ways I feel like it’s lacking in respecting player authority and autonomy. The game has a LOT of incredible moments that really help to define Spacebournes’s identity. It’s hard to forget the dogfights where you flip your ship around and fly within a hairs width of the top of an enemy ship before blowing them up, flying through the explosion of their debris, and taking out another enemy ship.