[Disclaimer: I received a review key for Frontiers Reach through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators. The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience. Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]
Frontiers Reach
Release Date: March 1, 2023
Systems: Windows, Linux, Steam OS
Publisher: Blind Alien Productions
Developer: Blind Alien Productions
Time Spent: 7h 20m
Welcome back to Part 2 of our review for Frontiers Reach from Blind Alien Productions. Part 1 was published on Monday, March 11th, and covered the initial installation and playing of the game while running the tutorial mission on the Steam Deck. My next handful of attempts were all the "Instant Action" option because the tutorial mission was becoming frustrating with the game freezing either after crashing too many times, or somehow failing and then being stuck in the hangar. I had tried to "Load Pilot" and create a "New Pilot" with nothing productive happening with either. I could proceed through the New Pilot creation but I couldn't enter a name, even when manually pulling up the keyboard (Steam Button + X), so it was "Instant Action" for me.
Compared to what I later played in the story mode, there were no customization options in Instant Action, which was fine as I just wanted to play something more than the tutorial. Here you are thrown into an automatically outfitted ship with a predetermined weapons loadout which, from what I could tell every time, was a generic and non-descript mission with only "Good Luck" as your guide. I quickly learned that the majority of the time I would be flying around haphazardly until I found something with a green target box around it, flew towards it, and then missiles and gunned my way until I ended up crashing enough times that the game eventually "froze" when I was in the hangar. And I mean "froze" in the same way the game was still running, there was background animation and audio, but I could not press pause to exit to the main menu and the game didn't automatically take me back to the main menu; except for one session where it did end the mission and took me back to the main menu but I don't know what I could have done and I could not repeat it on subsequent playthroughs. These green-boxed target missions I would later be almost identical to the opening story mission where you shoot at and destroy stationary land-based targets while on a planet; I specify planet because except for one Instant Mission on Monday, March 11th, every mission I have attempted have all been planet based, but more on that later.
After playing a handful of Instant Action missions, crashing both in terms of my ships and the game, I finally discovered the gear icon in the upper left of the screen and was able to change the screen resolution to 1280 x 720 @ 60Hz which finally allowed me to see the entire screen on the menus. I also lowered the General Quality from Ultra down to Medium, lowered the Shadow rendering down to Low, lowered the Cloud Quality slider by about a quarter, and turned the texture distance to about 60%, but left the terrain texture close to 90%. These combinations of changes drastically increased my frame rate from bottoming out between 1-8 fps down to a more reasonable 20-30 fps with frequent drops down to 12, but still very much playable; although there were times when the frame rate dropped to 0 for a second or two, thankfully that never led to any crashes; None of the videos or screenshots show the performance settings overlay that you can turn on/off on the Steam Deck.
So now while the graphical settings allowed for smoother gameplay, I still was unable to figure out how or why the game was freezing after crashing three times with the ship just sitting on the launch pad in the hangar. It didn't also help that after I was able to finally create a pilot profile (apparently the "hitbox," for lack of a better term, to click and enter your name is wonderfully small), I found that I was horrible at the starting mission that is supposed to familiarize you beyond what is in the tutorial. I was also less interested in the story where you attack a planet-based pirate outpost and just try to hit small green boxes with even smaller text in a not-at-all-easy-to-read green font as you blast by. Only after hours of attempts over several days did I finally make it past the "attack the pirates" and had two ships left to try and fly through a cave where I crashed twice while trying to enter the said cave; video from last Saturday; yes, I know there's no audio.
So now we have three options in terms of playing Frontiers Reach. The most interesting for me and engaging is the tutorial. The combination of a story that directly involves you and your family along with primarily airborne antagonists which I find a lot easier to engage with on planet-based missions meant that I was having more fun and eventually longer play sessions where I could go without crashing for 20+ minutes. The problem with the tutorial was that I was frequently failing somehow because my video game space Dad would say "I'm sorry," but I could never figure out why. I thought it was related to failing to protect the rover that was transporting my space Mom and space Brother, but I cannot confirm that is what was happening. And the fact that it was always happening right after the second not-mother ship was landing made it feel scripted, but in a poor way. And this was confirmed by the developer, that the mission just ends there.
The second option was to play the actual first story mission, but due to the overall difficulty in trying to aim at small targets with inaccurate-feeling munitions (and missiles that wouldn't target, possibly because they're not air to land missiles, which I might have to look into now that I think about it) and frequent crashes (both the ship and the game) left me feeling frustrated and less engaged. I get the idea of wanting to attack pirates to keep your community safe, but I didn't feel like there was any reason behind this specific attack. There was no investment like the tutorial, or if there is, it doesn't happen until after you're supposed to fly through a cave with a very narrow opening. And then there's the petty/lazy side of me that is annoyed that you have to go through the opening dialogue between your character and the First Mate every time you restart. It just felt like more work that I didn't want to deal with after failing.
The last option is Instant Action, which on some level is nice to have a randomized level, there might even be more randomization as you unlock more ships than the two that you start off with, but this felt like there was even less connection to anything going on. You launch from the hangar without any direction or clue on what you are supposed to be doing. The mission status on your HUD simply says "Good Luck" (I hear ROB 64's voice in my head every time). I know I sound contradictory when I praise the lack of story to just get you in the air to fight off some bad guys while also saying that there doesn't feel like there's enough here to maintain interest especially since all of the missions felt like they were modeled after the first mission, aka, destroy these targets on a stationary platform on a planet.
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And then Monday night happened and I played a mission in space and not one relegated to the planet side, a lot of the game has clicked with me. The controls feel more natural while navigating in three dimensions without worrying about gravity or the ground. There were still the same issues I had above, that I didn't know what I was supposed to be looking for beyond a green target, and even then, I think the game might've glitched because I flew around an asteroid space station for nearly eight minutes while looking for whatever my red arrow target indicator was pointing me towards. But I did engage with two separate pairs of enemy ships which was somewhat fun even if at times it was difficult to find what I was supposed to be targeting.
So that's where we are with Frontiers Reach. The most engaging part of the game ends in such an abrupt way that I feel that I've failed. The main mission feels overly difficult, and the play now option lacks direction and oftentimes feels like a reskin of the main mission. I feel that I can tell what it is that Blind Alien Productions is going for in terms of what they want Frontiers Reach to be. The design of the ships looks like you're flying some combination of planes Vietnam-era Air Force hangar from the future, and there is what feels like an insane attention to detail even if I know I'm missing a lot of it because realistic (albeit retro-futuristic) flights sims are not my go-to choice and I'm playing on a 7-inch 1280p touchscreen. There is also a fair amount of world-building told through the text of the loading screens and in conversations with other crew members in the Galley that I am interested in, which I know I haven't touched on, but that gets lost in everything I've said above. The developer feels like they take player feedback well having made various changes to the game since its first early release and launch including adding a first-person cockpit view and tweaking level/mission elements to make them more intuitive. I might jump back in every so often to see what has changed with the game, but right now, I just don't feel as engaged with any of my options to play on a regular basis. I want to like this game more than I do, and while that makes me a little sad, it's a hopeful kind of sad.
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