I have not bounced off a game this hard since Raven's Cry, but Steel Shadows isn't quite as bad, it's just a bit of an empty husk with good intentions. Its shortcomings are numerous, and I genuinely struggled to find something to put in the plus column. Obviously, this game is bound to find a foothold in the market somewhere, and as I searched about, there are indeed Ancient Frontier fans who are perfectly happy with how this game turned out. For me, however, it felt like a lifeless chore. Each time I sunk an hour into it, I couldn't help but think of the longingly of Starpoint Gemini or Endless Legend and how they did each aspect this game features in a significantly better way.

The battles are, and I really hate to use this word in a game review, boring for want of a better term. I played most of the game with my chin resting on my fist as I clicked about with zero haste and very little focus. The storyline is forgettable and lacks any real ruffles to get the player engaged at all. The dialogue is poor, and what little motivation it provides for each battle is quickly forgotten. Battlefields are crammed with VFX, but fundamentally contain very little except enemies and asteroids, which themselves are a half-baked feature that consistently left me in puzzlement. Sometimes, the game would feature grand blocks of rock or space stations only for me to discover you could fly straight through them. Objectives are just crap to be honest, as are the quests. One of which, scouting all squares on the map, is absolutely appalling because of the total lack of showing you what hexes you haven't explored. The market has zero filters for ship and item types, but can in fact be filtered—you just have to guess which one it applied for you. The overall polish and total lack of attention to any kind of detail only adds insult to injury and makes the whole experience a chore rather than any kind of entertainment.

The game showed promise. It is at its core a fleet management sim (albeit a very limited one), but is entirely let down by damn near every system in the game. It just seemed so chaotic and badly designed I felt absolutely zero drive to min/max anything or even try for that matter. Despite all this, I only ever failed a single mission, which was to scout all 800 hexes on a map only to lose on the 10th round because I had missed three hexes and the game didn't even vaguely indicate which ones they were. There are very few redeeming qualities to this game. If what it advertises itself as interests you, either hit up Starpoint Gemini, Endless Space, or Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus. I suppose at least it is cheap.