Halcyon 6: Lightspeed Edition (PC) Review

Halcyon 6: Lightspeed Edition attempts to fix a myriad of problems that plagued an otherwise great game. The art style, the story, the base construction, the battles, the JPRG character system, and much more, was loved, but there was a common ground of problems present. This update attempts to fix some of them, but others have merely been changed.

As a very brief explanation of the game for those that didn't play the original, then. Halcyon 6 could best be summed up as XCOM in space. There is a base to build new structures, officers to train up, new ships to build, things to research, and so on. Resource colonies must be protected, as battle is eventually done with the ultimate alien threat.

What's new, then? There are more events with the other aliens, more to do on colonies, more with the characters, and more with ships, as will be explained.

First is an overhaul to the resource system. There are now drones that can be built to automatically collect resources rather than manually doing it. This goes a long way to reducing minutia. The colonies can also be upgraded to produce faster or bring in larger loads.

Events and aliens have been expanded. There are a lot more situations to deal with, as well as aliens actually having a story, their own issues, and so on. This system was very bare bones when the game first came out, but has been fleshed out substantially in Lightspeed Edition.

The two biggest updates are in the characters and ships. Characters now have a skill tree, where each level they can level up their abilities depending on the player's choice. There are now ultimate moves, as well as passives in battle. Ships now are essentially blank slates that the player can equip skills of their choice to (still restricted by class). Both of these systems are a slight negative, with the ships being more problematic.

The skill tree is a great idea in theory, but it is a little lost in its own complexity. It is not immediately obvious what move does what, nor what skills will be boosted. Furthermore, there are issues such as good space moves being behind a lot of ground moves, and so on. These are not game breaking, but are definitely an issue.

Ships and combat unfortunately were not improved, and the new system feels like a detriment. As mentioned, ships are now blank slates where player puts any of a selection of moves onto them. Previously, it worked loosely about forcing a decision, as one ship may be better at disabling, but the other choice might do more damage. Now, the ships feel very lifeless, as the best moves are just slapped on and that's it. In the original, with new ships sometimes it'd be best to switch to a new class simply because that new move is just so good; this does not happen in this version.

Combat has been overhauled in some ways, as well. First, heals are now limited to a very low number and restocked when returning to base. Other moves now have a start-up wait period, as well as generally increased cooldowns across the board. This presents many problems, as combat was always a grind, and this does little to help. Originally, there were at least options to try to end fights quickly, or superior moves could be used over and over, whereas now, during many turns, the only option is literally to just pass. If this game was PvP, slowing down combat or weakening moves would make sense, but in a one-player game that already takes a while, this was not a good decision.