Space Reign

===TL;DR===
- Scrapes a positive review because the moment to moment combat is genuinely good fun, but there's a lot of caveats.
- The progression, game modes and gameplay loop are a bit of a confused mess design-wise. Feels off.
- Contracts are VERY repetitive & grindy. As such it's enjoyable but only in short bursts.
- Lots of potential, but not a lot of content yet in terms of ships and weapons.
- Claims to be a 1.0 release but feels no different to the Early Access.
===OVERVIEW===
This game has great DNA as a hybrid between flight arcade and strategy game, with clear influences from games like Homeworld and settings like The Expanse and Battlestar Galactica. But it also has some very over the top and oddly proportioned ship designs too. At the moment the equipment options are bare bones, and there aren't a huge amount of ships to choose from, but what's there is enjoyable.
===PROS===
Fun weapons and effects, decent ship AI and good combat mechanics around armour penetration, point defence, countermeasures and having different weapons for different targets ranging from fighters to capital ships. There's clearly scope for some good rock-paper-scissors strategy, loadout balancing and asymmetric battles.
Watching your fighters dogfight with the enemy around their frigates before freeing themselves up to dump torpedoes into them is genuinely fun. The visual language of the combat hits the right notes, from whizzing tracers chasing weaving fighters, to missile and engine trails.
===CONS===
I'd say the biggest current weakness is the gameplay flow. The game loop gets in its own way constantly, interrupting you instead of letting you get immersed in the action; the missions/encounters feel very short and anti-climactic, yet also grindy because the rewards are very weak. You do a very short mission, half of which is just flying to a place or waiting for enemies to arrive, and then kill them (which is fun but over very quickly and without much challenge) and then jump out.
Then you're back in the hub, but even choosing the best reward/hardest missions will not give you enough currency to unlock a new weapon, and you're probably still waiting to rank up so the game will let you field more ships. So you do nothing, choose another mission, and fly over to wherever to kill a few more ships, and repeat, many times before there's a meaningful change to make in your loadout. And you probably don't like the starting loadout much to begin with.
This really breaks up the flow and gets quite monotonous. It also makes managing ammo, or needing to do in-mission repairs kind of meaningless. Constantly jumping in and out of the world like this also robs it of any sense of permanence or reality. It would be nice if these sectors felt like they were part of a living breathing world, rather than a box you keep jumping in and out of to kill 10 ships at a time.
There are other game modes dotted along the encounter map, which are optional, but have their own problems. One is a map domination mode, which is kind of cool, but the maps are waaaay too big, and you have to keep going all the way back to resupply, then flying all the way out to the front line again. Or wait for long progress bars to fill up so your side sends an attack wave for you to use as a meat shield. It feels like a game mode intended for a multiplayer game. Like you're playing a mutliplayer game with a skeleton crew of bots on a dead server. It's just.. weird.
Then there's the endless mode. I've not tried this yet, but it's weirdly slotted into the regular campaign map as an optional node. It says ships can't be lost or gain experience in this mode, which begs the question why it is on the campaign map, with all the regular missions, where progression is a thing and losing ships matters to your continuity and progress. Again, weird. I like endless modes, but I also like fixed campaigns with continuity of units & resource management, and the two do not mix.
The biggest ships are disappointing. They don't have particularly more hardpoints than the smaller ones, just higher tier. So they're quite boring to equip and also quite inflexible, if you want a ship bristling with point defence and anti-fighter guns you're going to be let down after all the grind. They don't even get many large hardpoints, and large turrets look comically small on their large hulls. Very meh.
===SUGGESTIONS===
The game urgently needs more mission variety. This is by far the biggest problem. There are like 5 missions that you do over and over, sometimes getting the same one 3 times in a row. And they always play exactly the same. Consider adding randomised events that change how two missions of the same type can go.
Make contracts longer, and more rewarding. It will feel less disruptive to the player experience because you get to stay in the action. For example you could chain existing mission archetypes together - first defend a convoy trying to reach a station, then arrive at the station, resupply, and defend the station.
Make the hardest available contracts more rewarding and more challenging. Eg, 25% more rewards and 25% more enemy ships than we get currently.
Make the 'claim sector' domination mission maps smaller. They are so ridiculously, unnecessarily big. It's a huge and annoying waste of time flying back and forth between the points. It wouldn't hurt to add some more ships to both sides too, it feels quite empty rather than a warzone.
Asteroids seem largely decorative at the moment. It would add a lot if there was large space debris / asteroid fields in the areas we are fighting in to give the combat some terrain to fight around, and add variety to the combats.
Make taking damage feel more meaningful. Currently, repairing a ship from 1% hull is free, but it exploding is really expensive and punishing. This is very weird. It makes taking damage feel utterly meaningless unless something blows up. It should cost something to upkeep your ships that take lots of damage.
Remove or lessen the limit on the total number of ships a player can field - there is already a points value limit, so what's the purpose of limiting total number of ships? If a player wants to field a fighter + bomber swarm, why not let them? Two separate limits seems needlessly hostile to build freedom, in a single player game especially.
Give Large and Huge ships more S1 hardpoints to make them feel like capital ships not bricks with a few stronger guns. Huge ships should also have at least one more S3 each; 2 or 3 is just sad and fails to distinguish them from Large ships in power.
Make S3 turret models considerably larger; they look puny at the moment, especially on Huge ships.
Relax the restrictions on doing missions from higher level areas ahead of the player on the campaign map; when the player is facing little to no challenge (most of the time, the missions are extremely easy) it's boring and frustrating being locked into grinding the current area for XP just to be allowed to move forward.

I like the game for what it is:
Basically, a cousin of Battlefleet Gothic (skirmish mode) or Nexus: the Jupiter Incident, with less detailed fleet combat, but the ability to take direct control of any of your ships (including jumping into the cockpit of your fighters): you can both issue RTS commands OR assume direct control of ships.
It doesn't have as much depth as Nexus when it comes to ship design, but it is a bit more open, as in you can choose which missions to take to expand your small flottilla, and decide what to purchase in terms of ships and weapons (with a tech tree to unlock).
It suffers from a few stability issues (I got quite a few error messages), but I haven't run into anything drastic so far.
It is the only game that offers satisfiying 'fleet skirmishes' you can control from your own ship (Void Destroyer 2 and X4 are both more focused on the 4X part. Here, no risk of losing ships in auto battle, or having to cancel your plan to reinforce your base under attack by youtself because your AI defenders will get destroyed), even though your AI teammates deciding to Leeroy Jenkins to chase a target in the middle of an enemy fleet happens).
In a way, it is a bit like the other mercenary games (Warbanners, Mordheim, and to a lesser extent, Battle Brothers), where you only have to focus on your squadron and your current contract.
I wish it had more of a dynamic open world (like Starsector), but it is pretty good at what it is set to do.

after 60+ hours into this game, and very much awaiting 1.0 update.. can i recommend this game?... kinda..
i'm a person who has come from the Homeworld series and after the bismal homeworld 3, this game is a gem..
very much fun combat and ship / weapon designs; you have to keep playing to increase rep to unlock better weapons / ships, it can be grindy but yes plz, AI on the enemy ship's is bismal; always a hit and run tactic and when the mission cover / protect the station the AI attacks the closest ship on its route and you can be waiting for a very long time for them to come, that and they always get stuck on the asteroids, or colliding with ships / stations.
personally I dont like taking control of the ship, and I always play on the tactic screen issueing commands, perhaps a polish into this ???, but for me I really like this game and right now sitting waiting on 1.0 update ;-)

This one is gonna be a banger, keep your eye on it.

Very approachable for new players, with a bit of a difficulty spike in the second zone to keep you learning. Open map style game play combined with mission based objectives, so you can take things at your own pace.
Combat feels great, but turrets kinda have crappy aim (fun to watch though!), having the wrong turret type equipped is game ending. Missiles largely make up for this, but limited supply is going to have you zipping back to friendly stations for reloads fairly frequently. (the launch and homing graphics are fantastic and mildly addictive, kudos).
Tech tree is interesting with various direct upgrades and side grades which fill different roles, can be a tad on the confusing side until you get the hang of the tier system. Different wording would sort that out though, and, as it's a work in progress, I'm not complaining. It works fairly well all things considered.
Really looking forward to spending more time on this game!

Great straight to the action space sim. Progression is definitely a bit grindy, and the tutorial is a bit overbearing. Definitely early access but it has an amazing core gameplay loop and systems, and tons of clear directions for expanding the content.

So as an armchair admiral I have to say this game is pretty fantastic. Setting up your ships weapon loadouts to fulfill combat rolls and tailoring your fleet to complete various mission tasks feels great. I have seen some other reviews complain about the controls, but I cant comment about that much since I don't use the first person control much, and mostly RTS my fleet. Much more of a Bridge officer than a fighter pilot here.
I cant wait for ever larger ships and more weapons. Would love to see some utility "weapons" or parts, better sensors or EWAR ships, or whatever. I think Recon vessels that can see much farther than normal is one thing that feels missing at the moment.
And as much as I approve of this game I would absolutely love to see a modding community spring up around the framework provided by this game. Playing this game as the Galactic Empire from star wars, or something would feel so good.
Specifically if I had to request a Total Overhaul I would love to see would be EVE Online. This game even has the right classes and three sizes of weapons (Small, Medium, Large) So many of the weapons and ships would slot right in and I could finally have the EVE RTS I have always wanted.

Pros-
Game run totally fine for me no issues there.
Playing with direct control of the ship is REALLY where the magic is at. You dont get appreciate the subtitles of the different weapon loadouts nearly as much. Do not skip this, play this game like a commander mode, take direct control of your flagship and participate in the fights, while hitting M to jump to tac view to control your other ships is need be.
I love the Expanse and this game pulls alot of combat ideas from it.
Weapons have a unique feel and firing off Torpedos is addicting.
Cons
Yep the AI is for sure basic, like expect your own ships to run in to you, thankfully their is no collision damage, so its not a session ending.
A bit grindy, which I dont mind as I really enjoy the gameplay loop, rolling in with a destroyer and just ending everyone is just so satisfying.
Not really a story, more like a sandbox with progression in my opinion.
I highly recommend to anyone who enjoys semi realistic space battles.
Devs: PLEASE add Co-op or multiplayer, playing this against actually smart players would be a game changer IMO.
There are so many tactics that can be used that the AI is just not advanced enough to deploy against you to change up the fight.
Keep cooking I am excited to see what a 1.1 and beyond brings.