Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes Review - Frak Me Gently

ScrambledAshton
3 hours ago
9 min read

Space, a vast unforgiving void, the final frontier and the backdrop to most of the Battlestar Galactica series, and now, 48 years after the original series and 17 years after the reboot finished, our Cylon-fighting team has taken to video games once again, this time in the form of Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes, a roguelite RTS set as the Cylons return to take out the 12 colonies and destroy all of humankind. But will these space battles speak for themselves, or do you have to be a big ol' Battlestar Galactica stan to be interested? A Battlestar Galactican? No wait, they should be called Frakers! Anyway…

I didn’t know anything about Battlestar Galactica a few weeks ago, apart from the fact they kept roasting it in Big Bang Theory, but I doubt that counts. So, when this game hit our inboxes, I wanted to make sure I knew enough to give fans of the series a fair opinion about how well the game fits within the franchise, cue me watching the entire first season of the reboot, including the miniseries, in 2 days. And thus, I began my galactic journey with Scattered Hopes.

Scattered Hopes is set around the beginning of the reboot, as the Cylons re-emerge for the first time in 40 years, nuke all the human colonies, and use a backdoor into the humans’ systems to take out any of the modern ships in the fleet. We follow a Gunstar as they attempt to jump to the Galactica, fighting Cylon ships and managing the inhabitants of the ships in your mini fleet.

This Roguelite puts you at the helm of a battlestar as crisis hits, and you need to survive 15 sectors in order to rejoin the fleet and more specifically the Battlestar Galactica. Each sector consists of 2 main phases, Cylon battles and fleet management, both of which come with their own set of challenges.

Ok, before we get into this, I am going to need us all to lock the frak in, I am about to attempt to talk about ALL of the MANY elements of this game without forgetting anything or going completely insane, so I need you to prepare yourself for a bombardment of information. Ready? Good.

During the fleet management section of the game, you will be given 10 rounds to do a whole host of things, most of which progress time and take you closer to battle. On your ship, you will have 3 - 7 heroes, upgradable NPCs who will do most of the talking, fly the squadrons, and man the ship's weapons. During this section, however, you can use them to complete a number of tasks, all of which have the ability to earn you valuable resources, nukes, favor, or additional ships and heroes that may be floating in space. Sounds simple, right? Well, no, as these heroes may also be required to solve crises, assist in investigations, or defuse the bombs that people were seemingly constantly setting up on my ships.

You can, of course, expend resources to solve these problems, but your rewards may be smaller, or you’ll risk failing a fix. Given your heroes can mostly only be used once per sector, you may end up having to make tricky choices. Resources can also be gained without a hero, though to get them, it may cost more and reap fewer rewards, so you may find yourself skipping those gathering opportunities in favor of coveting resources.

Is that all for fleet management? Of course not! You’ll also use this time to upgrade your ship, repair your fleet, attempt not to get your heroes killed while sending them to complete crisis quest objectives, visit the bar to curry favor with heroes or factions, and investigate which of your heroes is a Cylon clone.

The last of those is something I thought was quite fun but wished was a little more in-depth, which is crazy when everything else is so deep that I felt my brain melting out of my ears with every sector I explored. However, the way these investigations work is relatively…bland. Once the Cylon event has begun, every sector you move through, you’ll be able to unveil a new selection of information about your heroes, highlighting if there are any suspicions about any members of your team. If there are, you can expend resources to reveal if those suspicions are null or if they are, in fact, a Cylon. Once you’ve found them, you can jettison them out of the airlock, losing a valuable hero and all the upgrades you’ve given them… Those frakking Cylons.

So that was a lot of information, and to be honest, I haven’t even gone into it all, but Scattered Hopes doesn’t shy away from giving you the true experience of leading a fleet and managing all of the moving parts. That being said, I think it is too much. I haven’t even mentioned the space fights yet, but I fear the sheer amount of things to think about, do, and manage is overwhelming, and eventually, you’re fighting a losing battle where you’ve got incidents up the wazoo, more activities than your heroes can handle, and not enough resources to improve your situation. And I know RNG is the essential element to roguelikes; you shouldn’t be able to make it to the end on the first run, and that we can improve our stats in between runs, but it is so frustrating to know that you’re failing out of a run through no fault of your own.

So that is one side of the game, but let’s talk space battles. Every sector you’ll be put into a fight with some kind of Cylon ship, details I am sure fans of the franchise will appreciate, and these short battles are the most hands-on you’ll get with fighting back against these robot biatches.

Your fighter ship is hidden very bravely behind 2 civilian ships and has a few rechargeable weapons strapped to its caboose, which you can use to fight back against the smaller Cylon fighters, but if you can’t handle these fighters alone… first, git gud, second don’t worry because you have a few squadrons of your own that you can send out to handle your enemies.

The battles can get hairy, which is why there is a ‘no limit’ tactical pause button that you can activate at any time to negotiate your battlefield and handle any treacherous situations that may have your citizens' buttholes clenching. Squadron ships all have their own playstyle, some cannot shoot while moving, some have a slow fire rate but do massive damage, and some can zip around the battlefield doing quick damage.

You’ll need to hold off the enemies for long enough for your fleet to charge their hyperdrive jumps as the longer you stay, the more likely you are to get nuked out of the sky. All squadrons can be destroyed during battle or left behind if you jump before they’ve returned to the hangar, but luckily for us, they’re not gone forever, and you’ll just need to give your heroes time to recover and spend resources to fix up your ships.

So that is everything… well actually there are a few more things, but honestly, I don’t think we have the time to go through all of it, so I think we have covered enough. The game sits so close to the beginning of the reboot series that there isn’t too much additional lore that you’ll be missing out on if you have never watched the show, though there are for sure elements of the universe that may be slightly confusing for the laymen to keep track of. There is a handy flashback intro that goes over the key details of the series, so if you’re wanting to play and not watch the show, then you’re golden.

The story on each ship is pretty simple, and as with most roguelikes, you may end up with a varying assortment of events, situations, and story beats but nothing that cohesive as far as narratives go. Every decision does have some impact on your fleet, failing crises result in damage to your ship or some other rotten outcome, choosing a faction to help may piss off other factions who never try to resolve their issues peacefully, and any random member of your hero team could engage in Cylon sabotage, but the overall narrative is the same: get to the Battlestar Galactica and stay alive!

Progression is earned through favor, a resource that can be gained in various ways during the runs, and once your poor battalion gets totally fraked, you can use those points to upgrade your starting stats, giving you more opening resources along with other meta upgrades that apply to your future battalions.

You also unlock 4 starting battalions as you go, all of which have their own challenging playstyles, weapons, and starting squadrons, so if you’d like to mix up your replays, you can flit between different fleets.

There is no voice acting within Scattered Hopes; all of the dialogue and storytelling is done through still images and text boxes, with background music setting the scene as the world falls apart around you and the underground mafia sets off yet another bomb because you wouldn’t let them steal all the medicine. Sound effects are primarily used to signify an event or incident, and even within space battles, the sound effects are just the muffled sounds of gunfire in space.

I don’t hate that the music is somewhat repetitive and minimal, as my brain was focusing on trying to decipher the many settings, systems, and general chaos that any more stimulating music may have triggered an aneurysm.

There are two distinct visual styles to note. The exterior of our fleet, the space battles, and the universe around us are beautifully realistic, with lovely light and shading, as well as interesting and suitably sci-fi designs for each individual ship, though I don’t know how much of that is taken directly from the series’ already rich battalion of ships. That same gorgeous design is translated nicely into the design of the heroes and characters that you encounter on your ship. There is a certain level of noir drama to the design of all the NPCs we meet throughout the game, and no two characters look the same… well, apart from two female generals who, despite being two different models, I genuinely couldn’t tell the difference between when they’d go greyscale to imply they’d stopped talking.

Our other visual style is primarily that of the ship's interior. The hangar, bar, and control room (to name a few) have subtly alive pixel backdrops, showing off the gritty, war-hardened state of the fighter you find yourself captain of. You may not spend much time within the walls of your ship, in between upgrades and cut scenes, but there is no denying how expertly they have been crafted.

Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes runs really well, and while it isn’t a fast-paced, high-intensity game, you’ll not find any moments of slowdown or buffering, and I didn’t seem to encounter any bugs or glitches, for which I am grateful because there was already a lot to deal with. This one isn’t for on the go, with no Steam Deck or controller support, which feels sensible; you may get eye strain trying to read some of this text, even on the OLED’s screen.

I am a secret sci-fi fan, and if this game has taught me anything, it is that I have been sleeping on the Battlestar Galactica series for all these years, but perhaps that is all I will take away from it. Made-up words and complicated lore aside, I fear Scattered Hopes has overcomplicated what is already a somewhat ambitious game.

The game looks fantastic, and the space battles are a lot of fun, if a touch short, but with so many things to juggle, resources to try and gather (too slowly in my opinion), and moving parts to deal with during the fleet management sections of the game, I felt I didn’t have a moment to breathe, regroup, or even fully understand the gravity of my situation, which is saying something considering it is a real-time strategy game.

There is a lot to like in Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes, and I am sure if I was a diehard Fraker, there would be even more exciting things to find in the game. Hell, I’ve only watched one season, and I got excited when they mentioned people, places, or things I recognized, but despite the way in which the game makes the series accessible, it is in its core mechanics that I find the most fault… or perhaps I am not cut out to be the captain of a battle fleet.

It is because of this overcomplication and, might I add, lack of re-referencable tutorials and information that I must award Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes a Table Lamp of competency. I hope it finds players that can appreciate it for what it offers… all of what it offers.

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