Star Traders: Frontiers

Being a captain in Star Traders: Frontiers is like being handed a loaded blaster, a jury-rigged warp drive, and a universe full of bad decisions, and then being told, “Go make history.” Or at least, an extremely profitable mess.

Trese Brothers’ endlessly surprising space-RPG doesn’t so much simulate a starship captain’s life as it embodies it. Want to be a merciful pirate queen with a jury-rigged missile barge and a flair for hostage negotiation? Sure. A humble trader smuggling addictive not-at-all-melange past border patrols? Also fine. A spy with a crew of amoral analysts wrecking interstellar politics from the shadows? That, too.

It’s not just window dressing, either. Your crew aren’t lifeless stat blocks, they level up, gain talents, and occasionally flip out, desert, or die tragically in boarding actions you probably shouldn’t have attempted. Your ship is a modular masterpiece, too: turn it into a flying casino, a surgical strike vessel, or a gas-huffing smuggler’s dream. Every component you rip out or bolt on is another step toward some wild, emergent story.

Random events and card-driven planetary actions inject just enough chaos to keep your empire-building dreams (or criminal rampages) precarious. And the faction politics? They’re not just background flavor, they remember you. Help a prince once, and his war might find you years later.

There are flaws, sure, single save slot masochism, the occasional opaque system, but Star Traders gets away with it by doing what so few games manage: making you feel like the story is really yours.

So go ahead. Pick a faction. Pick a fight. Pick a weird hat. Star Traders: Frontiers is waiting to make you a legend, or a cautionary tale with a flaming wake.