In the thirteen years I've been playing FTL I've come to realise that this is one of the best and most tightly designed games I've ever played. I'm so sad that the developers did not create any more content beyond Advanced Edition because, in spite of there already being so much content to sink your teeth into for the ten dollar price tag, it has left me wanting so much more.

I recommend this game to everyone and it has made me a staunch fan of Subset Games. Please work on more things so I can buy them

I considered reaching the second round with the Flagship a consolation prize. Being armed with a defensive, combat, and beam drone would mean little to the boarding drones merrily entrenched inside of my oxygen/life support (O2) room. Yes, that plural is correct for FTL fans out there—I am well aware that only one enemy boarding drone can be present per ship, but RNGesus had smiteth me mightily with the Flagship’s patented triple-missile barrage disabling my defensive (and offensive) drones, allowing for the possibility that the offending boarding ‘bots would land in the same room, three times in succession.

Under normal circumstances, I would have decompressed the invaded room(s) and wait for the raiders to either be recalled to their ship or die from space exposure. Unfortunately for me, robots do not possess the weaknesses of carbon-based lifeforms. I tried rotating my crew in and out of the room as their HPs warranted, but I was at a disadvantage, for not only were these raiders those special boss-tier kind that do more damage than they take, but my crew was also an all-Engi assemblage. Their racial penalty to melee combat resulted in impotent blows which failed to inflict even a respectable amount of damage before they had to withdraw and rotate with another Engi.

Eventually, the attrition became insurmountable; my all-Engi crew assailed those drones with the full might of charging mounted knights armed with feather dusters instead of lances as they and their ship sustained damage like Little People inside of a Fisher Price school bus being rolled from the top of a flight of stairs. In the O2 room, a duo of my Engi get served like Apollo Creed against Ivan Drago. My weapons officer perished from asphyxiation while vainly trying to restore my armament for return fire. My my engineer took an energy blast to the knee while powering up the FTL drives for a desperation regress. My helmsman valiantly maintained his post to the last man, and didn’t blink when the Torus absorbed the deathblow and majestically disintegrated into an assortment of fragments during that painfully long “YOU LOSE” animation that lasts longer than any of the destruction animations of the ships that I had defeated up to this point.

I stare at the “Game Over” screen taunting me for what feels like the thousandth time, but it’s only about the fifteenth time…with the same ship. I allow myself an exasperated sigh before returning to the hangar and launching another mission…with the same ship.

GOATed game.

More or less the best game ever in my opinion.