Space RPG Games That Will Send You On an Epic Adventure
Tired of games always taking place on the same planet? Do you want to go out into space and unleash your inner space pirate?
Or are you just looking for games where you can explore the galaxy?
Then take a look at this list, you are sure to find something that you’ll love playing.
1. Rebel Galaxy
Welcome to the place of shady people, liars, thugs and thieves. This is a galaxy you don’t trust. Be careful who you make deals with, as trouble lurks around every star system.
Rebel Galaxy is an epic, action-packed, single-player space RPG. You take control of a spacecraft called the “Rasputin”, which isn’t quite in the best shape as it used to be.
So you travel to this massive universe that has various stations you can dock to where you can buy parts. Go to the bar if you want to meet some shady people. Make deals with them if you think they’re good, or do the many missions that are put up on the mission board, such as escorting or defending a valuable object or ship.
There’s also lots of trading you can do if that’s your kind of thing.
Depending on your actions, you may end up becoming friendly to space pirates, or the Confederate militia if you’re a good guy.
If you decide to go for another new game run, you’ll notice that the game world is randomly generated. Be careful when going near planets, the gravity can pull you. Unfortunately you can’t explore planets but the game is still really fun with the many different situations you may come into. You never know when a group of space pirates will appear or if an alien will come across trying to negotiate for some illegal jobs.
Watch out for that asteroid!
2. Elite: Dangerous
Thrown into the Milky Way with a small spaceship, you have the freedom to go wherever you want and do whatever you want. Do you want to go alone and explore this massive 400-billion star system? Or will you team up with your friends and encounter various threats?
Elite: Dangerous is a realistic space RPG. Basically there is no story you have to follow. You start out with a small starship and a few credits. From there it’s all up to you whether you’ll focus on combat, on trading, exploration, or some well….illegal business.
This game is huge. They have basically recreated the Milky Way. If you want to know how massive it is, someone has calculated that it would take 381 real life years to explore it alone. That is just insane.
You play the game in the cockpit view (no third-person view) and if you have a virtual reality headset then this gets even more immersive because you feel like you are actually inside the ship flying past huge planets.
If you want to explore planets you’ll have to get the Horizons Season Pass.
It’s a beautiful galaxy out there.
3. Star Wars: The Old Republic
Which side will you choose? Do your choices pull you to the Light or consume you to the Dark side? Are you part of the Republic or the Empire It is all up to you in this interactive story-driven Star Wars MMORPG.
This game, just like any game made by BioWare, puts you in a world where you can make choices. These choices impact your story. Your actions will determine whether you side with the Light or the Dark.
You have eight classes you can choose from, four classes from the Republic and four from the Empire. Once you do that and finish creating your character, you set out on a story-driven world which you can even play as a single-player game.
Compared to the previous two games, this one doesn’t have that much space exploration. Your ship serves as a base of operations and the space combat features a sequence of intense, fast-paced linear dogfights. They’re still fun to play through after some great story quests and intense PvP battles.
The first chapter of the game is free-to-play, but for the rest of the game you’ll have to pay a subscription fee.
Watch out for that Killik, Jedi!
4. Star Trek Online
Jump into the Star Trek universe in a way like never before. Customize your ship and lead your crew as you take on the role of a captain. Explore star systems, take on missions, uncover new life. It is your choice, captain.
Star Trek: Online is a free-to-play MMORPG that lets you control your starship and crew. Choose from 3 warring factions and a variety of races, each with their own traits. The three factions are called: “The United Federation of Planets”, “The Klingon Empire” and “The Romulan Republic”.
There are over 200 star systems to explore and the space combat is nice. You can fully customize your ship, from the color to the design. You can even change the weapons and choose different parts for customizing your armor, giving you the ability to create a unique design for your ship.
The game also lets you explore planets with some decent ground combat. Missions aren’t your typical MMO quests. They feel like single-player campaign missions, and they’re pretty fun.
You can even create and build your own missions using the Foundry. This gives the game an unlimited amount of content, as it allows the players to be creative and make their own ideas come to life, ideas that might be even better than the missions in the game. You can create your own mission by launching the game and clicking the “Create Content” button that can be found in the Character selection screen. From there you will create a character dedicated to using the Foundry.
Is that a big cube ship!?
5. Galaxy on Fire 2 Full HD
A hyperdrive malfunction throws you 35 years into the future, at the far end of the galaxy. As a known galactic hero you fight the alien fleet that is inflicting chaos on many races.
Galaxy on Fire 2 is a single-player space RPG that lets you explore over 20 solar systems with 100 space stations and more than 30 customizable spaceships.
The main story is not that long but there are a lot of side quests you can do which can be found at space stations. Trading is pretty good and complex. It has over 170 commodities. Graphics are good and the soundtrack is nice to listen to.
Aliens can attack at any time and they can even open up wormholes to escape. You can go through too and chase them down if you want.
A sequel is coming out, but it’s an Apple TV exclusive so unfortunately we probably won’t see another PC release.
Use jumpgates to travel to different stations.
6. Starsector
Stuck 6000 light years from Earth, you must set out and begin a new space life. What choices will you make to survive in this procedurally generated sector? Will you live as a bounty hunter, a trader, or a smuggler? The choice is yours.
Starsector is an open-world, single-player, top-down space RPG currently in-development. Choose from one of the roles available and begin your journey as a trader, a smuggler or a bounty hunter. Customize your ship and set up your own fleet to use in your many 2D space battles.
Combat is very interesting. It requires being strategic, as any wrong move you make may get you killed. For example, if an enemy is holding up his shield you can try and come up close and use the Blink ability to teleport behind him and deal critical damage. Using a good combination of missiles and lasers helps too.
The sector is different each time you play, and if you want to make it even harder to explore you can turn on the “Iron mode” which basically means that if you die, it’s game over.
Careful, that big guy looks dangerous!
You can buy Starsector in its current Alpha state on the game’s website.
7. EVE Online
Jump into a massive galaxy called New Eden and begin one of the most memorable adventures ever. Fight, trade, mine, and explore the galaxy as you wish. You choose what to do, and every decision you make affects the whole universe.
EVE Online is a sci-fi MMORPG that takes place in a galaxy that has over 7000 star systems filled with tons of players. Customize and upgrade your ship and go out in this unpredictable world and experience huge space battles that happen frequently.
Playing this game will require lots of dedication. But it is so amazing. If you join the alliances and work together with other players it becomes an incredible experience.
One of the great things about Eve Online is the ship and weapons system. There are close-range and long-range weapons that you can equip on your ship. Close-range weapons do more damage and are easier to fit on a ship, while long-range weapons do less damage and have a harder time tracking targets. These weapons are also arranged according to size. You have versions of each turret and missile system for frigate-sized ships, cruiser-sized ships, battleship-sized ships and for capitals and super-capitals. Each weapon is powerful when hitting ships of the same size and bigger.
The weapons used by frigates can hit almost any ship, but cruiser-sized weapons will do less damage to frigates and battleship weapons will have quite a tough time hitting smaller targets. Customization involves buying various different paint styles for your ship, and the combat has a variety of different things you need to think about in order to succeed.
Understanding how your weapons work helps a lot, knowing things such as how fast the weapon can rotate, the ideal distance to shoot from, the weapon type, its ammunition and much more are all good things to know when fighting. It’s quite a complex combat system, and this is just some of the things it offers.
The economy of the game is completely player-driven. Buying and selling, doing contracts, making courier agreements and many other things are all done by the players.
You can try and build your own empire and start gaining territory, but you will have to face much bigger threats in doing so, unless you can ally with those big player-controlled empires.
So you’ll probably want to join one of the big corporations and work with them to try and take as much of the galaxy you can, altering the whole game.
One of the many huge battles you may face if you’re part of the big alliances.
You literally can be anything that you want. Do you want to be a merchant, an industrialist, a politician, or a spy? It’s up to you, the possibilities are endless. If you have lots of time then this is an experience you don’t want to miss.
8. Star Citizen
Star Citizen puts you in a massive sci-fi universe where you can be whatever you want. Want to focus on trading? Looking to do some space piracy? Want to be a mercenary for hire? The choice is yours.
This game is still in-development but you can support the game and get the alpha version. You can play both in first and third-person view, you can even go inside space stations, do some first-person shooting, or control your highly detailed space ship and engage in amazing space battles.
The developers have received a huge amount of money for this game thanks to crowd-funding support on Kickstarter and the Roberts Space Industries website, raising a stunning amount of $117 million. And that number will continue to rise.
Star Citizen is a space lover’s dream. It will be an incredible achievement if the developers ever fully finish and release this amazing game.
Keep ready on the trigger, your enemy may be right around the corner.
9. No Man’s Sky
No Man’s Sky is a sci-fi game about exploration and survival in a procedurally generated galaxy. Uncover new planets no one has ever seen before, land on them, name them, and survive the creatures living on these planets!
What this game is trying to make you feel is the sense of scale, how big the universe is. It’s a single-player game, yet one that is connected to the cloud, allowing other players to see the planets you named. It will be very rare to meet someone in the game because everyone gets randomly spawned on one of many beautiful procedurally generated planets.
This is not about a multiplayer experience, an experience to fly together with your friends. It’s an experience that is supposed to make you feel how big everything is, and how far you are from your friends. You will have the many things other space MMOs have, such as the ability to be a trader, an explorer or a fighter. The game lets you be what you want. But it is ultimately a single-player game, and a huge one at that.
Better not make those drones angry, or you’ll be in trouble.
No Man’s Sky releases on August 12, 2016.
Planets await to be discovered, each with different creatures.
10. Starpoint Gemini 2
Explore the Gemini system with your own spaceship and go on an adventure filled with dark secrets and surprising twists that will finally reveal the truth behind everything that’s been going on.
Starpoint Gemini 2 is a single-player tactical space simulator with a complex, but easy-to-use RPG system.
You can use T-Gates, wormholes and riftways to travel faster around the dynamic Gemini system. There are over 50 various factions ranging from companies and states to Outlaws. Missions can even get randomly generated depending on your actions and obligations.
If you fancy yourself a trader there are over 100 commodities to trade with, or plunder if you like being a space pirate. The game has over 70 unique upgradeable ships and you can even employ officers to do key positions on the ship, things like engineering and navigation. Hire mercenaries to travel with you if you need help.
Real-time, dynamic space combat
A spin-off is currently in Early Access on Steam and is up next on this list.
11. Starpoint Gemini Warlords
Warlords brings a great mix of RPG, space sim and 4X games. Command your spaceship, build your own space station, send your fleets to conquer territories, mine, trade or salvage in this much improved spin-off.
This game basically puts all the community requested features that couldn’t be put in Starpoint Gemini 2 into this game. These are huge changes too.
The Gemini System is now 10 times larger than previously seen. You’ll be able to even build and upgrade your own space station. It will allow you to do research, construct ships, set up fleets and lots more.
If the developers manage to finish and put all the promised features then this will be a great space game that is built with love and dedication to the community.
Space is in your hands.
12. Mass Effect
Take the role of Commander Shepard as you lead an elite squad on a journey to stop Saren and his deadly army to save the galaxy. Your choices will determine the fate of all life.
Mass Effect is a single-player third-person space RPG full of adventure and tough choices. These choices you make can affect the whole galaxy, or it can be some chatting between characters. You can build a good relationship with them depending on how you treat them.
The game also has a nice planetary exploration system. It really makes the game feel big with how many planets you can drop down to and explore with an armored vehicle. Driving it can get a bit clunky though, depending on what kind of terrain the planet has.
One of many planets you will fight through.
Mass Effect is a great game, selling over 3 million units around the world. It was the start of an amazing trilogy.
13. Mass Effect 2
Mass Effect 2 continues the story of Commander Shepard and his crew to stop the most terrifying threat mankind has ever witnessed: The Collectors, a deadly evil race of insect-like beings. Gather a powerful team once again to prepare for one of the most suicidal missions ever.
The conversation system in this sequel is improved, allowing you to even interrupt conversations at times to change the course of the mission. Customization has also been vastly improved, as well as the third-person shooter combat that lets you spot the weak points of the enemy.
While you will go on many planets completing your missions, you won’t be able to explore with a vehicle as previously seen in Mass Effect 1. The feature that replaced it is the ability to scan planets for resources. Scanning can also uncover new missions.
Mass Effect 2 is the best-selling game in the series, selling over 4 million units all over the world.
Use powerful abilities to strike your foes.
14. Mass Effect 3
The Reapers are taking over civilizations. As Commander Shepard you must lead the final fight and save humanity from the most dangerous threat in the galaxy.
Mass Effect 3 is the last game in the trilogy that puts in much tougher choices that will determine the fate of the galaxy.
New features include powerful new powers and combat moves. You can combine biotic and tech powers with your squad to create devastating power combos.
Characters from the previous game are back, and some new ones are introduced too. You’ll experience one of the toughest choices ever. Some of your favorite old characters may not survive till the end.
The planet scanning seen in Mass Effect 2 has been replaced by a “Search and Rescue” system, which is similar. It is basically a new way of scanning that you’ll use to uncover war assets, intel, artifacts and salvage as you fly around the system. Wreckage floating around can be salvaged for fuel. Be careful, though, the Reapers may track you and start hunting you.
Mass Effect 3 has sold 3 million units worldwide. A new game called Mass Effect: Andromeda is in-development, which won’t feature Commander Shepard.
One of many tough battles you will face.
15. Freelancer (2003)
Freelancer is the space RPG that inspired many of the new ones we see today. Trade, fight, explore in this sequel to 2000’s Starlancer.
The single-player mode puts you through a series of missions to save the Sirius sector from a dangerous alien force. In multiplayer mode you can do whatever you want.
There are 48 star systems filled with various planets and space stations. You can fight with computer-controlled spaceships or actual players. Do bounty-hunting or trading, or defend the traders from space pirates…unless you want to plunder those traders yourself.
It’s a great game and one that inspired many developers to create the space games we see today.
You will experience lots of battles in this classic.
There are lots of space games nowadays. Each have their own special touch to the genre, and each are suited for different kinds of players. Some are more complicated, and some are just quick and easy. Whatever suits you, I hope this list helped you find your new favorite space RPG. Thanks for reading, and remember: “Live long and prosper”.
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