Halcyon 6: Lightspeed Edition Review for PC

Halcyon 6: Lightspeed Edition by developer Massive Damage is a turn-based strategy game set in space. In it, you play as the newly appointed commander of the Terran Federation after the previous command (and most of the federation outside the space station you start in) is destroyed by a new alien threat known as the Chruul race.

As opposed to most movies and games where humanity fights against an outside alien threat, this game begins at a point where other alien races (aside from the one you’re fighting) have made contact with humanity. In fact, according to the game’s story, the Terran Federation was actually strong enough to keep these races from fighting each other before the emergence of the Chruul. As such, your units and the units of the Chruul are on a much more even playing field.

Combat in the game is, as previously mentioned, turn-based. A turn order for all units can be found at the bottom of the screen. While there are plenty of moves that deal pure damage, there are other moves that inflict status conditions on the enemies or buffs on your own units. In fact, many of the attacks in the game will deal double damage if the enemy it hits is suffering from a specific status condition. For example, one of the strongest attack moves I had—called “Flak Cannon”—dealt 120 damage normally and dealt double damage when it targeted an enemy with the status condition “engines down.” I would equip another one of my ships with an attack which—while not nearly as strong as “Flak Cannon”—would inflict the condition of “engines down.” Then I would attack with “Flak Cannon” and do a whooping 240 damage to the enemy ship I was attacking. Exploiting combos such as this can make a huge difference in battle.

Halcyon 6: Lightspeed Edition also has ground battles, but these play out more or less the same as space battles. The moves and status conditions are different, but the combat is still turn-based with a focus on status condition exploitation. As this is a space game, you will not see ground-based combat nearly as often as space combat, but it still doesn’t hurt to make sure an officer you select has good ground abilities.

Halcyon 6: Lightspeed Edition’s units are “officers.” At the beginning of the game you have a choice between one of three officers—a tactical officer, an engineering officer, and a science officer. Engineering officers usually have the largest, most powerful ships, but at the expense of not having nearly as many turns as the other two officers (turn amount is decided by ship speed). Science officers, on the other hand, have light, fragile ships that are able to take the most turns out of the three. Every time you get a new officer, you are again given a choice of one of the three types to have. I found it effective to go into battle with one of each type of officer.

The game has 4 resource types: dark matter, fuel, materials, and crew size. All 4 of these are generated by space stations found in the remnants of what used to be Terran Federation space. With these space stations, you can either send ships out to collect the resources generated by them, or you can build a satellite drone at the station which will then periodically send resources to your base.

Additionally, you can gain dark matter and materials from winning space battles. When you collect a resource through a collection of ships, the ships will hold the resources and the resources will be unusable until the ships dock at your base.

Throughout Halcyon 6: Lightspeed Edition, you will occasionally be contacted by ships from the other races. While sometimes (usually when contacting the Chruul) these conversations don’t change anything, most times they end with deciding whether or not to take on a quest. Other times, they force a quest on you and you can make a decision on which way you want to handle the quest. These decisions also occasionally appear mid-quest (although I only saw a decision appear during a quest once).

Overall, I think Halcyon 6: Lightspeed Edition is very well put together and something that fans of turn-based strategy games would enjoy. As such, I think a fair rating for this game would be 8.5/10.

Check Out the Halcyon 6: Lightspeed Edition Trailer:

Halcyon 6: Lightspeed Edition is now available for PC, Mac and Linux on Steam.