Given my status as an elder gamer, who remembers playing Pong at home and had a Commodore 64 in his room, there’s a solid handful of games I remember way back in the day that I’d love to see revived. Outside of a wish that the company Epyx could come back and make a new version of their Summer Games series, or perhaps a new Racing Destruction Set could get greenlit, my biggest wish would be to see the return of the Wing Commander franchise. That series’ mix of great storytelling (Hobbes!?!?! Nooo!), iconic characters, and outstanding ship-to-ship combat it had, still remain in my mind to this day. While we’ve had some decent titles in a similar vein on the Switch, none have really come close to that formula overall.

In several regards, Stellar Wanderer DX at least takes a stab at most of these elements, putting in a decent effort even if coming up short overall. What it particularly does well is impart the feeling of the vastness of space, though you could argue it does that a little too well. I absolutely appreciate the effort here to help you feel the distance between objects, and that most of the areas you’ll be exploring are mostly empty. That said, without a sufficient means of more quickly getting through these areas you’ll repeatedly need to move through in every mission, it does make for a frustrating amount of downtime simply getting from point to point. This is especially when in most missions you’ll need to warp multiple times, adding even more to boredom as you need to first waste time getting to a warp gate, and then waste more time to get to your next destination as well. It’s definitely a grind, and on an overall level while the dogfighting is at least decent, it also feels quite watered down. Sure, you’ll have to take out a variety of enemy vessels, and I applaud the fact that also includes larger-scale capital ships as well, but there’s just a detached quality to combat, so it never truly sucked me in.

In terms of the storytelling and overall sense of direction, I’d also say that while things could be worse, the game simply doesn’t do much to raise the bar. I do appreciate that you’ll have the option of tackling your adventure in the style that most speaks to you, ranging from being focused on combat, trade, or some combination of factors, but that ultimately boils down to your stats and your approach to equipment more so than fundamentally changing the overall experience. If you don’t mind the grind and the fact that many missions feel quite similar, requiring you to fly around between checkpoints, take on some enemies, and then perhaps address some secondary concerns, the overall gameplay is decent and works, I just think it lacks a hook that will make it feel memorable once you put it down.