You are in the distant future where the Earth is so bad off that humans have left land to live in the depths of the oceans. You play the role of William Drake, a young lad who basically lost his well-known family to death or insanity and sets off on an adventure for lost treasure. This naive spineless sniffling twerp gets his freighter captured by pirates and next thing you know they take command of his ship. They do let him live provided he makes himself useful. It is from Amitab, the lead Pirate who you will get orders through and maybe someday, you just might get your ship back.

Though pirates may be a harsh word to use, because this lot seems to have some good morals and are not out for senseless looting. You will take on rescue and escort missions along with seek and destroy. There are a plethora of dangers in the deep that will have you as shark bait in a matter of no time. Thankfully your new team is watching your back and teaches you that you can not trust everybody. Of course you take this with a grain of salt because they did indeed steal your ship from you.

You pilot sub-like vessels that you can equip with different weapons, engines, repair tools, etc. Each weapon does either kinetic or EMP type of damage. You are limited by what the ship can carry, and the amount of energy used to fire the weapon. Reload times are also a factor to consider. One of my favorite weapons is the vendetta sniper. A well placed shot right into a cockpit of an enemy vessel only means one thing, instant death. As you progress through the missions you will salvage weapons, armor subs, etc. Then you will be able to pick and choose the configuration that best suits your mission. If you don't want to bother with customizations, you can have the computer auto-pick for you.

The graphics are beautiful and along with the sound effects and musical score really immerse you in the game. The ethnic accents could use some work; in fact they could use a lot of work. The story line is much better than the first AquaNox and the developers must have listened to the gamers. In the first there were so many non-player characters to talk to that it started to make the game boring. You still have a fair amount of NPC to chat with, but at least for the most part you need to talk to them to help the story flow. My only gripe about the story line is that I wanted to reach into my monitor and slap William Drake. How could anybody be such a push over? I certainly hope in the later missions that he gets a backbone!

Overall I really enjoy the game despite the fact that it lacks a Multi-Player option which will hinder the re-playability factor. However, the game is beautiful and fun and will provide a good deal of bang for your buck. This Review was done on a recent Beta copy, but the developers assure us that this is really close to the final product. From what I found it was not buggy at all and played just as smooth as any retail game I recently have played. So I do believe this to be true!

Graphics: 8.5
In a word, Wonderful. The first AquaNox utilized the Krass engine and wowed players with beautiful fast graphics, and you will find some of the same here.

Sound: 8
The sound effects and musical score are awesome. It’s the poor attempt at the diverse ethnic backgrounds where the accents are quite poor. A few are ok, but most are just plain terrible.

Difficulty: Medium
Easy to get going and you can save your games just about anywhere except during the action. That’s ok though. If you save before you leave the dock you will be just fine. If you die during your fight, simply reload!

Overall: 8
Fun and addictive well worth the MSRP!