Build a crew and set out to play your mission through a galaxy of interconnecting stopping points. Trade or fight at each stopping point, or upgrade your ship and crew to fight another day.

A story-powered space game

Star Traders: Frontiers is not as open-world or sandbox as its devs would have you believe. It appears open world at first, but as you become a veteran player, you will see how you are confined to a certain path where you must stop at different stopping points and cannot power your way through to the end without completing the predetermined missions or events. Take your ship and upgrade it as you go. Recruit new crew and use their different abilities to board enemy craft and take their stuff. Each map is procedurally generated, but you are forced to play through one of 26 stories each time you play. Still, being able to run through 26 stories within procedurally generated environments should keep most RPG space fans busy for a while.

It could have been amazing

Games such as Starsector, Rebel Galaxy and Cosmonautica have tried desperately to repeat the success and genius that was FTL (Faster Than Light) while adding trading and/or RPG elements to it. Star Traders: Frontiers could have been another stellar attempt, and it could have done what Cosmonautica almost did, but sadly Star Traders: Frontiers did not. The story is so linear that you are railroaded away from anything resembling a sandbox or open world, and having the gaming mechanics stacked against the player may have worked in FTL where cumulative balancing/advantages were determined by the player, but Star Traders stacks the deck against you and there is nothing you can do to build an advantage against the game enemies.