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Getting started with Terminus is an enigmatic process requiring the player to serendipitously navigate the cornucopia of convoluted interface screens. Something went drastically astray with the interface scheme in Terminus. Maybe the perplexing interface can be blamed on the three-year development cycle of the game. Perhaps the developers became so accustomed to seeing the smorgasbord of options that they forgot what it looked like to someone who hadn’t seen it before. It’s not that there is an overwhelming amount of information at your disposal, it’s just that the information is categorized and organized in an incredibly inefficient manner. You’ll have a devil of a time figuring out how to go about purchasing and outfitting a ship, and even simple tasks are frustrated by the non-intuitive way in which information is displayed on various screens. If the developers spent three years on the game, they must have spent three minutes on the pre-game interface. Considering that the story and RPG aspects of Terminus are played out on the pre-game interface for the most part, it seems a more useful design would have drawn the player into the story rather than propelling him or her away from it. As it is, the pre-game interface almost completely dishevels the game as a whole.

Additionally, the in-game interface is less confusing but almost as useless. Admittedly, I’m far less than a seasoned space sim veteran, but I could not find my way around the Terminus universe if my life depended on it. An in-game navigation map supposedly helps you locate yourself and other ships in the galaxy, but using it is more labyrinthine than anything. The only thing really useful about the in-game interface are the velocity lines that show you the general direction in which you are headed and offer some visual clues as to where you are relative to everything else on the screen. Velocity lines are created when your ship starts moving in a certain direction and will streak across the screen at different angles depending on what direction your ship is facing. Also on the plus side is the way contrails are drawn behind other ships in visible range. Using the contrail of a ship, you can track it down and engage in a dogfight without losing a sense of situational awareness.

Top-notch graphics are almost a pre-requisite for a good space sim these days. Terminus is visually a little behind in this area. The three-year development cycle has reared its head again in the form of outdated graphics. Ship designs are adequate, but don’t come close to the intricate designs in other space games. The rest of the scenery is similar to Allegiance--minus the NASA quality rendering of planets and stellar formations. On the plus side, explosions are satisfyingly brilliant while filling your screen with red and yellow flames as you blow the smithereens out of your opponent.