There are six available roles to choose from when starting a game, Captain, Pilot, Scientist, Weapons Specialist and Engineer. Each provides a different experience through the use of different gameplay roles for each. This makes for a game that is always different depending on which role is chosen, which greatly extends the gameplay experience and longevity.
Crew on the bridge consists of a captain and 5 stations:
Engineering - in charge of energy distribution and the DamCon
Science - in charge of scanning and information distribution
Weapons - in charge of military equipment
Comms - in charge of monitoring communications between enemies and friendly ships
Helm - in charge of piloting the ship
Being that there are a few different roles to choose from it will take many play-throughs to experience them all, which gives good variety to the player, especially when considering that the experience even with the same role can play out differently with a group of different players.
Artemis is designed around many popular sci-fi tropes, providing an enjoyable sense of fan-service for those who are interested in pop culture and movie media.
The exploration, crafting and combat are all both very polished and deep in terms of what you can do, especially compared to other games in the genre. This makes the sandbox very fun to play in as you're never really stuck doing the same thing over and over.
Starbound is unlike most games in this genre, in that from the very beginning it has a decent level of difficulty to it, which for a lot of people is a very nice change. The very first enemies you encounter can get the better of you, and materials will take awhile to harvest. Don't expect rapid advancement unless you get very lucky.
Play with your friends! It makes base-building and exploration much more fun, and you'll also advance to the more impressive craftable items more quickly. Of course it will take a decent level of coordination in order to make the best use of having multiple people work on a single aspect, but that's part of the fun.
From temperate jungles to literal oceans of magma, Starbound has a ton of interesting places to discover. Each planet type also has several different biomes, both above and below ground.
By facing the Bosses of Starbound and defeating them, you open up the universe even more. This essentially means that by killing a boss, you increase the diversity of the materials you can obtain, which also increases the customization you can do of your character through new and improved gear.
Starbound allows the player to go at their own pace while completing the tutorials. By the end of the tutorials the player will have the skills and equipment to succeed in the game and have fun doing it.
There are five total roles available in the game that a player can choose to be when playing. These include Captain, Helm, Tactical, Engineering and Science. Each has different tasks in their stake in the game, which makes for a differing experience depending on which role one chooses, which in turn adds to the games longevity due to how different each played game play out.
Quintet is offered for free on Steam as well as the developers own website, so anyone who would like to try the game out or jump in with a group of friends who already have the game have nothing holding them back from downloading the game to join in.
While the game is listed as only having partial controller support the meat of the game needs the use of a controller as the keyboard and mouse controls are pretty much absent when in a game.