Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday

The Good
Solid strategy and good variety of weapons/enemies. Decent story line. Lots of side quests to lengthen the game. Collecting, using, selling opponents weapons and armor motivates you to explore areas with unique weaponry. Space battles add to the variety.

The Bad
Game is a little too short, even with the side quests. The space battles can go South pretty quick resulting in a restart from the last save.

The Bottom Line
In short, this is a fantastic game for the Sega Genesis. I played this back when it came out and was absolutely won over by the unique and varied gameplay. I recently purchased a used copy and played through it again. It's just as good as I remembered.

At its core, Buck Rogers is a turn based strategy. Unlike Shining Force, here you travel around a map and engage in random battles, similar to the Final Fantasy games. When you start a battle, you actually get to move the characters around the battlefield and take advantage of the environment during the fight. After the battle, you can collect the opponents weapons and armor, which is a unique feature not found in too many other games. In addition to the standard scenarios, there are also space battles of a completely different nature adding to the variety of the game.