As typical of the adventure game genre, the player must explore the game world with little direction and make discoveries and connections independently. Interaction with the various alien species is a chief part of the adventure game; the backstory of both the species from the first games and new ones were fleshed out considerably. There are hours of dialogue, each species bringing out their characteristic conversational quirks, music, and even display fonts.
A two-player mode is available, named Super Mêlée, consisting solely of the ship-to-ship combat. All ships from the first game are available, even if they made no appearance in the story, along with a number of new ones.
