Like other roam-if-you-want-to games, Space Rangers 2 tosses you the reins, offers a few pointers, then leaves you to whim your way to grave or glory. Race and profession selection prime your trade relations and spec out starter-ship capacity and strength, then it's up to you to fight or scavenge, trade or terrorize, and eventually rack up enough leadership points to take on the Dominators a galaxy at a time. Unscripted and ruthless, the A.I. has its own capabilities, economic agendas and career paths, and the war between the five-race Coalition and silicoid Dominators will unfurl with or without your help.

You guide your ship across a star-festooned 2-D map using a mouse to direct (single-left-click) then execute (spacebar or double-left-click) turns, though it's safer to think of the system as pseudo-real-time: Everyone "goes" at once, and you can plot a 10-turn course, tap go, then watch it play out or pause at will. Parsec-spanning systems harbor revolving planets, bases, space anomalies (like black holes) and mineral resources spun off from asteroids with honest-to-goodness ellipsoid orbits. You start with a small ship and pocket change, plucking ore from the void and selling it to buy better weapons, scanners, warp engines, mining equipment ... pretty much whatever trips your galaxy-trotting trigger. Eventually you gin up enough cash and engine power to hop systems and push into Dominator-controlled territory. Fending off pirates (or police types, if you go bad seed) turns into a full-time job as you gussy up your gear and become a more tempting target. You can also take on time-limited missions for big money, be it carting provocative books to colonies of emotionally goosy children or expunging enemy bases planetside.

While much of Space Rangers 2 transpires in space, you're occasionally called in to fight 3-D real-time land-based skirmishes of the build, attack and tug-of-node stripe. Other minigames include real-time arcade shootouts within black holes for bonus goodies, old-school text-based adventure quests, a car-driving sequence where you trade and battle bandits, a Darwinian animal-survivalist mash and a ski-resort tycoon simulator. Space Rangers 2 is single-player only.

Zany, narcotic and ingenious

If you come to Space Rangers 2 looking for sobriety (or sober, for that matter), you'll probably still get sucked in—it'll just take longer. What at first resembles a straight-up freeform trading sim soon detours impishly into genre jambalaya. It's like walking onto a Baz Luhrmann set where everyone's somber and serious, then suddenly belting symphonic renditions of "In the Name of Love" as the whole house bops and swings. Don't get me wrong, the particulars are deep and methodical, but Space Rangers 2 is the Cindy Lauper of space-trading sims: It just wants to have fun.

Take, for instance, the space disease "Chekumash," which may cause you to "hallucinate" things that look like, oh, say, the Death Star from Star Wars, or a space station from Babylon 5. Occasionally you'll have to worm your way through a text adventure Zork-style. (Which way do you go? North toward the frozen mountains? Or southwest, toward that mysterious tree-topping plume of smoke?) Shock-drop black holes, teleport bases, add bodyguard robots, invest in real estate or order special market scans, even run your own ski resort (make a million to win!); it's hard to convey just how refreshingly quilted the game feels, other than to point out that each time you think you've seen it all, Space Rangers 2 trots out something new, decidedly retro and weirdly diverting.

And I'm not paying lip service to a bunch of tacked-on features that sound cool on paper but feel more like incongruous growths. Everything ties (don't ask me how) into the central game somehow, so yes, that daffy text adventure on Planet Whatever has different possible outcomes that may impact your bottom-line payout, and those twitchy arrow-keys-to-move and Ctrl-to-fire battles in black holes dish up ship-enhancing techie perks. Sure, I could nitpick the tutorial (it's a bit abstruse and text-heavy, really) or the low-res 1024x768 lock, or knock the large number of translation typos (the game was developed in Vladivostok, of all places), but it's sort of like pointing out the animal poop in a zoo—kind of unavoidable, and somehow missing the point.

Of course, it's also possible that you won't take to the game precisely because it's all over the map, the way some people dislike Douglas Adams or Spider Robinson or "controlled" silliness in general. Excusing that crowd (the sort that dismiss the Lord of the Rings movies in their entirety just because Gimli fell off a horse), Space Rangers 2 remains one of the smarter, savvier, riskier efforts in a market of pallid clones and sequels. And where else can you go to jail and race cockroaches?