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Sunrider: First Arrival
Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius
Sunrider: Liberation Day (Captain's Edition)
(Love in Space/Sekai Project (2014))
Sunrider is somewhat unusual as a game goes, in that the genre it actually belongs to (turn-based tactics) is considered higher up gaming's pecking order of genres/effort levels than the one it claims to belong to (visual novels). I mean, it's built on the Ren'py engine, so it's got a solid claim to be a visual novel, but realistically any game where you spend the vast majority of it staring at a hex grid is probably not actually a VN.
That's just as well, really, because the writing is pretty terrible. First Arrival, to be fair, is not so bad. I mean, it's silly for a variety of reasons, but it's understood we're playing by the rules of YA fiction so we can forgive things like "no, seriously, it makes no sense whatsoever that this first-in-class light carrier/battlecruiser hybrid thing you've just launched has a completely green crew including its commanding officer". I mean, this doesn't excuse the game's adhering to dating sim tropes and having all of the characters except the player avatar be female; other than inasmuch as "everyone else is doing it" is a bit of a better excuse for something in a genre where formula is broadly accepted to be part of how things work. Beyond that, though, the writers can't decide whether they're writing a harem animé or a harrowing war story, resulting in a series of jarring tonal shifts, weird (and sophomoric) political interludes and unsubtle allegories. For Liberation Day it gets even worse as you're railroaded down a plothole so ridiculous the writers eventually released a VN epilogue with a time-travel plot where you go back in time to prevent all the stupid happening. That said, the characters (well, some of them) are actually pretty engaging and, when the atmosphere is appropriate for the sort of game it ought to be, it sometimes feels like we're in a properly swashbuckling heroic adventure.
Young Adult genre tropes do excuse the ridiculous odds you throw your ship against and come out victorious on regular occasions, and the tactical game is great fun throughout. It's also a refreshing departure. Most turn-based tactics games are about minimising the chances the enemy gets to concentrate fire, holding tight defensive formations and winning slugging matches. Try that in Sunrider (and I did) and you get steamrollered. Sunrider's all about concentrating your own firepower, expansive offensive formations, and killing everything in sight before the next wave shows up without overextending and leaving your non-tanky units vulnerable. Sadly the accompanying levelling-up/strategy section is kind of bad for two reasons - if you're doing well it rewards you with more upgrades you clearly didn't need, and it's also possible to go down dead ends where your build doesn't have the required synergies to kill things fast enough to survive the later missions. Accordingly this bit is probably best done with a walkthrough unless you like the idea of having to redo large parts of the campaign repeatedly.
Overall, Sunrider comes....weakly recommended. The first two episodes are free, so you might as well download them and give them a go, and if you want to see how the story finishes then buy the final one when it's on sale, it's not worth full price. You'll enjoy the missions in the final episode too, just not the plot...
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