Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters has an excellent story and wordbuilding, and you can talk to all kinds of weird aliens. If you don’t like the ship combat, you can set up the game’s AI to fight for you.
If you liked this game, you might be interested to learn that Pistol Shrimp games, an independent game dev company started by Paul Rieche III and Fred Ford (the original creators of Star Control and Star Control 2), are making a sequel, with story written by Paul Rieche III.
The re-release on steam is partly to get the word out about it. Join our discord to learn more!