Sins of a Solar Empire | A great evolution of the 4x genre

Sins of a Solar Empire | Excellent Game

pc & video games:

Sins of a Solar Em...

	Sins of a Solar Empire Windows \| Stardock, 2008 average customer review:based on 74 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A great evolution of the 4x genre

If you're an older gamer, you might recall with fondness the 4x genre of space strategy games including Master of Orion, Master of Orion 2: Battle at Antares, Stars!, Imperium Galactica II (sorry never played the first), etc. Unfortunately there have been a number of, in my opinion, very bad followups to the genre including Master of Orion III (you can win either by going nuts with micromanagement, or sending out two ships and hitting End Turn repeatedly until the senate votes you in) and Hegemonia. Stardock's earlier Galactic Civilizations II (again, sorry didn't play the first) was a nice return to the roots of the style, and with Sins the little developer that could finally succeeds in blending the 4x strat game effectively with realtime.

From a game design standpoint, there are a number of things to absolutely love about this game. First, it scales to older hardware very well, though you may have to turn down your GFX settings a bit. I used to play it on my old AMD 2600+ with 2GB RAM and a Radeon 9800 Pro (yes I was using this as recently as a month ago) until it finally died. I only got a little bit of chunking when zoomed way in on a space battle; otherwise, smooth as silk. Stardock has wisely foregone the absolute bleeding edge in effects in order to bring this great game to a way broader audience who don't all spend a month's gross income on a gaming computer. It still looks beautiful though, and the ability to seamlessly zoom in and out from a single ship external view to a several solar system view with the mousewheel is great.

In addition, and maybe most importantly, there is no code-based DRM. AT ALL. No SecuROM hiding null entries in your registry chugging down your computer with useless tasks, no Starforce spinning up your optical drives until they self-destruct, no insane new SecuROM limiting your activations a la Spore, which I understand several people on Amazon might have heard about. All there is is a simple license key required for online matchmaking and to access patches/updates. In light of recent events in game development, it should get 5 stars on that alone.

Fortunately, the game is also a lot of fun to play. One of the big hurdles in trying to bring 4x to realtime was the amount of complexity and micromanagement players would get into on each turn, which also made multiplayer games a bore. (I used to play hotseat MOO2, and forced the use of a chess clock on my friends to keep them from burning half an hour making pointless decisions.) Other efforts like Hegemonia tried to get around this by making management so simplistic as to be totally meaningless. Sins strikes a perfect balance between a pace that's manageable enough to allow some occasional micromanagement if you feel like it, just enough combat options to actually reward you for taking a personal hand in your battles, and a procedural AI strong enough to make reasonable decisions on its own if you just want to relax and let the computer handle the details.

The one downside to this great solution to the realtime 4x game is that games can take a long time, if you are used to the 5-pool pace that modern "strategy" has devolved into. You can still rush if you think it's the right way to go, but you can also easily spend hours on a match. If you need to break it up, you can save in the middle of a multiplayer game, which is a great option for long games that stretch on and on, or if the game crashes. (Never happened to me though.)

I highly recommend this game to anyone who enjoyed the 4x genre, to anyone who likes RTS games with a little more depth to them, hell I'd recommend it to anyone really. Stardock quietly turns out winners. I even bought a copy for a friend, and I'm pretty cheap.

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Excellent Game

If anything else, this is probably one of the better space RTS out there in the market. It is a lot of fun and will keep you playing for at least several hours.

however, this game is not for everyone. It requires quite a long time to get used to the game with its fairly median learning curve, but once you get the hang of it, enjoyment is assured.If your up for battling for control of a universe and creating the largest fleet of ships to annhilate yr opponent, then by all means get this game

At first Blush

I'm struggling through my first game, so this is all 'at first blush' impressions.

Positive:
I like the random map creator. That auto-hooks me for replayability. The graphics are spectacular and I comfortably compare them to Homeworld for the cinematic quality. I like being able to build my gravity wells to my specifications and can prep the battlespace to my requirements.

Negative:
Wow...pinpoint micromanagement. An option to go to every single event at the tap of the spacebar is overwhelming. I don't like the research trees for the constant herding and directing. MOO3 had a nice %-age slider for weight of effort in a research field. That would be useful here. The combat AI looks good enough, but I would like options or ship attitudes toward attacking ship types to give the AI a tweak. Do I slam the big dog battleship or pick apart his retinue of escorts?

I feel a little overwhelmed right now and am looking for a 'game speed' slider so I can get more done because I can't seem to find enough crystal to get anything done!

I here a 1.1 patch is on the horizon, maybe that will fix some of the deeper concerns other folks have found.

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