I really enjoy space empire-building
RTS games. For the past couple years however, all of the releases that I tried were pretty disappointing. So much so that I was no longer getting my hopes up when trying a new one out.
Accordingly, I was in for a pleasant surprise after a buying
Sins of a Solar Empire and playing for a couple hours. OK, maybe more than a couple hours; this game is quickly engrossing.
The interface is very well designed and easy to learn, especially for anyone familiar with the basic concepts of this genre of games. The built-in tutorial campaigns are paced quite well: not so rudimentary that you don't get bored stiff performing elementary tasks that most gamers learn in seconds, nor overly detail-oriented that you find yourself consulting the (rather skimpy) printed instruction booklet that ships with the game.
After finishing the tutorials (which took about 30 minutes), I quickly launched a single player campaign versus 3 AI opponents and found my hands full nearly from the start. There are lots of things to attend to, especially in the early stages of a campaign: resource gathering, scouting, planet improvements and scientific research. All of these are familiar features of the space empire
RTS genre, but the way they are implemented and balanced in SoaSE makes for very enjoyable gameplay.
The scope of the game is quite impressive, allowing the player to move the camera from a close-up of a single scout ship's wing all the way back to a multi-stellar systems view simply by scrolling the mouse wheel, rendering all in high detail throughout. One can also rotate the camera on all 3 axes in any magnification, which can actually get quite disorienting when trying to find one of your planets in the middle of a heated battle.
Sins features a fairly standard faction diplomacy system; nothing really new in this department. However, one twist are the random pirate raids, which are launched at regular intervals. Players can anonymously bid on competing factions in an auction-like environment; whichever faction has the largest current bounty is then the target of the pirate raid. This feature can add some intriguing facets in multiplayer online matches, especially early in the game when resources are scarce and defenses are light. This also allows a viable winning strategy for hardcore economist/trading factions, which are often underpowered (and thus seldom effective) in most space empire games.
Sins features three factions, the archetypes of which will likely be familiar to fans of this genre:
- TEC - Trader Emergency Coalition (aka the humans)
- The Advent - (aka the spiritual aliens)
- The Vasari - (aka the dark, powerful, foreboding aliens)
Each of these races is fairly well-balanced, and have unique research paths (necessary for unlocking more advanced technologies and production capabilities). The long-term playability of any
RTS game (especially for online multiplayer gaming) depends in large part on balance, and in this regard Sins rates very highly.
Campaigns in SoaSE can last anywhere from 1 to 8 hours, or even longer. A very deep techonolgy tree, and a good variety of ships, weapons, defenses and racial abilities can combine to create massively marathon battles (often resulting in turn in loss of sleep!).
By far the most important units in Sins are the capital ships. Each race has access to five classes of capital ship, each with specialized functions (i.e. space combat, planetary bombardment, support, defense). As ship experience improves, your capital ships can also upgrade to enhanced weapons and capabilites (again, each of these being unique to each race), improving the overall effectiveness of your fleet. The impressive graphics of Sins can result in some really spectacular space battles involving dozens of capital ships, along with supporting frigates and fighters.
One complaint would be the fairly limited variety of smaller ships; each race only has 5-6 frigates and 4 cruisers available. Even a sizable squad of the strongest of those would be no match for a capital ship. To balance this, Sins limits the number of capital ships available to a player through the use of capital ship commanders. To unlock the maximum number of capital ships allowed at any one time (10) requires vast amounts of research resources and time.
Overall though, Sins of a Solar Empire is a very enjoyable and replayable space empire
RTS game, having quite deservingly won numerous Best Games awards, including
IGN's Best Strategy Game, Best New IP, Most Innovative Design, and Game of the Year (2008)., along with awards from many other computer game reviewers, including GameSpot and PC Gamer.
An expansion pack,
Sins of a Solar Empire: Entrenchment, was released in early 2009 and focuses most of the new content on defenses, promoting even longer and larger battles. The massive new planetary defense starbases provide a good counterbalance to the very powerful capital shipswhich offsets some of the dominance of the capital ships.
If you are a former or current fan of the space empire
RTS niche, then
Ironclad Games' Sins of a Solar Empire is definitely worth installing.
Review also posted in GamersHQ Reviews section:
http://www.gamershq.com/reviews/show...roduct=2&cat=9
