The bigger a game gets, the harder it is to review.
Sins of a Solar Empire? It’s fucking huge, if you choose for it to be, like most 4x projects. Customization of maps is all set, random maps of all sizes are good to go, and the AI, well, it’s ready for anything.
The short of it is that Sins of a Solar Empire manages to take the very, very complex (and in terms of Stardock’s repetoire, mastered) 4x genre into real time territory, and keep it all easily managed by means of a great UI, which allows it to stay both fun and manage to get plenty complicated.
You know what a 4x game is by now. It’s all about keeping an empire running. The economy, the military, the technology, the culture. Any of those start to fail, and the whole thing can go down the shitter, but how to appropriately handle it all, well that’s the challenge. It would be without hostile beings in the world trying to take over, but hey, if there wasn’t a challenger, it’d be Sim Federation 3000, not Sins of a Solar Empire.
So, while you’re off and about trying to build a space empire by mining resources and exploring new planets, other people are trying to do the same, and let me tell you, after a ship has spent 3 years en route to a destination only to find out someone already planted a colony there, the occupants get a little mad. Fights break out between planetary systems and factions, the arms race for the best military tech ensues, and to keep that from stagnating, domestic and civilian projects must continue, providing the money and knowledge to improve those military projects which keep you from getting blown up, or at the very least make diplomats extra convincing. It sounds like a lot to handle, even just in a turn based format, and it is.
What makes it managable is a combination of two things. The first is the empire tree, a wonderful UI innovation allowing instnat control over all you see, or at least instant orders regarding all you’ve surveyed previously. Secondly, the AI sets itself apart from most AI in that it has its own goals. Most AI wants to beat the player, and that’s fine, but in a game with multiple factions that are at war, it always seems odd when they just attack you. The AI for SoaSE isn’t about beating you, it’s about winning for itself. That means forging alliances with players and AI, declaring war with players and AI, and generally doing what you would to secure your status in the universe. The AI doesn’t differentiate between other AI players and human players, which results in a rich, unpredictable experience that is far more human than it should be at points(and is getting moreso with every patch).
Graphically, it’s nothing to go showing off. Nothing is ugly, but things tend to look a bit light, hollow. It’s a generic enough sci-fi look, though stars and planets do look very nice. Then again, one could consider the UI a graphic element, and if that’s taken into consideration, the game excels. With the game’s most important elements placed neatly on the left hand side, it’s nice and easy to handle everything important in seconds. The implementation of mouse-focused zoom(aka, zooming in where your mouse is pointed, thank you Supreme Commander) is wonderful for quick navigation as well. Zoom out, point, zoom in, if you don’t feel like double clicking on the empire tree.
Still, all things considered, not bad at all. Space is big, and it’s empty. There’s a nice level of detail on the various ships and structures which make it clear what it is and give it a nice sciencey look without sacrificing performance. Explosions are big, ships are ships, and the sense of scale is good between the smaller and larger ships, though as is typical of space based games, it’s easy to forget how big natural formations are.
The sound, well, it’s forgettable. Nice music, nice sound effects, but nothing to make you forget you’re sitting in a chair in your basement. It functions but doesn’t excel.
Despite so many things that seem average, the game excels, both with tried and true methodology for 4x and RTS gaming, and innovation. The black market system is a great idea, allowing instant purchase from the seedy underworld of vital resources, or even sale of your own. Of course, you’ll not get a good deal there, but you can undercut your enemies to prevent their sales by sacrificing your own profit if you choose. Hiring pirates is an important part of the game, and in games with three or more parties, makes for a nice way to attack with anonymity by placing money in bounties. Every ten minutes or so, pirates will attack whoever has the most bounty, until it’s exhausted and they regroup. However, the bounty on other targets remains in the pool, unspent, and whichever is highest will become the next target. Bidding up the pirates has its advantages and disadvantages built right in, because getting in too many bidding wars truly does serve them more than anyone else.
The game loves to leave players short on resources, and things can tend to feel desperate quite often with very limited(at least, early on) fleet capacities, and only one capital ship(the behemoths of the game which can bombard planets, crush fleets at will, and gain levels, but are stunningly expensive in resources to field) at the start that of the game. Picking your battles, and which planets or asteroids are worth battling over, in particular, is very important. Get too aggressive, run out of resources which will be needed for defense at the worst time during a pirate raid. Stay in your hole too long, and pirates will soften you up until a five capital ships come to bombard your capital from orbit, and overwhelm you through a seemingly unlimited fleet thanks to their superior resources. As always with both RTS and 4x games, balance is a major factor, and knowing how to walk to line matters.
Of course, knowing when to run away counts too, such as when one’s 5 frigates(which are the grunt combat unit on the game, to give an idea of the scale) run into the pirate base planet, and get attacked by 50 cruisers and meet 20 defense platforms upon entering the gravitational shadow.
None of this is to discount diplomacy, of course, most useful with lots of factions in a map. The standard back-scratching can take a new route here, wherein factions can give others missions to prove their worth, often being the destruction of certain planets or fleets. Diplomacy involves both talking to your enemies, and blowing them up, and damn do I love it. But I love the whole thing.
Also of note, as it should be standard for every multiplayer RTS/4x game, saving. As in, you can save your MP games and resume them later, or even have AI fill in for dropped players. When a game takes 3-5 hours on average, for a small encounter, that’s an absolute priority. Sure we’ve all spent entire nights playing Total Annihilation, but we’ve all felt the pain when our opponent had to leave(or worse, we did!). It’s something that, on paper, seems small, but makes all the difference in application.
Sins of a Solar Empire gets 5 canes out of 5. Not everything is perfect, but it all comes together very well, and truly is more than the sum of its parts. This is the Stardock Standard in terms of quality, meaning you’re going to play for hours on end and absolutely love every minute of it.
