Sins of a Solar Empire

This is the first game to be released by the Ironclad developer, which is comprised of a game designer’s expertise which varies from Barking dog studios and Rockstar games; for those who don’t know, Barking dog studios developed Homeworld and Homeworld: cataclysm amongst other popular titles.

Sins of a solar empire is a sci-fi strategy game, for the uninitiated can be compared to Civilisation 3 with a exotic mix of War craft 3 unit system. So you will have massive games that will last up to 8 hours per game from civ series (no turn basic combat included) and then you will have main "hero" type units that will level up after each combat encounter similar to the warcraft series.

Although this is a good idea in theory to attempt to satisfy 2 audiences of very popular games, this game will take you a long time to get into. The fact that there is no single player storyline/missions will leave many players feeling disappointed and unconvinced by the game. To being players must a skirmish game against a computer and them spend many hours playing one game at a time. There are 3 races in SOASE which apart from the unit styling and colour hold many similarities. However each race will play very distinctly from each other, this is because there is a "talent tree" of sorts where you can buy with credits or resources; either general or specific upgrades for your civilisation, which range from Combat, Civilisation, army size, Hero ship allocation and Artifacts.

The objective of the game whatever path you choose is to take over the entire Solar system or Systems planets which would include defeating enemy players as all planets have a tendency to be captured pretty early on. Depending on how many other players or computer players you include and the map size this will greatly vary and for those who are interested in seriously long game play then this will appeal to you greatly. You need to build up your fleet and make hero ships and start expanding taking over planets bit by bit. There are also various space buildings that you can have orbiting your planet which hold bonuses such as influencing other nearby planets, construction of capital and normal ships, stationary guns torrents, trade ports and many more. The set pieces repeat themselves for each race but as mentioned before it is the talent tree that really separates them and can make the distinctive difference between them.

A unique feature this game has is a computer player style of playing, so basically you can specify what kind of computer player you want it to be, which range from defensive, fast builders, fast attackers, researchers and so on, this can help prepare you for all times of different gamplay habits you could encounter when you play online which can be useful and perfecting and increasing your skills. The difficulty of this game is worth mentioning, as computer players difficulty is very noticeable when you jump from Easy to normal. Easy will be a walk in the park, however normal was much more difficult, so be prepared for a surprise if you are not used to this style of game.

The ship units work similarly to the idea of Rock, paper scissors, like most games do nowadays. Each unit will be supremely powerful over one of your enemy’s ones and one of theirs will be able to destroy one of your ships pretty effectible. So it is wise to keep an even amount of ships of each class ready at all times to deal with enemy attacks. One feature the game has is it will list your entire fleet on the left of your screen, grouped around which planetary atmosphere they are in., which will also display hostile units. However this can be somewhat of a annoyance if your playing a huge game and you are in control of many units; to say the least your micro-management abilities will l be tested to bleeding point. The graphics are quite appealing and will be enjoyed on many levels as you watch your huge fleet turn up and squash huge planetary dense and fleets, can be very satisfying, and having to defend your planets with the tooth and nail will also provide some very action-packed times.

You cannot travel to whatever planet you choose; you have to capture planets one by one, and cannot jump to the enemy’s home-planet, which is another feature to help increase gameplay. To also increase replayabilty, developers have included achievements into the game, which players can work to do, and provide some extension in the gameplay. However you gain nothing from them, so to a certain extent they do feel rather meaningless, and some are so easy to achieve it begs the question as to why they were even included.

The multiplayer part of the game allows local and internet games, and can allow up to 10 players per game and will take either a lot longer than a game against the computer, or a lot quicker depending on skill levels. The developers have included the ability to "save online game" and so you can play with your friends on one weekend then continue the game the next one, although a novel idea but I doubt in practice it will be that useful as people will want to start fresh.

To sum up this game to those who are not sure whether to get this game or not, would be to ask yourself whether you enjoyed the long drawn out experience that was the Civilisations series, if so then you will find this to be the perfect follow-up. However if you are a Warcraft 3 diehard fan and are still looking for a game to replace it on your new system, then I suggest you keep looking this game is not for you and will bore you to tears long before you find it enjoyable.

System requirements:

Minimum Requirements:
• Windows XP SP2 / Windows Vista
• 1.8 GHz Single-Core Processor
• 512 MB RAM (1 GB for Windows Vista)
• 128 MB DirectX 9 3D Video Card (Radeon 9600 / GeForce FX 6600 and above)
• DirectX 9.0c Compatible Sound Card
• DVD-ROM Drive
• 3 GB Hard Drive Space
• Keyboard and Mouse
• DirectX 9.0c

Recommended Requirements:
• 2.2 GHz Dual- or Quad-Core Processor
• 1 GB RAM (2 GB for Windows Vista)
• 256 MB DirectX 9 3D Video Card (Radeon X1600 / GeForce 7600 and above)