GameSpy
GameSpy "Out of the Box" Preliminary Review


Just noticed this one on GameSpy, certainly a positive start.

A score of 8 is pretty good. As a number of recent articles have said, most game reviews are over-inflated anyway. 8 tends to mean a very good game that's worth one's time, especially if one is a fan of the genre. I think that's appropriate.

Here's my first impressions as a person who a) likes the idea of strategy games but can't play them very well, and thinks we need more companies who care like Stardock does:

Sins of a Solar Empire is quite daunting. I sort of expected this, owning GalCiv and GalCiv2 (plus all expansions), but it was still crazy-tough. I think a campaign would've helped. The great thing about a campaign in games such as Starcraft and Dawn of War is that they introduce you to the bits and pieces little-by-little. Sins sort of does this with the tutorial, but it isn't as much fun as if I had a full on actual goal to complete. And yes, I understand why Sins doesn't have one (because they wanted to focus on having good, and a lot, of skirmish maps). But I can't help but think this is a mistake. RTS games seem to benefit from campaigns.

I found the interface a bit iffy. It seems that that the scrolling and moving the camera around was very touchy, even if I turned things like zoom sensitivity down. I'll have to muck more with it to see if I can find a sweet spot. Control is key - if I don't feel like I can focus in and control my troops efficiently, then I'm going to be frustrated.

I did have to hack the settings file to get my desired resolution (1280x960). In game it only gave me the option of 1280x1024 (absolutely no other options).

Thank The Maker there's multiplayer and it's co-op. I will say to the end of time how much of a mistake it is that GalCiv2 isn't. I know Brad's reasons why it's not, but I like to play games with friends, so I love co-op multiplayer.

I have to play a lot more, but I expect that I will agree with an 8 score. This looks like it's a game made for hardcore strategy types. If one isn't, then it's going to be tough to get into the game and overlook some of the issues it has (like Stardock's other games, it's just missing that extra bit of polish that a AAA publisher can afford to spend time on). It will be hard to get non-strategy gamers to like this game. All of this won't, and shouldn't, matter to the faithful.

But I applaud Ironclad for a) making a game that seems to successfully blend the sophistication of a TBS game with the faster pace of an RTS game and 2) having the guts to choose a publisher that cares for its customers. I hope both see lots of success from this title.

-HM

Good review, I just disagree with the "score" is all. Also, when you say things like: "A game on a small galaxy with only two players can potentially go on for hours."

It can be misleading for people who havent bought the game. Instead of Galaxy, it's better to just say map. Galaxy makes me think of billions of stars, ala: Galaxy. Thus, people may think that a map is a rotating Galaxy like Mass Effect or Empire At War.

A lot of people have been using the terms Universe and Galaxy when referring to the maps in this game, when the maps are exponentially smaller than those two terms. Story-wise, yes, it follows a power struggle within a Galaxy.

Great review. But I'm one that thinks this game deserves a 9.0 or higher. And I am extremely harsh on games. This is a rare occasion where we have the privilege to own a product with such polish, it makes you appreciate being a gamer once again. It also makes me feel as though the developers actually "care" about thier customers, in a time when that Hack company EA is ruining the business. These are some of the reasons I would have given it a 9.5, but that's just me.

IMO, COD4 and Sins are officially the best products to be released as of late.

I'm guessing solar system or star cluster is a better term, since you usually only deal with a handful of star systems at most. It can support much larger numbers, but most games played won't use those numbers. Its the number of planets and colonizable asteroids that determine the size really not the number of stars present.

1) They complain that the game is too slow with ship speeds. If you setup your game with a Fast setting, ship speeds are greatly increased so long as they're not in combat.

2) They complained that Long Range Jump doesn't improve phase jump speed.  It's not supposed to.  All it allows you to do is jump between stars on multi-star maps.

3) They complained that fleets can avoid planetary defense turrets and jump to planets deeper in your empire.  That's intentional because in the beta players were forced to jump right on top of defenses and were slaughtered. It wasn't fun.  Phase Jump Inhibitors are designed to slow the advance of enemy fleets.

4) They complained there's no sabotage or espionage. That's not true.  Scouts are good tools for espionage, and each race has its own special techs to assist with this.  As for sabotage, backstabbing an ally using the pirates is an example. Plus the TEC has a Foreign Sabotage tech as part of their advanced culture effects, plus their later Insurgeance ability.

@lordkosc - Are you going to update the OP with all the links and what not?

yeah, but there is only 1 review...... the rest are pre-reviews , i was going to focus on actual reviews with scores... do you guys just want me to pop up everything that has come out since its release?

Good plan to only update with actual reviews and not pre-reviews. Keeps that first post as clean as possible.

That would be a good think methinks.

what? just the scored reviews? or all the reviews?

Hey All!

I'll add this first: http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/sins-of-a-solar-empire/849840p1.html
It's not the official review mind you, but an "out of the box" segment denoting a "promising" ranking.

Anyway, I figured that there is a day or two before we got more reviews on this game and many people want them now, so I'll fill in my experiences with the *cough*seven*cough* hours I got to spend on SOASE yesterday.

First of all, installation and activation went completely smooth. I had no issues what so ever setting up the game and getting it to run. One thing I cant seem to find is the user.setting file. I wanted to see about modifying some of my options, but there is no ironclad folder in the apps folder. I even did a windows search and that file doesnt seem to exist on this machine, which leaves me wondering where it might be. But that is my own experience and others, I'm sure, have found it with ease.

Next, I move into the interface. The startup menu is clean and smooth. I was able to crank my graphics settings to max without so much as a hiccup on my HP notebook. Buttons responded immediately as they should and menus popped up instantly as well. I did find the tutorials mildly helpful when going through the basics, but the majority of the UI learning came from actually rolling over a button and systematically seeing what everything does. Because the number of buttons on the UI are "few" in comparison to other RTS's and 4X games, this didnt really take that long. (On a side note, I was quite taken aback when I click on the scuttle button and my ship blew up... just so happened it was a migrator too!). Overall the UI is clean and fairly easy to use, though the info cards and empire tree do take some getting used to and some familiarizing to get the hang of. I have to say it is one of the better UI's I've used in an RTS setting.

From there, I will go to controls. I really like these controls. You can zoom out as far as you like and zoom in to a specific unit/planet/etc easily. I especially like that if you mouse over a unit and zoom in, your camera will follow that unit. This is especially fun when you are waiting for a ship to go from a to b or just waiting for some funds. You can lock on the back of a ship and watch it enter hyperspace without actually having to select the ship. The other nice thing about the zoom is that, by default, it will zoom to your mouse cursor location. So wherever your mouse is on the map, the camera will zoom there. I found this to take some practice because most other RTS's are nearly that slick to control. Further with the camera zoom, there was NO drop in FPS for me. It's just so smooth. I do wish I could switch the operation of RMB and MMB in terms of camera controls. (I'm thinking there is a user.setting setting that would allow that IF I could find it). Ships are fairly simple to control and move. The create fleet option is simply wonderful. I especially like that ALL of your fleet/planet/etc controls are within 2 menus, tops. Click on build logistics and then the building and place it. There is no messing around with finding a construction ship just to build one thing and find another to build another. Clicking the planet and then the operations you want within 2 menus and the ships automatically go there is just wonderful. Zooming out iconizes things for you so you can see what ships, fleets, structures, enemies, etc are in a particular system (or rather, how many). This is about as streamlined as I can think to make something this epoch in scale.

Ok, moving on... Combat. And ships in general. It is somewhat "slow". I wish the frigates (and fleets in general) would have some movement like the fighters. The fighters are fantastic, flying around and zipping here and there (though they are tough to track and hard to see when zoomed out). It is, however, simply awesome to see a truly epoch battle. Like when both sides are filled to the brim with ships and it becomes one big blood bath. It's hardly noticiable at that point that the frigates arent moving much. It does take some time to kill a single ship, but this allows for tactics. You dont simply go in and just fire until the other ship(s) is dead. You go in and move your ships around so that they get the best position for killing the target ship while staying out of the main blast. This is a depth of strategy I have not seen much in the RTS world. It takes those capital ships a fair amount of time to turn and use their primary weapons, so if you can sneak some fast moving frigates behind them... well, you know. Anyway, like any RTS, it does take some getting used to splitting your attention between multiple target areas, but what fun would an RTS be if it were simply?

I'll only touch briefly on the economy and politics as I'm running long and I actually want people to read this. The economics are fair. I rarely have crystals in the beginning and rarely have metals in the end so it all balances out. The black market is a nice feature to help balance that out because I almost always have more credits then I know what to do with. The politics screen (diplomacy and such) are very well implemented for an RTS. I did find that with 6 AI players, it got a little overwhelming to keep on friendly terms with them all. I eventually had to cut some of them off which resulted in many battles over territories. To combat that, I would raise the bounties on them and let the pirates do my dirty work The pirates are brutal sometimes. I didnt have much trouble overall with them, but when left unchecked and a bounty of 10k, it can get a little intense. The AI does give you a run for your money. It seemed pretty logical from my first impressions with it, but only time will tell.

Overall, whew made it... This is a fantastic epoch RTS game. The engine is fantastic to say the least and the controls are decent. The graphics are nice, nothing earth shattering, but far from terrible. The pace of the game can be slow if you let it. I, personally, didnt take much time with the sound or multiplayer so I wont include that in the review. I can definitely see myself playing this game for years to come and at the bestbuy price tag, I cant complain. Overall I give it a 9.5.

Controls: 9.5
Graphics: 8.0
Engine: 10.0
AI: 8.5
Value: 10.0
Longevity: 10.0
Strategy: 10.0
Uniqueness: 10.0

Overall: 9.5

I would give it another 10 just for how it is distributed. I mean, no CD/DVD in drive needed is always a plus for me, laptop and all. Kudos to stardock and ironclad! Should get this game just to support companies like them who actually care about the quality of their product and the satisfaction of their customers.

For a non genre gamer I would put it in the 8.3-8.5 range, meaning they should at least try it because it is a decent game. For a non gamer, this game might be daunting with all the potential bells and whistles, but they should at least know what its about.

SoaSE props in Penny-Arcade:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2008/02/06



For those who don't read PA and might not necessarly understand the author's tone, the above is high praise. Very high praise indeed....

Here is my initial impression with the game (only played for 2 hours):

Right off the bat, ran the game after install and was surprised to see no single player campaign. OK, so skirmish is what I will stick with then. Loaded up a small map (1v1 game) to get a handle on the gameplay.

One of my expectations of the game was combat similar to Homeworld and Homeworld 2. I know, its not really fair, but alas, Homeworld as THE first RTS game to get space combat right. I am disappointed to find that SoaSE is missing 3 dimensions of movement.

The graphics are very good and looking at the tech tree just one faction has room for 2500 ship points. Wow is all I can say. That makes for some huge armadas and equally large battles.

Three factions usually means some sort of repetitiveness (a la Supreme Commander) but the amount of effort put into balancing is sound. So far, the factions are as balanced as the three found in Starcraft.

I definitely need to spend more time playing the game and can't wait to engage in some larger games online.

Shacknews review: WWW Link
Shacknews just straight up reviews the game and doesn't give a score.

Use the ' key to move in the Z-axis.

Updated ShackNews to the list.

I have played around with two games so far.

Game 1, got my arse handed to me by the pirates.....argh.

Game 2 tried my hand at custome map making. Nice tools! Just got figure out what way to slide those sliders 'cause I set the map with some LONG lanes. 1 v 1 v 1 on what I guess is medium map (27 planets, 1 star).

I am not going into the back and forth in the game but just want to say that I can see me playing this a long time. I personally prefer games with a "sandbox" because get to make my own game so to speak.

Thanks to both Ironclad and Stardock for an excellent game.

Wow.

Wow.

Beyond a certain zoom range I don`t see attack effects (i.e. beams, missiles, etc,) and I think I should - I am quite close to the ships at the zoom level I am thinking of - but that is my only real complaint at this point.

Hats of to the designers for some of the coolest looking starship designs I have ever seen, particularly for the Vasari. Wow. I need to read through that hard-copy manual though... I suspect much escapes me about the finer points of play right now. A good constant reminder of the Empire display, what the icons and elements are, would benefit me too.

Just a single star system two-player game was Wow... this is going to be one enduring game. I honestly can`t wait for expansion as per the developer comments. More! More! Wow.


One cautionary thought however - don`t get caught up in the neverending integrity-chipping multiplayer balance trap, where every ability or asset is ultimately homogenized into unexciting proportions. Generally, stick to the core of your original design.

seems that lots of people arent noticing the effect that gravity has on thier ships' speeds either. ships move slower when moving away from planets and faster when moving torards planets.

I got it today and and I must say, Sins is by FAR the best space rts game I have ever gotten my irish mitts on. The gameplay is phenomenal, the challenge exciting, and the different techs are wonderful additions. I've literally played every single space rts out there, sims included, and Sins is gonna be my new addiction. Wow. I just spent 2.5 hours learning and trying, and getting whooped on, but what fun. The ONLY downside to this game is the lack of a single player scenario, which kinda blows, but even the small maps have plenty to do, i haven't even touched the medium or large ones yet, i can't even begin to wonder how much time suckage that is gonna be. This game def deserves a solid 9.0, it would rank a 10 in my book, but the lack of a single player scenario would def have been the highlight of this game. oh well...there are always expansions!

i hate it when reviewers categorize a "steep learning curve" as a negative aspect of a game.

ya as if everyone would only like to play games which can even be played by a 5 year old.
Its especially funny cause reviewers always complain about a lack of deepth and innovative ideas and then they make such comments when they get those.

GameStats: 8.8

http://www.gamestats.com/objects/775/775249/

That's just aggregated press scores like gamerankings or metacritic, but combined with user votes (not a great idea).

Try manually increasing the particle fx count in your user.setting file.

XP: C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Setting\

Vista: C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Setting\

Open user.setting using Notepad (don't use Wordpad or Word) and modify MaxParticleCount 6000  to something higher (try 8000).