The last real-time strategy (RTS) game I played was the Supreme Commander (PC) beta, and that didn’t run so well on my weak hardware. The requirements were much too demanding and taxed my system much too heavily to play it at a decent framerate. I don’t play PC games often anymore; my latest ventures in PC gaming were returns to World of Warcraft (PC), Counter-Strike: Source (PC), and Minesweeper (PC). Nevertheless, I like reading about the game industry and always get informed of the latest PC titles. When Sins of a Solar Empire was released in February, I briefly looked at the reviews and was impressed by the stuff people were saying. Most of my RTS experience lies in StarCraft (PC), and here was a radically different game in the same genre. Naturally when I found it in my local Target, I bought it.

Sins of a Solar Empire sells itself as a “RT4X” game, said to be a hybrid of the RTS and the 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate) genres. The game takes place solely in space; the actual gameplay is on a two-dimensional plane while the ships and planets appear as three-dimensional models. The goal of each game is simple: build up your fleets, expand your empire, and crush your enemies. The gameplay itself is much more complicated. To the average casual gamer, Sins of a Solar Empire may appear overwhelming with its multiple resources, expansive tech trees, and a wide variety of spacecraft and buildings. In actuality, the game takes many elements of the 4X genre and simplifies them into easy commands and eliminates the need for micromanagement. Avid RTS fans will just adapt easier and likely enjoy it more, and maybe possibly turn off much of the automatic functioning of the game in favor of micromanagement. Regardless of the player’s knowledge and experience, Sins of a Solar Empire will cater to both audiences with its well-structured user interface.

There are three races: the TEC (Trader Emergency Coalition), the Vasari, and the Advent. Each race plays similarly but have qualities and strengths that make playing each race a vastly different experience. There are three main types of ships: frigates, cruisers, and capital ships. In all three categories of spacecraft, each unit specializes in a specific task, whether that be exploring, colonizing, or simply blowing up enemy ships. Unlike other games, Sins of a Solar Empire doesn’t have too many units, which helps in simplifying the fleets the player must manage. Although the ships of the three races may vary in weaknesses and advantages, there are basically six types of frigates, four types of cruisers, and five types of capital ships. Some of these ships, namely a few of the cruisers and the capital ships, can house fighter and bomber squadrons that deal additional damage.

Buildings are split into two categories: logistics and tactical. Logistics buildings are focused on the expansion and growth of the player’s empire. Military and civilian laboratories fulfill requirements for research upgrades, and frigate and capital ship factories manufacture ships. Crystal and metal extractors gather their respective resources, and refineries increase the productivity of these extractors. Trade ports act as additional sources of credit, the primary resource, income, and the player’s trade port income increases based on the longest chain of adjacent planets with trade ports. Placement of these buildings can play an essential part in strategy because enemies often first attack specific targets. The tactical buildings narrows down to planetary defense and fleet repair platforms, including turrets and repair bays.

Games can be played on randomly generated maps, included scenarios, and custom-made maps. Sins of a Solar Empire lacks a single-player campaign, a problem that will be rectified in the upcoming expansion pack, but tries to replace it with scenarios. Although the scenarios give a short description of the map, the goal of each map is to dominate all of the enemy empires. Each game begins with each player on one planet. Only planets, asteroids, and other space phenomena directly linked to your planet will be visible, and the player must expand and locate enemy positions. Transportation between planets take some time because ships need to initiate a phase jump, so movement of ships are not immediate. The slow speed may turn off many players; although Sins of a Solar Empire offer different game speeds, the game is not all that quick. Especially on larger maps in which the number of planets and star systems could reach one hundred, the slow pace stretches games up to several hours, possibly even longer.

There are different aspects to Sins of a Solar Empire as well, and those involve diplomacy and economy and development. The diplomacy, when compared to that of other 4X games, is much more simplified; players can request ceasefires, create alliances, form trade alliances, and share planetary and ship vision. Relations with other empires are improved or worsened through missions given to the player involving demands for resources or requests to destroy other ships and structures. It’s a tad too simple, but there is another curveball thrown into the fray: pirates. Empires can place bounties on each other in 250 credit increments, and pirates will attack the empire with the highest bounty. These attacks take place in timed increments, so players exactly know the amount of time before the pirate raids are launched; it somewhat brings the feel of a simplified eBay auction. The pirates are not very helpful though, but they can serve as worthy fodder to level up capital ships. Adding to the economic play is the black market. Players can buy and sell crystal and metal; each resource has its own individual market, and prices are affected by player actions; e.g. a lot of metal purchases will cause metal prices to skyrocket. It’s a nice, dynamic element and proves itself as highly important because resource management is crucial to the player’s success.

To put it bluntly, the artificial intelligence of Sins of a Solar Empire is irritating and cumbersome. The “Hard” and “Unfair” difficulty settings are not necessarily challenging but meticulous and annoying. Once nearing defeat, the enemy starts constantly moving its remaining fleets elsewhere, and the player is forced to chase after them as they hassle one of his or her fringe colonies or weakly-defended planets. The AI does take on a personality though, and it’s determined in the game options. The gameplay changes slightly but I did not feel the personality makes much of a difference.

Sins of a Solar Empire has an amazing user interface that makes playing accessible and feasible. My lack of familiarity with recent RTS titles may prove this incorrect, but Sins of a Solar Empire introduces a great sidebar tool. It’ll show each fleet created and each planet, and each of their ships or tactical buildings. This allows for quick access and movement of the player’s ships. Since the map sizes can be ridiculously large with multiple star systems and hundreds of planets, Ironclad Games (the developer) also ripped borrowed the zoom-in/zoom-out feature from Supreme Commander. A simple mouse scroll upwards will zoom-in on the planet, building, or ship the mouse cursor is focused on, and a mouse scroll downwards will scale out, eventually revealing the entire accessible galaxy to the player. When viewing multiple planets, each planet will have tabs around it to easily take control of ships or buildings near the planet, so the player does not have to zoom-in and zoom-out constantly to take control. Lastly, pop-up tabs that neatly detail the fleet or planet or individual ship targeted with the mouse cursor. It makes management and organization easy and intuitive.

The online multiplayer is solid and offers the same functionality as offline multiplayer. Both provide text chat and customizable maps and game options, and the former has a decent lobby and friend system that does an adequate job. One big flaw, which is not directly the game’s fault, is the length of the games online. While there is a save/load feature for stranger and friend matches, it’s problematic for games with random opponents. It is understandable for friends to save and play later, but it does not work so well for strangers; how enticed are you to finish a match later with someone you do not know? Since games can house up to ten players, a match can last for longer than ten hours but it is doubtful the majority will stick for more than a couple of hours.

Sins of a Solar Empire looks and sounds great but the graphics are nothing amazing. Perhaps what is most remarkable is the game’s smooth performance on a variety of machines. Low performance machines are able to run Sins of a Solar Empire well, and the game is quite pretty on the top machines too. Shifting from the detailed, single planet views (in which the other planets are still viewable at angles) to the star system views are seamless and smooth without loss of framerate or any hitches. If desiring to view an epic battle between fleets, simply zoom in to watch lasers and missiles fly across space and striking ships to create pretty explosions and debris. However, the player will rarely appreciate these visuals and effects because much of the larger games are played at a multi-planet view. In the biggest games, the chaos and incredible amount of empire management will prevent the players from taking the time to relax and watch a battle unfold. Sound in the game fits perfectly for the game; the score suits the atmosphere of massive empires clashing in epic war. Effects scale well, depending on the player’s zoom level. The voice acting is decent but not noteworthy.

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Verdict: A-

Not clinging to the traditional guidelines of the RTS and 4X genres, Sins of a Solar Empire effectively combines elements of both, providing a slow yet satisfying experience. RTS fans looking for heavy micromanagement and 4X fans searching for ridiculously deep levels of intricate economic and diplomatic management will be disappointed. Sins of a Solar Empire does simplify components of the genres, but does so to be accessible as possible. In the end, Sins of a Solar Empire is still complex and intimidating. The learning curve is high and casual gamers will be immediately turned off, but the reward is great if they last through initial play times. It’s a blast to see your fleets decimating the remnants of the enemy fleet or to capture a major chokepoint and disrupt the enemy momentum. You like strategy games? Get Sins of a Solar Empire.

This post is tagged games, pc, sins of a solar empire