Review: Sins of a Solar Empire Brings Fresh Perspective to Space Strategy

For fans of space strategy games, recent releases have proved disappointing, riddled with buggy code and mindless repetition. Sins of a Solar Empire, released February 04, 2008, represents a welcome, although imperfect, departure from that trend and brings its own set of innovations that could well reshape some of the standards of the genre.

Overview & Gamplay:
Make no mistake... Sins of a Solar Empire is a macro-level space strategy game that focuses on military and/or economic domination. The macro-level emphasis means that you will not get to design your own ships with highly customized configurations of weapons nor will you be able to micro-manage tax rates or the lives of your minions. The absence of political domination features means that diplomacy and trade agreements are extremely simplistic in nature and are centered around fulfilling 'missions' offered by other civilizations.

If there was poor AI to handle all the finer nuances of governing an empire, this might make for a serious distraction from the game. Happily, the benefits of streamlined user interaction leads to a game that is amazingly stable (as long as your drivers are up-to-date) and a minimal learning curve where it is quite possible to figure out most of the features and intricacies within an hour of starting a game for any veteran of strategy games. Performing actions in Sins is relatively straight-forward. Researching tech trees is breeze and a mouse-over information box fills the player in on the costs and benefits of any particular research project. Likewise, developing planets involves just a couple clicks of the mouse. Even better, planets and planetary defense systems are quite capable of running themselves once they get going.

Sins is also unique in the sense that the entire game is played in real-time, literally everything, not just the battles. If you spend too much time focusing on any one particular thing, you will pay for it. Send an invasion fleet out to a distant star and you'll only have yourself to blame when your enemies invade all of your core worlds and it takes your fleet ten minutes to return. Skimp on planetary defenses now and suffer the rude awakening that you won't be able to construct a bunch of them in 'one turn.' Sins forces players to recognize that long-term benefits and require long-time commitment and sacrificing short-term savings for long-term prosperity..

The other innovative feature of Sins is the existence of "pirate" fleets. These marauding troublemakers will gladly harass any civilization for a monetary bounty. The higher the bounty, the more the pirates will try to destroy. Pirates help keep the playing field level for both human and computer players and can serve as a defensive or 'softening' strategy for players with lots of economic capital but little in the way of a navy.

Graphics:
With a higher-end graphics card, Sins is capable of churning out some positively beautiful effects when ships explode. A 360-degree, three-dimensional cinematic mode lets the players witness (and still control) the full glory of a battlefield without annoying information icons. For those of us who want to capture our exploits for posterity, there are in-game features that allow for manual or automated screenshots and video sequences. The user interface for Sins is easily understood and keeps a player from having to dig too deep to find options.

Unfortunately, most objects aren't rendered in very great detail and the ships themselves, including capital ships, are somewhat crudely rendered, which detracts from the excitement of a big epic space battle.

Audio:
The background music is typical of space strategy games and isn't unpleasant on the ear. Sound effects in battle are rather limited and go in tandem with the basic-looking ugly ships. The worst aspect of in-game audio is the constant repetitive reminders about the latest events (planet under attack, allied capital ship destroyed, etc.); ideally they serve to warn the player when immediate action is required but these reminders happen so often that it becomes too easy just to tune them out.

Fun & Longevity:
The AI is as smart as you'd like it to be and generally refrains from irrationality and blatantly stupid errors. Better yet, depending on the difficulty setting, it is able to take advantage of the player's stupid errors and oversight. One is rarely left wondering, at least with hindsight, why the computer decided on a certain course of action and it makes for a much more engaging gameplay experience.

Sins comes with a large number of prefabricated scenarios set in galaxies of varying sizes (although the largest galaxies are nowhere near the level of Space Empires V or Master of Orion III). While the scenarios start to get repetitive, the high degree of mod-ability in Sins means that enthusiasts can create or download all new scenarios with all kinds of parameters. There's also a lively online multiplayer mode for those who want to face human opposition.

For all of its innovation and playability, there's just enough lacking in this game that there is no 'inner spark' that hooks you in and doesn't let you quit. Nevertheless, while Sins of a Solar Empire will lose its initial thrill after a few quality hours of gameplay, you'll probably find that you'll come back to it when you've got some free time on your hands.

Grades (A+ through F):
Graphics & Audio: C+
Gamplay: A-
Creativity: A
Fun: A-

OVERALL: B+