Karl Katzke

I bought Sins of a Solar Empire expecting it to be a Moo2 — but instead, I got a Starcraft. That’s not to say it’s a bad thing.

I have yet to play all three races, but the special abilities seem to be similar for all of them. From all sides, it’s fairly well balanced. The ships are inexpensive, durable, and yet dish out a lot of damage — especially late game. You want to get the ability to put fighter installations in at your earliest opportunity. You also really, really need to get as many crystal mines as you can at your first opportunity. Don’t think that sealing your borders will work. It’s quite possible to enter a system, cut across it, and jump out with a flotilla of smaller craft.

The research tree is *not* very deep. It’s innovative, just not deep. I realize that I’m more of a galciv2 audience as opposed to the quick smash-and-grab audience that SoaSE is made for, but I would like to see research trees in games that are too deep to actually finish out — you need to focus on doing one thing and get good at it, a’la Eve-online.

One of the neat features is that you can pay pirates to pay a visit to your enemy’s empire and attack one of their systems. They’ll bomb the planet that’s closest to their hangout. You’ll need a pretty beefy fleet to survive them, especially late game. Even on ‘easy’, the AI players are pretty sneaky about trying to outbid you.

Haven’t played online yet. I’ll append to this review after I do.

Summary: Good game if you like smash-and-bash strategy/tactics games. Not the top of the mark on beauty, depth, creativity, or any other place, but the whole is well-executed. If you liked Starcraft, you’ll play the hell out of SoaSE.