Sins of a Solar Empire

Sins of a Solar Empire is real time (space) strategy game recently released by Stardock, who are most (deservedly) famous for being the makers of Galactic Civilizations 1&2, which almost single handedly revived the 4X space genre after the failure of MOO3.

As such, it is tempting to think of Sins as an RTS GalCiv2, but, for good or for ill, nothing could be further from the truth. (this is partly because the game was *published by Stardock, not developed by them)

The game promises deep strategy and dramatic fleet battles in a fast paced real time environment, and, to a acceptable extent, it delivers on these promises. Nonetheless, it suffers from a sense of disappointment or let down if you enter into its experience expecting it to be something other than what it is. If the game suffers, it is because it fits into a somewhat unwieldy space between GalCiv 2, which has a grander sense of strategy and history, and Homeworld, which is more tactically sophisticated.

In fact, the closest analogue to Sins, actually, are other RTS games, and it shares, to a great extent, their benefits and their faults. Fundamentally, Sins is Warcraft 3, in space.

The game starts you in a planet that serves as a source of economic strength and an anchor around which to build the foundations for the fleet you will build to expand. That fleet will consist of ships with pre-defined stats, weapons, and roles, and the three factions will each have a ship that fulfills each of those roles. The differences come in the atmospherics, in how the ships look and feel, and in how they achieve the role they are meant to serve. On the one hand, this allows for tactics which are intuitive and thus easy to learn, but a fan of the 4X genre may be disappointed at the lack of customization options for your fleet.

Furthermore, like many other RTS games, the "S" is somewhat of a misnomer, it would be more appropriately called "Real Time Tactics" The economic model, the research, and the structures you can build to support your fleet, expand the reach of your empire, and improve your economy are both varied, powerful, and deep for an RTS, but will come off as a bit shallow to a turn based strategy fan. Culture, trade, and research, are primarily ways to assist your fleet in space, rather than ends in and of themselves, or fully fleshed out means of victory (culture can cause an enemy player to lose planets, but this is difficult to do, and takes an inordinate amount of time). As such, the only victory condition is that all your enemies no longer be standing, and by far the most expeditious means to achieve this end is to launch your thousand ships and proceed to the metaphorical sacking of Troy, sans angering the gods.

The biggest disappointment for someone expecting a real time GalCiv2, however, would have to be the lack of a campaign for the three factions, as well as a distinct lack of character or story to the game. The back story for the entire universe as published consists entirely of about about four short paragraphs, which is unfortunate especially because the races are built well enough to *be* interesting and make the player *want* to know more about them. Along the same lines, if you enjoyed the quirky sense of humor present in GalCiv2, do not expect it here. The tone is more definitively more serious and "space operatic."

Once you have built that fleet, you will send it off into glorious battle. The game presents glossy images of gloriously stylized ships firing missles in space, and while it would be inaccurate in the extreme to call this a lie, it is somewhat misleading. You can zoom in and watch your ships trading fire with the enemy, and it is, in fact, very pretty. It is however, entirely useless. Most of the time, you will be zoomed out so that all your ships are (easy to read) icons. It would be much like playing Homeworld using nothing but a prettier tactical map mode. Furthermore, as compared to Homeworld, the battles are more sterile. There is very little ship movement and no changing formations, and the speed of the ships and their weapons versus the hitpoints of everything slow the pace of battles down considerably. The field of play for any individual battle, furthermore, tends to be somewhat constrained. A single star system easily becoems crowded with two sizeable fleets in Sins. Capital ships are simialr to the hero units of Warcraft 3, with special abilities that can be selected as they "level up" by fighting enemies. You will find yourself, in Sins much as its brethren, focusing all your fleet's fire on a single ship at a time and primarily using your ships special abilities (which are varied and interesting) in an intelligent way.

All that criticism aside, it is a fundamentally very good game. The AI is acceptably intelligent and provides a decent to good challenge. The game looks very good and yet is rather forgiving of hardware. I am using a 4890 1gb OC, 4 gb's of Patriot Viper ram and an Intel Q9550, although I well surpass the requrements to play this game at max it all you need to max it out is a decent dual core system with at least a 8600 gt/7800 series as this game is more cpu intensive than gpu intensive. The research trees (each faction has a semi-unique tree) are interesting and well balanced, as are the individual units and the three factions. The interface is fairly elegant and easy to use. The economics, while simple, *benefit* from that simplicity and work well. And the battles and process of expanding one's empire, which is the core of the game, is interesting and has minor strategic elements. The game is slightly slower paced than most others within the RTS genre, something which fans of strategy games should find preferable. Lastly, the game has that signature 4X "just a bit more" quality to it, the desire to go on playing to get one more planet, research a few more techs, build a few more ships, is powerful, and no game that achieves this can be called anything but good.

Bottom Line: A good Space RTS with mild to moderate strategic elements that is fun and addictive, so long as you keep in mind what it is and what it is not.