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IN SPACE NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU END YOUR TURN...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 118 / 124
Date: February 06, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This is an EXCELLENT game that takes the galaxy civilization games a clear step further. Open-ended like a new science-fiction world and played as a seat-of-your-pants RTS game, this is a very intelligent hybrid that I greatly enjoyed.

In effect, SINS is a successful blend of the wonderful GALACTIC CIVILIZATIONS and HOMEWORLD series, with a sprinkling of TOTAL WAR for good measure. This is NOT a turn-based civilization game, so expect a much faster pace. What this means is that while it maintains the characteristics of classic turn-based civilization games (exploration, expansion, exploitation and extermination), by relieving from the micromanagement tedium, it allows for an intense RealTime Strategy experience. Now, this probably may not appeal to turn-based purists, but I would advise an open mind: this is a good game.

This concept-blending is new, so expect a slow learning curve - it took me a number of ...false-starts to get the hang of it: after all, it plays like an RTS and (although simplified) it still has enough of turn-based features that need to be taken care of. The interface is simplified and informative at the same time, with info trees sliding out only when needed.

There are three different factions to choose from (financiers, technologists and psitecs) - yet, their differences focus mainly on research tree-branching and ship designs. What I did not like was that the ships of all three factions are effectively the same and their differences are only skin-deep. What I would have liked to find (and was disappointed to the point of withholding the 5th star for fun) was ship design and building! Remember how much fun was to design our own spaceships (from freighters to battleships) in GALACTIC CIVILIZATIONS II? Well, no such luck here. Let's hope they keep it in mind when the patch gets prepared.

Quick and constant exploration is not only encouraged by a necessity if one wants to survive - let alone win. Spaceships built within a solar system cannot travel beyond it, unless using "wormhole"-like singularities. This adds to realism but can stretch your finances to their breaking point - since only locally built ships can be used. Moreover, it makes really hard to locate the strategic points to either built defenses or focus an attack. The AI will constantly be bypassing your planning like the Maginot line - and leave you with such a French feeling...

The graphics (of all of backgrounds, planets and units) are very nicely done. I really liked the multiple afterburners tracing through space as a spaceship squadron was dopplering past my screen...And less-than-cutting-edge PC owners rejoice: even 4-5 years old systems can handle this game like a breeze!
What I truly appreciated was the realistic scale of things. Galaxies are much larger than star systems, which in turn are much larger than planets, which in turn are much larger than space stations...than spaceships and so on. How is this achieved? Excellent zooming!
SUPREME COMMANDER was the first game to introduce strategic zoom; however, SINS implements it much better and shows how it should had been done: from a galaxy to a single planet and to a single spaceship, zooming in or out firmly maintains the effectiveness of battle controls by grouping and simplifying the info-tiles as one zooms out. In SupCom, we had to chose between either discerning the units or moving ...info-tiles around the battlefield - not a bad first attempt, mind you. In SINS, one almost never looses perspective: ongoing battles, critical hotspots, or colony revolts are all easily identifiable in real-time.

On another note, SINS OF A SOLAR EMPIRE is a STARDOCK release which, yes, means their specialized installation utility. Nevertheless, this game hides no DRM or other intrusive security idiocy. Since trust and respect between a game publisher and its customers is a two-way street (and STARDOCK was willing to prove its friendship first), SINS deserves our support.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Early Strategy GOTY contender

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 17 / 19
Date: February 13, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Before I get into the meat of this review, let me start by telling everyone what 'Sins' is and isn't... This game is a space-based 4x-type (eXplore-eXpand-eXploit-eXterminate) realtime strategy game. This game is not Master of Orion, Homeworld or Medieval: Total War (in space)...

So with that said, I'll continue...

Sins of a Solar Empire, or simply 'Sins', is a new strategy offering by developer Ironclad Games utilizing their propriety 'Iron' engine and published by our friends over at Stardock. Stardock has become famous the world over for their excellent gaming and productivity software, developing and releasing suck products as Galactic Civilizations 1 and 2, Windowblinds and Object Desktop. Stardock has become quite admired by many in the gaming community (including myself) for their stance on the use of DRM software. For this reason alone, a lot of gamers have given their products a try and the result has been a truly great developer-gamer relationship.

Whereas the Galactic Civilizations franchise effectively 'rebooted' the turn-based 4X experience that was left dying on the vine after the Master of Orion 3 fiasco, Ironclad clearly set out to go a step further create an RTS game that had all the excitement of realtime play with all the depth and tactics of a great strategy game. For the most part, I think Ironclad knocked one completely out of the park!

The game features 3 distinct races of a somewhat familiar format. The TEC (Trade Emergency Coalition) are the Terran race of the game, the Advent are the psychics, and the Vasari are the wunderkind advanced tech race. A typical game scenario has two or more races/players fighting against each other for military, economic and cultural control of a star system.

Where the game really shines is in it's use of the new 'Iron' engine, which allows you to seamlessly scale in and out of the action a-la Supreme Commander. You also have full 360 degree camera control, allowing you to focus in as far as an individual starfighter at any angle, or out far enough to see the entire star system. Although there are technically 3 dimensions of actions, the gameplay really focuses on only 2 dimensions and this is where Homeworld fans might be slightly dissapointed.

The overall format and gameplay are very remniscent of Ubi Soft's earlier Conquest: Frontier Wars in many ways,which I enjoyed a great deal. The combat in both games is similiar, with ships being of the rock-paper-scissors variety that encourage a combined arms approach to ship combat. But Sins takes this formula and totally runs with it. In addition to the scalable interface and RTS gameplay, Sins comfortably integrates in cultural, trade and research elements that fit well and provide another great dimension to the game.

Another thing the developers chose to add in the game are space pirates. On Stardock's official Sins forum, it already appears as though people either love or hate the pirates. Pirates in Sins provide you (and your opponents) with what are essentially mercenaries that can be hired to attack your opponent. The player that bids the most money in a given time period is essentially spared a pirate attack on one of their systems while their enemy is forced to fend them off. Pirates as an offensive threat can be eliminated however by detroying their well-fortified homeworld. At first I was annoyed by the inclusion of space pirates, but after getting used to planning for their use and attacks, I have to say I've grown to love that element of the game too.

One thing that I noticed quickly that was completely missing from the game was ground combat.Instead of building transports to haul troops in to invade a planet, you basically have to bombard a planet until it's a dustball and then 'colonize' it. This is the one big thing that I thought Ironclad could have done better, but even with this omission 'Sins' is still far superior to many of its contemporaries.

The bottom line:

Pros: Realtime gameplay, scalable interface, beautiful fleet battles, excellent tech integration, cool ships/races, no DRM, and Stardock is the publisher!

Cons: No ground combat, pirates are a slightly annoying element, combat can be slow and bland at times.

Final Word: If you love RTS or general strategy games, pick this one up. To not play it would be to miss out on an early contender for strategy game of the year!

Simply Beautiful!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 15 / 17
Date: February 07, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Hey All!

Rather then rewriting a new review, I'm pasting the one I wrote earlier today. So without further ado:
...
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: 9.5/10.0

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.
...

Having played today with sound on, I can say that I like the sound track, but the Vasari voice over kind of annoys me. The other two factions are fine, but the Vasari sound like the Rulons from the old 80's cartoon DinoRiders. They have this low raspy voice that can get irritating after a while. I'd give the sound an 8.5. I'd probably give it a 9.0 if the units didnt speak every time you issue a new command, but modding tools will be available soon, so this problem can be remedied.

The best RTS game.... EVER.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 13 / 16
Date: February 05, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Space Empires meets Supreme Commander. This 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate) allows you to view your entire empire/galaxy in real time and zoom into your solar systems, planets, fleets, battleships even as far as individual fighters. Play one of three races. Each with unique ships and tech trees. Win through diplomacy, cultural influence or sheer military domination. Build capital ships to support your fleets. As they gain experience like RPG characters you can upgrade their weapons and defenses to your liking. With all the moddable features the developers put into this title plan to see conversions of Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar, Star Gate.. ect I can't wait!. In short, this is a must play for any RTS fan.

They did everything right

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 12
Date: February 06, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Stardock/Ironclad did everything extremely well in this game. Let's run down some of the high points:

1) Innovation: This game combines Real Time Strategy and 4X in a way never before accomplished. The ability to seamlessly change the zoom from a single ship to an entire galaxy is no small feat. But at the same time, a truly unique interface makes the game very playable without the need to micromanage

2) Graphics: Beautiful to look at while at the same time able to run on older systems makes this a good game for any computer. It doesn't take much horsepower but you get a lot in return, including great scenery and a massive scope.

3) Multiplayer: Terrific multiplayer/matching engine makes the replay value higher than any other similar game.

4) Stability: Stardock had this game in testing for a long time with a LOT of testers, so it is rock solid and very refined. No crashing, no bugs, and great performance. When was the last time EA or Ubisoft released a game where you could say that?!

To sum it all up, this game is one that everyone will be playing for a LONG time. It's worth every penny because you will still be enjoying it many years from now.

GalCiv2 and Supreme Commander had a love child

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 13
Date: February 06, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Sins of the Solar Empire is one of those games that first makes you wonder why nobody'd ever done this before, until you realize that technology just wouldn't have provided a good experience.

If you are a fan of 4X Strategy games or real-time strategy games, then you'll probably truly enjoy Sins. It's slower-paced than most RTS games, but for good reason: much more complexity than most RTS games. Likewise, it's less complex than many modern 4X strategy games.

When you buy this game, PLAY IT AND LEARN BEFORE YOU PASS JUDGEMENT. The game is complex and there are a lot of little tricks that you can learn on your own or from the manual that will get you up to speed. One of the best tricks I've heard is to, after playing through some of the tutorials, start up a 2v2 game on a medium map. 1 hard AI as an ally, 2 easy AIs as enemies. That'll give you time to learn the ins-and-outs of how the game works.

Buy this game, support StarDock! They'll be coming out with lots more free content in the near future as well.

Great Graphics and Great Gameplay!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: February 06, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Just got this game yesterday, so I'm no expert. But so far, I can see this game has fantastic graphics. If you are familiar to stragegy games, then the user interface and methods of play should be generally similar to what you are used to. But this game adds so much more. Like Homeworld, you can manage battles if you want to, but you don't really need to, as the AI is smart and can do most of the 'detailed' work for you. But you will need to keep an eye on a battle and maybe build more ships, or send in more defenses from other planets. Maybe even ask for help from an alliance or bribe pirates?

This game is great so far, and I've only completed 1 of the 4 tutorials and just had to jump into a single mission. So, tonight I'm need to do another tutorial to better understand what to do. But last night I was having so much fun, I didn't want to stop playing.

This game also allows for Mods and recording Replays, so the future looks pretty open for new ideas...

A Brave New Paradigm in PC Gaming is Established!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 12
Date: February 06, 2008
Author: Amazon User

NOTE: This is a real quick write up a more detailed review to come later when I have more free time.

With that said....

If you are a true PC gamer and you like strategy games then you should be very interested in Sins. It is afresh new concept in gaming with hybrid genera inventing concept. They have elegantly crossed traditional 4X gaming with RTS and have beyond doubt created a new standard for the industry.

The policies of the publisher [...] and developer for things such as licenses and protection as well as updates and support are top shelf bar none. There simply is not a better publisher in the market place when it comes to supporting consumers and for the freshmen title from the developers given how they have developed the title especially throughout the past year I fully expect them to stand at StarDocks side in the near future.

The development of the title was done in the public arena from nearly day one and has really been a very interesting thing to be a part of and watch over the past year. Moreover they [The developers & publishers] are really active on the forums and have made many, many changes to the games design based on the feedback and at fundamental levels. Granted there are some aspects of the process I don't like so much but there is also other things to consider such as trade secrets, development cycle, marketing, financial resources and promotional strategy -etc... All of which are very reasonable.

With nearly all of the other beta programs I have participated in I have felt ignored, abused, placated and simply taken for granted. Additionally the selection processes leave me wondering "WTF?" most times. I don't see a clearly defined plan of action, articulated communication networks, trackers, coherent stages, organized issues lists and corrections -etc... and most of the forums are populated with mindless dribble and flame wars and to add insult to injury are managed by people not doing the actual development work. I simply fail to see the real point of the "testing" except for pure marketing value and or maybe for server load issues.

Breath of Fresh Air

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: February 06, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This game is a breath of fresh air. Just as, once upon a time, Starcraft re-wrote the book for what an RTS "should" be, so too will this game. Its far from a stale, overdone copy of a mediocre clone, which most RTS games are these days. This game incorporates new features and ideas, a new approach to the genre, and the brilliance of one of the best companies out there. I've been a part since the early beta -- which means that yes, my opinion is skewed -- and this game is incredible.

The developers have had the active participation of a large beta community for the last year or so, receiving constant input from the end-users, all of whom were not under an NDA. To get into the beta, you just had to pre-order the game before or during certain time windows when it was opened. Hundreds of people helped them polish it until it gleamed, creating a game that was more stable 6 months before release than most released games.

On top of that, this game incorporates many, many things from the 4X -- eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate -- genre, despite its being real time instead of turn based. You can build up a real economy, and tools like an actual diplomacy system and the ability to sic pirates on someone via bounties allow that to be a semi-functional approach. Obviously, however, a strong military is still important, and there is another place this game shines. Its combat system rejects the micro-heavy approach of most games, and while almost all units have abilities, the unit AI can handle using those abilities for you most of the time.

I could go on for hours, but I won't. I'll just conclude with this: this game is going places. Buy it, and get in on the ground floor of the game that is going to use Starcraft II to mop the ground!

'Must own' game of 2008

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: February 06, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This is a must own game! You'll enjoy it for its challenge, and for its amazing graphics and story. If you enjoy playing online, there is even save game abilities, so you can play against your friends when you have time and not worry about disconnects or ending the game early because you have to leave to do something else. Just resume your saved game. The community support for this game is also very extensive as well. You'll be happy you made this purchase. Oh did I mention, the game is fun to play!

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