But aside from all the prays and high marks this game received overall, its approach on RTS and the mix of elements it brings, one can find some things that will bother a few players and that will eventually influence the grades of this review. Ok, let's take it from the top.

The TEC (or Trade Emergency Coalition) are the closest thing to humanity in Sins of a Solar Empire. A coalition of trade merchants as the name suggests, TEC guaranteed good life for its citizens, and everything prospered and flourished for hundreds of years, under what the history books call the "Golden Age". Great progress was made in every aspect of human life. Until they came!

The Vasari were once the great masters of the universe. The Vasari Empire assimilated every other culture by either diplomacy or war. But at a moment of glory, the Vasari fleet suddenly lost all contact with their home planet. Every ship, big or small, every fleet that was sent back to see what happened never returned. Finally a ship barely made it back, almost destroyed. The Dark Armada fleet ran as far away as possible, but there were always signs of pursuit from their ruthless silent enemy. Desperate and without resources, they entered TEC space and started to conquer everything in their path. At first, TEC was overwhelmed, and since they haven't fought in nearly a millennia, they didn't know what to do. It took them nearly 10 years to get back on their feet and mount up a counter-offensive. Meanwhile,

The Advent intervened. Fighting against both sides, the Advent were once members of the TEC. Their ancestors were religious fanatics, militants of the "Unity", that were castaway some time ago. Their return meant death and destruction. The Advent possess psi powers like no other, making them a formidable opponent.

So that's all you needed to know before you start playing basically. (*pssst* actually, you don't; it's nice to know, but you won't feel dirty, hollow and empty inside if you don't... don't tell anyone though...)

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The Actual Game is a mixture of tactics and strategy. While managing the economy, planets, trade and constructing on a planet fall into the 4X strategy games category (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate - you know... games like Master of Orion or Civilization), building structures and ships in space and the fight style get that classic real time strategy look and feel (closest I can think of is Warcraft III).

Then there are a few other tricks one can use to make his stellar empire more... stellar. The huge upgrade tree is split into two major sections: one helps improve your combat abilities and one brings economy benefits. Each of the two contains around 40 abilities (though some have two or even three tiers of upgrades), and is split further into three categories. These abilities vary enough for each race to make the difference. And I say that because I am a bit disappointed with the ships and buildings that even though have a different model for each race, don't vary too much in functionality.

Let us start from the planetary level, and build our way up to those stars and far away galaxies, shall we?

Clicking on the planet icon (green thing) brings up the menu that allows you to construct things on your planet. You can build additional civilian infrastructure, emergency facilities to shelter the population when the planet is being assaulted or expand the logistics or tactical structures slots around the planet. You can also investigate the planet's surface in order to find artifacts or you can change a planet to be your empire's capital.

Clicking on your planet and selecting either the logistics or tactical buttons, you can construct various buildings in orbit. Basic logistic buildings are the extractors that bring resources to your empire, shipyards to construct your army and your capital ships and upgrade structures that allow you to research new abilities with the help of the research menu. Add to that any specific buildings that each race has, but must be researched first in order to be built.

Resources consist in Credits, Metal and Crystal. While the first ship designs and buildings use credits, you will need crystal the more you progress in the game for more advanced stuff.

Don't worry about having ships that collect resources or construct buildings. Two of these are always constructed automatically, and if they are destroyed they will be replaced without your intervention. You can select them, but they are really small, and there is no point to really. Just click on the planet and you'll see everything you need there.

Building a trade port around each planet brings your empire greater income, and additional trade treaties can be signed with other competing empires to benefit both economies. Just use the diplomacy menu to share resources, offer a cease fire, ship or planet vision, and so on and so forth.

Going further up the later, we find the ships and shipbuilding. Three sections are available: Frigates are the bulk of your army, small and cheap ship for any situation. Cruisers are more powerful ships, but they will cost you more. Finally, Capital ships possess unique abilities, gain experience and can level up. Ship control and battles are very similar to Warcraft III. Your "hero" (read "capital ship") has passive or offensive abilities, gaining the most powerful one at level 6. Some capital ships are good for support offering auras like Concentration, or Vampiric, others are more direct damage oriented or planetary assault. Mana is called antimatter by the way.

Initially you can only build one capital ship. The situation can be "fixed" by accessing the Fleet Logistics menu and upgrading your fleet size or number of capital ships you can have at one time, but at the cost of a higher upkeep (lower resource income).

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To spice things up a bit, and similar to Master of Orion and Pax Imperia for example, Sins of a Solar Empire introduces space Pirates. They always have a base somewhere and will attack the lowest bidder. Yes, you can instate a bounty on your enemy's head, and if it is higher than the one he has on you, they will probably attack him. Pirate attacks are very annoying and will start every 10-15 minutes or so.

The evil part is, even on easy, the computer will "outbid" you on the bounty when the timer is at 00:00 and you'll probably end up attacked by pirates anyway. Beginning of the end you ask? Not quite, but I will talk about the small annoying things a bit now...

First, you have no business comparing this to Homeworld, as I've seen in many other places. Totally different. Ship combat is more statistical and not so much action. You see ships, they fire each other but that's about it. Forget about fancy maneuvers or any micro management. You can even fool a whole fleet to follow one ship once they decide to attack it. There's no stopping them - except in death.

Plus, ships don't "do" 3 axis movements, the movement is completely 2D. If you order a ship to go back further away from the conflict, it will do a big loop forward, in front of all the enemy vessels, and then try to turn. Try, because it will almost certainly be destroyed. Plus they usually take out colony ships, which will make your life harder at first.

Second, vessels aren't that much different for each faction. Just the looks.

The thing is, as I see it, this game would have been really great if it were turn based. A bit lighter than Civilisation maybe, but an instant classic. Instead Ironclad chose a real time game. Realtime at this scale brings a lot of problems. In order to be able to manage everything as you expend further into the universe, game speed is very very very slow. I can't describe it properly in words, but if you check out a couple of videos you'll get the main idea. Keep in mind I played at the fastest speed setting I could find. Normal is a lot slower. Speed setting also has to be checked when creating a new game, because you can't change it afterwards.

Oh, and if you wait to have a big army and attack the pirates, think again. Look at my end-game video and see what kind of army they have...

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Conclusion

A good game but, contrary to some enthusiasts and fans, not for every strategy fan out there. Elements from 4X strategy games make the interface a bit complicated and the learning curve takes quite some time. If you have never played Civilization, Pax Imperia or Master of Orion before, (or anything similar really), don't even think skipping the tutorial! And if you just played Warcraft III, arm yourself with a lot of patience. I think one of the main reasons this game is highly regarded is that there haven't been any decent strategy titles in ages...

Oh, I almost forgot the smart interface bar found on the left of the screen, that shows every unit you have under your command in nice battle groups. Smart, but I am old and forgot about it all the time... Control+1 and 1 that's all i can remember...

Gameplay: 85

The mixture is interesting enough to make this game something worth playing. It's arguable if you'll like it or not, but there are high chanses you will if you give it a chance and some learning time. Some elements like slow gameplay, more statistical combat and the fact that you have to zoom in and out wayyyy too much can make it annoying from time to time. Not to mention the AI or the pirates. I really loved the research tree however and the way everything expands...

I would have hoped for some kind of campaign too, but it just has 10 maps (including a random map generator).

Graphics: 82

Nothing spectacular and everything moves only on 2 axes. Nothing is cutting edge, but the graphics are not aggressive and fun to watch even after 5 or 10 hours of gameplay. Plus some ships (especially alien) look cool...

Multiplayer: 88

Since a game can take a couple of days to complete really, there is a smart save option for online matches. The game has also a matchmaking system included that, while it isn't too fancy, it works ok.

Sound: 76

Depending on the faction again, some voices are good, but some are really too cheesy... When I started reviewing this, I chose a random faction, and I ended up with the Advent. I totally hate the Advent announcer voice, and their structure and ship design as well... But the Vasari have it much cooler. Fight and ship sounds aren't really worth mentioning (but I'm doing it anyway). Oh yes, you'll want to cut sound at a certain point.

Music reminds me of Space Odyssey music a bit, calm symphonic background music... And I like it.

Hardware: 89

At least the game moves well on most systems. Except if you attack the pirates, check out the video...