Sins of a Solar Empire Review

Sins of a Solar Empire really puts the “strategy” in “real-time strategy”. Most RTS games are in reality real-time tactical games that emphasize swift and proper battlefield execution far more than they do strategic planning on a grand scale. Sins resembles a grand scale galactic 4X turn-based strategy game more than it does a traditional RTS game. However all of the action takes place in real-time, so you never have the luxury of taking several minutes to plot out your next move. Sins’ take on strategy manages to capture some of the best of both worlds. From the turn-based world you get the grand scale and strategic play of that type of game along with the real-time equivalent of the “just one more turn” phenomenon. From the RTS side you get the tense gameplay that comes with the need to make some quick decisions under pressure. And overall, you get a game that is a lot of fun to play.

There are three playable factions in Sins of a Solar Empire: the TEC, Advent, and Vasari. The human TEC (Traders’ Emergency Coalition) excel at economic power and building cheap weaker units. The Advent are human as well, but are fervent followers of an alien philosophy that has led them on a path of psionic development. The Vasari are an alien race whose fleets are expensive to build but feature powerful ships. There is a backstory to the game, but it doesn’t fit directly into the game in any way. There’s no campaign game and the scenarios are based on starting conditions rather than events in the game’s timeline. While the lack of a campaign’s impact on the game’s story is obvious, what is not so obvious is that you miss out the smaller-scale controlled condition battles that help ease you into what is ultimately a pretty complex game. There is a small tutorial in the game, but it covers the basic mechanics of playing such as how to move the camera and give orders to ships rather than the particulars of running a stellar empire. If you’re used to games on this scale than you’ll be able to get a handle on most of the game after a play through or two, but gamers new to the genre will probably quickly feel overwhelmed by it all.

Sins is played on a map of a single, planet-rich system or a small number of interconnected systems. Each planet is connected to one or more of the other planets via jump paths along which ships can travel. Because of this travel restriction, you’re effectively playing on a traditional stellar map with the star systems replaced by individual planets. Each planet has a “gravity well” associated with it which defines the space in which ships may maneuver without jumping and in that you can build space-based structures and facilities. Planets range from uninhabitable “space junk” to small asteroids to full planets with terran, volcanic, or arctic environments on which you can build full colonies. Also orbiting most planets are small asteroids that can be mined to collect the game’s two resources: metal and crystal.

One of the impressive things about Sins is that it wraps its planetary maps in an interface that is not only visually impressive, but intuitive and easy to use as well. You can scroll the map out to the point where you can view the entire collection of planets on a single screen or zoom right in until you’re looking at a single spaceship filling your entire screen. The map also supports full 360 degree camera rotation so you can view your empire and its ships from any angle. The camera controls are quite powerful, but they’re also very easy to use; you can quickly get the view on the action that you want with a few quick mouse movements. Managing your empire is just as easy as it is viewing it. You can always manage things in the traditional way by selecting planets or ships and then using the command panel at the bottom of the screen to issue orders, but Sins gives you another option that is a great way to keep tabs on your expanding empire. The Empire Tree sits along the left side of the screen and gives you a complete synopsis of your empire at a glance. You’ll see each of your planets, the ships in orbit, any enemy ships present, and more, such as the presence of asteroids that you have yet to start mining. The summary information is great, but what makes this interface really useful is that you can issue orders directly from it. Notice a metal asteroid floating around a planet that you neglected to mine? You can order that a mine be built on it straight from the Empire Tree. You can also order ships to move between worlds or attack enemy fleets or specific ships. In fact, you can manage a large percentage of the operations of your empire from this panel, and once you’ve built a large empire it can be a real godsend.

Fans of turn-based galactic strategy games will probably find that Sins of a Solar Empire abstracts aspects of the game a bit too much for their tastes. There’s a diplomatic interface, but it just covers the basics of diplomacy such as peace treaties. In fact the diplomatic interface almost acts as a mission generator as alien races will request that you perform tasks for them in order to gain their trust and favor. I found this to be an interesting take on diplomacy but some purists may not like it. The game features a large tech tree for both civilian and military advancement, but ship designs are preset. You won’t be able to research a fancy new weapon and then build a custom ship class around it. These are just a couple of examples of how the game isn’t as complex as most of the 4X style games that have come before it. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing and it works well within the context of the game, but I just wanted you to be aware of these types of differences in case you were looking for the second coming of Master of Orion.

The path to success in Sins of a Solar Empire invariably runs down the road of conquest and you’ll need to build and manage a large fleet to win games. The ship AI is pretty good and you can often let it manage your battles for you. When enemy ships enter a system, the defending ships will move to attack, identify the priority targets, and take proper firing positions to take advantage of each ship class’ strengths. You’ll want to take control during critical battles, though, because individual ships can sometimes be distracted by targets of opportunity when they’re needed elsewhere.

The game adds an interesting wildcard faction into the game in the form of space pirates. The pirates occupy one of the planets in the system and at regular intervals send out large raiding parties to pillage nearby worlds. What really makes them a different foe than your rival empires is that they can be bribed to attack one of your enemies when they go on their next excursion. Of course, your enemies can do the same to you, and this leads to bidding wars in which empires try to increase the bounties on each other to direct the pirates elsewhere. The pirates add an interesting aspect to the game but this feature of the game needs to be tweaked a bit for balance. The biggest issue is that the interval between pirate raids is too small. You can find yourself in the midst of trying to put an end to a raid when next thing you know you’ve missed the bidding and the next wave of attackers is on its way. Also, the only bidding that really matters is the final flurry that occurs after the raid timer has hit zero. To keep the pirates at bay you need to spend a considerable amount of time watching the timer and then sitting on the bid screen so that you’re not outbid at the last second. It all requires too much management as it is implemented and hopefully a future patch of the game will address this issue.

Sins of a Solar Empire can be an engrossing game and it certainly has the ability to keep you playing way past your bedtime. The late nights are just partially due to the “just one more turn” phenomenon. Also responsible is the fact that there’s no such thing as a short game of Sins of a Solar Empire. A game played on the smallest map against a single opponent can easily require a four hour or more time commitment. Part of this is due to the nature of the game and part is due to the enemy AI. The AI is partial to taking a “turtle” approach to the game and will devote most of the early game to building up its systems and economy. It also doesn’t know when to quit, and you’ll be forced to fight the enemy down to its last asteroid before it will accept defeat.

Overall Sins of a Solar Empire is an easy game to recommend to strategy fans. It may put off RTS gamers who live off of rush tactics or turn-based gamers who like the luxury of taking all the time that they want to plot their next move. Everyone else will enjoy playing a strategy game that isn’t simply a clone of all of the space games before it and hopefully inspires some much needed innovation in the genre.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 88%. Sins of a Solar Empire doesn't do much wrong.