Sins of a Solar Empire

I have been a huge Real Time Strategy fan since I played Command and Conquer : Red Alert Retaliation on the Playstation 1....which any gaming enthusiast can tell you was far too long ago to remember, since then however I have changed to games like Company of Heroes, the Dawn of War franchise, Medieval 2 total war and Sins of a Solar empire to name just a few.

Sins of a Solar Empire, for those who haven't played it, is a 4X RTS game, it is in the same vein as Civilisation, in that, you are tasked to; EXpand, eXplore, eXploit and eXterminate your enemies, although this particular game is a RTS set in space...which pretty much instantly makes it better in my mind, and also a fair amount quicker.

Unrivalled Scale is quite correct when looking at this game, playing multiplayer against 2 of my friends and a couple of AI players you can have multiple solar systems to travel between and fight over which took a minimum of 5 hours (And this is only because one of my friends and I decided to turn on our other friend and call it a day).

The learning curve for this game is fairly steep, but I found that the small selection of tutorials were more than adequate, and the game let me develop my own tactical thought process for this game instead of trying to do a sort of crash course in strategic theory which would have left most players confused.

Very, VERY steep learning curve in this game.

In most 4X games graphical quality takes a back seat to gameplay, and this is no exception to that general rule, though that doesn't mean that this is by any stretch of the imagination an Ugly game, in fact that is quite far from the truth, as the rendering on the ships and constructs are fantastic, as is the designs of the suns or planets which all have little details that you wouldn't expect from many games.

Due to the expansive nature and extreme size of maps in this game, the use of strategy and tactics is key, I once split my armada in half before sending them to 2 different planets, both of which joined by interspace 'motorway' to a planet I wanted to attack, I chose both fleets and told them to attack as one, allowing me to make a strategic outflanking manoeuvre.

There really isn't much of a story for this game, it feels more like the old Battlefield games, in fact in Sins of a Solar Empire, there isn't actually a story mode, the story can be summed up as 'They all hate each other for arbitrary reasons.'

Final Review

Pros
-Massive Maps
-Allows easy use of tactics
-Great Multiplayer combat

Cons
-No story mode
-Steep Learning Curve
-Give yourself about a day to play a game of this because you will spend shit loads of time on one map without realising

If you enjoy this you may also enjoy- 

-Galactic Civilisation 2
-Dawn of War
-Starcraft 2
-Civilisation 4