Space. Space is empty. How do you set a game in the vast void between stars and planets? Well, if you are Ironclad, you do it with a deft touch and plenty of skill, and a tech tree as big as my house.
To understand exactly what this game is, the phrase 4X must be used. (Warning: the following review is a powerful nerd aphrodisiac.) 4X stands for Explore, Expand, Exploit and Exterminate. These four tenets guide the gameplay in every aspect of the game world. They are the foundations of the gameplay, the setting and the pace of the game. You don’t play Sins of a Solar Empire; you invest in it.
Sins is basically a space combat game. You win by destroying every unit of the enemy, spread out over planets, asteroids and stars in a galaxy spanning hundreds of systems, very similar to the world map overview mode in Medieval: Total War 2. It also shares many aspect of the MMO EVE Online.
You begin each game by choosing a race. There are three, essentially all exactly the same other than visually, with slight differences in technology and ships. The TEC are the human race, focusing on firepower and weaponry. The Advent are outcasts who focus on cultural influence and infrastructure, and finally the Vasari, an ancient space faring race who can deceive and subvert their enemies. You also start with a home world, a fully developed planet capable of building orbital platforms and conducting research - essentially your base. The rest of the universe is hidden from you; planets, stars, wormholes and all manner of interstellar bodies are out there, waiting to be found. To find them, you need to spread out the edges of your space empire. You need to explore.
Stretching out from your home world are any number of interplanetary phase lanes. Phase lanes are the roads which connect your empire - highways in space. Phase lanes connect planetary bodies, around which extend gravity wells. You will spend most of the game in pockets of space in which ships can move, structures can be built and enemies fought.
Capture uninhabited planets by colonizing them, build stations on the surface of resource laden asteroids, suspend mining structures in the orbits of gas giants. Grow your empire. Construct outposts on the edge of your system, post sentries and protect your conquered planets with force fields and orbital gun platforms. You need to expand.
Once your fledgling empire is up and running you can approach the game just how you like. Want to form alliances with other players? Place bounties on their heads for NPC pirates to cash in on? Obliterate alien races with an iron fist of doom? Yes. All of these are possible, and likely. Sins allows such freedom that you can and will do anything you want. The game is merely a conduit for your own devious machinations. You need to exploit.
The main sequence of the game occurs once your empire is at a reasonable size, and most of the universe is held by one faction or another. Fights break out for the most resource-rich planetoids. Fleets of thousands clash in the upper atmosphere of volcanic worlds ripe for development. The infrastructure of your empire also develops; trade lanes are established with hundreds of merchant vessels traversing the vastness of your space. Pump your cash into communications or military production. Conquer your enemies using cultural influence or giant nuclear bombs. It is up to you.
Unfortunately, after this main sequence, the game is let down. While fleet composition is important, one powerful leveled-up capital ship can pretty much kill anything on its own, including entire planets. Given enough time, one powerful capital ship could commit interstellar genocide. You can get a capital ship for free right from the start of each game, making the early game a grind-fest with each faction racing to level up their mothership on NPC pirate raiders. On smaller maps (which themselves still dwarf most other games’ multiplayer maps) rushing in with a quick capital ship and a smattering of support ships is an entirely workable strategy that is incredibly hard to react to if done right.
But combat is just one aspect of a rich and varied game. You can win without building a single military vessel. One of the races in the game even focus an entire tech tree to spreading culture. Planets will swap allegiance if you spread it strong enough and far enough. You can even employ the pirate raiders to anonymously attack your enemies for you (with enough cash of course).
Even a cursory glance at the aforementioned tech tree is enough to make Joe Average Gamer wet his pants. You have a set of two tech trees per race: civilian and military. Also, you have a tree for fleet management, allowing you to expand its size. Oh, and another tree in which collected artifacts are stored. These can confer statistical benefits on any and all aspects of your game, from improving ship speed to improving culture spread. They are limitless in design and hidden in the universe, waiting to be found. Within each of the main research trees are another three sub-trees, and within those sub-trees are even more sub sub-trees. Each specific research option has up to five levels of completion, unlocking further levels of tech. Multiplayer games of Sins can last weeks before you research everything. Weeks.
This brings me to the super weapons. No strategy game is complete without them, and Sins doesn’t hold back on the super aspect. These weapons are the end game of Sins, costing unheard of amounts of resources and research; it could easily take you weeks of real time gameplay to even build one, let alone implement one in an attack. The wait though, is worth it. With these tools, you can destroy the universe, utterly and without remorse. They are tools of infinite destruction which enhance this game from the low leagues into a realm of possibilities not yet seen in gaming. You need to exterminate.
Overall, Sins is verging dangerously between being incredibly deep and overly complex. It has technical troubles, balancing worries (you will come to hate the Lost Fleet as much as I do) and some unfinished and sloppy design choices. Sins of a Solar Empire: even the name of the game is complicated. Don’t worry though, the game is much, much more complicated than you can even imagine, and benefits from it. You won’t ever see a console port of this game, and in a way it makes the PC gamer inside of me feel warm and fuzzy. This is a game for me, and me alone.
Buy this game and say goodbye to your life. If you thought Civilization was addictive, it will look like a cheap cup of Starbucks compared to the fine Italian espresso that is Sins of a Solar Empire.
