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Sins Of A Solar Empire (PC) | 
 enlarge | From: Kalypso Media
Category: Video Games
List Price: £29.99
Buy New: £17.61
You Save: £12.38 (41%)
New (7) Used (2) from £15.00
Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 702
Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows Xp
Genre: fantasy-strategy-games
Rating: To Be Announced
Media: DVD-ROM
Operating System: Windows Vista
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.5 x 0.9
EAN: 4260089411500
ASIN: B00195P6J0
Release Date: June 20, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 IN SPACE NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU END YOUR TURN... May 24, 2008
NeuroSplicer (Freeside, in geosynchronous orbit)
67 out of 72 found this review helpful
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. It was released in early February in the US (from where I got my copy) and although it is not protected by anything more than its customers trust and honor, it NEVER LEFT THE BESTSELLER LIST EVER SINCE. That should be a lesson to other game publishers who insult their own customers with Limited Installations and draconian DRM.
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!
Who needs a story June 17, 2008
Ivan Booth (UK)
22 out of 25 found this review helpful
This game doesnt.
Think about it - what does a campagn do...
Each mission gets you a new bit of tech
Makes the overall game artificially last longer
Thats about it .
This game doesnt need one - I played a small map last night for 5 hours.
The pace is just right.
The AI adapted to my strategies with apparent ease.
I remember one encouter :
I attacked a planet - the enemy fleet sat and watched untill the planatary defences had weakened my fleet - enemy ships were still entering the system - It then sent an attacking force to the nearest one of my planets and engaged my attack fleet.
It was sneaky!!!
I cant praise the gameply enough - I would call it elegant.
Simple to learn very dificult to master - like all the best games:)
Breadth of a Turnbased, with the excitement of Real Time June 7, 2008
D. A. Duncan
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
If you take one thing away from this review, it should be that if you like strategy games, you will like Sins of a Solar Empire. This game is more akin to civilisation / galactic civilisations than to C&C / starcraft games, it is not as frantic as C&C, but yet not as slow as a civ game.
The basic premise is that you take over as a the head of a space faring nation. There are only 3 races availible to you (one focused on economics, one on research, and the other on production), for each of the races the basic ships are very similar. You get a scout ship (fast, mobile, not going to last long in a dog fight), a small medium and large gun ship, a planetary assault ship, a command ship, and a race specific ship. These are fairly vanilla, the real meat of the space battles comes in the shape of the Capital Ships. Each race has a different set of these behemoths which look pretty spectacular. These act like hero units, like you would see in Warcraft III, and generally can give out a pounding and take one as well - nothing is quite as satisfying as destroying an enemies capital ship.
The game has a fairly basic base building mechanism. Basically you colonise planets, each planet has a certain amount of resources orbiting it in the form of asteroids. Also in the space around each planet you can build only so many buildings. The planets can also be upgraded to provide more tax, more defence against invasion, etc. Truth be told base building is not the focus of this game - it is merely a means to an end, with the end being war. However each race does get a set of orbital buildings that are different, including one super weapon for each race.
Diplomacy, sadly, is fairly weak in this game when compared to a turn based strategy (obviously most RTS's don't even have a diplomacy option), and a lot of the diplomacy amounts to either bribing someone not to attack you, or to put up a large bounty on an enemy. In the larger games, if you find yourself in a weak military position, but a strong economic one. Such as 3 or more nations ganging up on you, it can be very effective to put an extremely large bounty on the most powerful of your enemies and watching allies backstab each other to get their hands on such a lucrative bounty.
On the downside this game has basically no story (though there is apparently a story in the works, it does not come with the game at retail), and the only option is skirmishes (though a skirmish on the largest setting will take a very long time to complete, even on smaller maps it will be a matter of hours). However that is due to this game being more turn based in attitude than RTS - and truely who plays an RTS for the gripping story?
Again I will repeat, if you like strategy games, you will like sins of a solar empire.
A rare gem of a game August 25, 2008
Mr. Christopher Watton (Gloucestershire)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
OK, first of all, I have never in the past had any time for RTS games, I loved the Total War turned based strategy type games (and still do). I thought that no other game would ever surpass Rome Total War for the excessive amount of time I spent on the game (my wife even called herself a 'Rome Widow'!)
Until this little gem of a game. It is a, at first, slow burning strategy game, with a very intuitive interface (absolutely no need for the keyboard, everything can be accessed using the mouse), nice graphics and very clever AI (If you do not make alliances, you will be beaten!) It just pulls you in until at some point, you realise you've just spent four hours on one of the smaller scenarios, when you think you've only been playing for half an hour or so!
It is so deep and challenging (on the harder difficulty levels), that I find myself doing what I did when playing Rome; I spend time at work thinking about the best strategy to expand my empire - do I kill them with commerce, or a fleet of heavily armed, levelled up battle cruiser and frigate fleets, or a sprinkling of both? The game, like all good strategy games, makes you think about your choices, and penalises you if you make the wrong ones (like I did when I thought I'd just sit it out until I had enough money, crystal and metal to 'level up' my planets and resources....)
If you like strategy games, be it RTS or turned based, you cannot fail to like this game, it is fun, clever, nice looking, easy to get into and quite addictive, a rare combination in these days of looks are everything with game play an afterthought.
Highly recommended, and excellent value for money. It has changed my views about RTS games forever.
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