8.7

Sins of a Solar Empire was developed by Ironclad games (and published by Stardock). Who? That’s what we thought too, the story starts a while ago with a company called Barking Dog. Many of the Ironclad folks originally worked at Barking Dog Studios, who developed Homeworld: Cataclysm and did minor work with Valve on the original Counter-Strike. Then, Rockstar, of GTA fame, bought Barking Dog. At some point after that, some of the original Barking Dog folks split off and formed Ironclad, using what they learned to build one heck of an RTS-meets-civ game and Sins of a Solar Empire was born. This game also will probably be popular with fans of EVE, X3 and other space games, simply because it has that atmospheric feel and a solid depth to it.

Sins of a Solar Empire is one of those games that tries to combine a few different genres to create an experience that offers the best of each. We’ve seen many games try this and fail. Sins of a Solar Empire is one of the best combinations we’ve seen. If you’re an RTS or Civ fan that likes depth and variety, you’ll probably love Sins of a Solar Empire. If you’re a hardcore RTS or Civ fan, Sins may not scratch the itch of either genre. We, however, thought it was a perfect balance.

Graphics
In a phrase: pretty but manageable. The required specs are fairly low but we pumped this game all the way to 1920×1200 with all effects maxed and it still ran smoothly on our test machine. Space is pretty, atmospheric and the battles and explosions are awesome. The interface is pretty and uses the screen real-estate very well to manage all the data you need to control your growing empire. Each race has a very clear style and the ship models are interesting and believable.

The planets and stars in Sins of a Solar Empire feature crisp textures, bump mapping and bloom effects. The relative sizes of planets, ships, stars and orbital structures create a realistic-feeling space economy.

The game offers easy zoom in and out with the mouse wheel and full 3D camera rotation. It also automatically follows units and an displays unit icons when zoomed out. It also features a sidebar that shows fleets, planets and other handy information in an easily-scannable format. You can turn off all info readouts for a “cinematic mode” and there is a built in way of capturing screen shots or videos of your epic battles.

Sound
The sound is neither mind-blowing nor weak. The unit acknowledgments are somewhat bland but all sounds are done well and fitting for the units or weapons. The game soundtrack is very well done and really sets the mood for both the clashing fleet battles and peaceful technology and expansion phases.

Gameplay
Sins of a Solar Empire is a very deep game. That being said, it’s very easy to play. There are four tutorials to get you started. They are fairly quick and don’t go far in describing the finer points of the interface or strategy but they do give you a good enough idea to get started without ever touching the manual. The interface design is brilliant. The way that menus and information is organized is probably the best we’ve ever seen for a game this deep.

Sins does not have a campaign mode as such. The game starts with a description of the events leading up to the war between the Advent, Vasari and Trade Emergency Coalition(TEC). The TEC are a classic human race with blocky ships and gauss and missile weapons. The Advent are a human zealot race with sleek-curving ships and lots of energy abilities. The Vasari are an alien race with few but heavily powered units. Each race has its own buildings and units as well as their own technology trees, meaning each race is substantially different.

Players choose between a wealth of single-player skirmish-like missions. These are not your usual RTS skirmishes, however. The smallest map with a single AI and a pirate base took us 3 hours and 48 minutes to beat our first time through. The game is large and deep enough that a single skirmish can serve as an entire campaign.

The game-creation interface offers a variety of AI styles and three difficulty levels. It also offers many maps to play, both random and premade in multiple sizes. It also gives the player the ability to create their own map on the fly by specifying specific values for each of the maps perimeters (number of star systems, planets, planet-types, distances and more). These maps can be saved for future replaying both single and multiplayer.

In an actual game you usually start with a single planet and a ship construction building. From there you explore new planets, research technologies and build more buildings to unlock new units and abilities. You build a fleet and conquer your opponents. This process is complicated by pirates, which can be bribed by you or your opponents to raid planets and opportunities for alliances and other diplomatic operations.

There are multiple resources to manage: cash, minerals and crystals, all of which are required for different things. Different types of research can increase production of these materials and they can also be sold or purchased on the black market. Players also need to manage their fleet cap, which can also be increased through research but also adds a fleet upkeep cost.

As you acquire planets, technologies and fleets the number of things to manage grows. However, Sins of a Solar Empire keeps this reasonable through clear tech paths and lots of auto-fleet management. For instance, if your fleet enters a space with enemies, your units will automatically engage the units they are the most effective against. Newly produced units automatically join fleets of units they share abilities with and fleets can be easily created or disbanded. You can also set units to wait to phase jump until the whole fleet is in position and to automatically use their special abilities. Graphs and trees in the interface make it easy to see what planets can support and where your cashflow is coming from. Messages are verbose in telling you what you need to build certain units and icons also make it easy to tell at a glance.

The game allows you to save and load single and multiplayer games (since games can last quite some time) and also auto-saves your game periodically in 10 different auto-save slots.

All of these elements make a deep, complex game very easy to play but leave a wealth of opportunities for mastery and strategy. Oh, and giant fleet battles are simply spectacular.

Longevity
Given the depth and variety of this game, combined with the single-player and multiplayer capacities, we see enormous longevity. There are few games that we would recommend more as a good way to spend your gaming dime.

Technical
Ironclad released Sins of a Solar Empire in a large public beta. They listened to problems and fixed them before launching the final product. If all game developers did this you would see far fewer giant patches that are released a month after the game ships. Sins of a Solar Empire is a solid stable product in our experience.

To make this even better, Ironclad seems determined to listen to their fanbase. They are active on the Sins of a Solar Empire Forum, asking players for advice or complaints and implementing a few complaint fixes in their next patch.

Overall
Honestly, we are darn proud of these guys. On behalf of gamers everywhere, we’d like to offer Ironclad and Stardock a big pat on the back for the way they have handled the release of their product.

We’ve already said it but we’ll say it again, Sins of a Solar Empire is worth it. We suspect that Ironclad and Stardock probably only had a fraction of the budget that some of the big players out there like EA and THQ have to work with. They invested their dollars wisely. This game shines in many ways and we hope that Stardock and Ironclad are well rewarded for their hard work and solid product.