So let’s hear it for an overcomplicated user interface and strange gameplay! Stardocks’ Sins of the Solar Empire is an a empire-building space based game that has some very nice features, is a decently designed and developed low-budget game. Sins doesn’t have a ton of fancy graphics that makes your computer churn, nor does it have a wicked sense of humor, other than naming of planets (which every space game has had since MOO #1).

Synopsis: you’re an empire, just like in Civilization or many of it’s knock offs. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to destroy the others. But like most of these games, it’s HOW you play the game that makes it different.

How far have I played? I’ve yet to win a game, I’ve gone through all the tutorials, and I’ve done at least 12 hours of gameplay. My longest game thus far is 2 hours. I prefer the large games (10 ai enemies, 5/6 suns). I’ve no desire to play multi-player due to my post-traumatic Starcraft disorder (My first internet game was being on the receiving end of what I soon learned was a Zerg rush. I still have nightmares…)

The story is average, the graphics aren’t rocking, and the interface…. well, there’s a LOT to it. If you learned all the hot keys by memory, I’m sure that the game would be more enjoyable… but since I still can’t tell reload from medic on TF2, I wanted to make sure my brain cells are reserved for other games.

So what makes this game above average? The interface has a smooth and graceful way of moving from planet to planet: a quick flick of the mouse wheel and you’re anywhere you want to be on the map. Other games have tried to implement this design and failed miserably, but Sins seems to have it right. What I fear though, is that it’s only pleasurable due to the lack of fancy graphics, allowing the scale transitions’ smoothness. Combined with quick key logic and definable grouping and everything else that makes RTS play easy, Sins is ok.

The voice work and music don’t suck either - in fact, this is the ONLY sim game that I don’t bomb the music immediately. The voices, unfortunately, due get to be a little repetitive, not because of the voice acting quality, but there just doesn’t seem to be any “Zug Zug” or “Stop poking me” loving.

One piece of graphic shiny-ness is the closeup fighting. If you mousewheel all the way in during a fight, there’s some pretty eyecandy. It’s not really interactive, but it’s pretty nonetheless. And cool. You get the dramatic sense of epic warfare by watching it.

What don’t I like? There’s five resources you have to manage: money, crystal, metal, fleet size and fleet officer cadre something or other. The first three are interactive - you can buy/sell crystals and metal for money - and have generators that throttle your development. The second two are resource purchases so you get bigger and better fleets. And no matter what, you always end up with too much of one and not enough of the other two. This may be the way I play, but at the end of each game, you can look at resources and the AI’s just don’t have it.

Also, the steamroller army is the ultimate solution for any problem: Get to 3-4 planets, build up a really big army and start steamrolling - there’s no lines of supply to worry about, so just start pillaging. Sinee the maps are ultimately circular, you can always just turn right at a planet return to your homebase, repair your ships and do it all over again.

So what’s the pet peeves: Like every sim game, there’s a game conceit moderator - if you’re beating the AI, “pirates” target you, just like the Moo2’s evil Antarians to hammer you down and hinder your progress. It’s a weak system that needs to rely on that, more importantly - if *I* have to manage 5 resources, why doesn’t the pirates? My next effort will be to build a fleet and take out their home territory just because I wanna see what happens.

Also, there’s the entire astrophysics of this game - yes, relative time in gameplay would be difficult - read Joe Haldeman’s Forever War for a good explanation why, but… planets and suns and other this just DON’T organize the way you play this game. If a solar system has 5 planets, there’s 5 planets to colonize. Terran is worlds are great, but Mars doesn’t suck when compared to Jovian gas giants, sulfur acid venuses (veni? insert penis joke here), and Mercurial burn zones. In short, if you’re going to design a space game, either use solar systems to your advantage or come up with a gameplay conceit that does it right. Just having a planet in the middle of space without any reference to it’s solar system… well, it’s just dumb.

All lifeforms are air-breathing carbon based lifeforms. Ok, I can let that one slide.

One race is psychic. Oh for frag’s sake… the horse is dead. It’s been lead to water and fell over and it’s GLUE. Pushing daisies. Writers and designers: get more originality, please.

No tactics. There’s absolutely no tactics to this game: one fleet parks it’s fat ass next to the enemy fleet and ka-POW ka-POW ka-POW. Yawn.

Now, in a battle zone that has fighters and bombers (why can’t they be both?) where’s the fucking marines? If ships are so expensive they require the resources of entire planets to build (even the small ones), then warfare would have a ton of space marine action. Ok, so this last pet peeve would be a feature scope creep in the game’s design, but even so… if you’re going to go to this detail of resource micromanagement, taking over enemy resources would be a benefit. I suspect that this was on the list of original gameplay features and Stardock/Ironclad didn’t have resources to get it finished with the rest of the game, so I’ll let this one slide.

Final Recommendation: If you like SciFi, and SimCiv games, I encourage a demo download. There’s some good and bad with this game, but it’s definitely much better than MOO3 and has some nice elements to it. If you like sim games that keeps your brains thinking, it’s a decent distraction.

Fry’s Electronics had the game for 35 bucks, where the website and Stardock sell it for $45.