Sins of a Solar Empire Review

Intro
Sins of a Solar Empire is an RTS game made by Ironclad Games and publish by Stardock both not very well known studios.
Sins of a Solar Empire is an mixture of space simulator and an Real Time Strategy Game.

Gameplay
Sins of a Solar Empire is played as an regular RTS but with the depth of an turn based space simulator.
The game is set in space and the main goal is to take over other planets, these can give you income and with a bit of strategy you can even make much profit, the game is driven by economics, there 3 resources, Metal, Crystal and Credits the first 2 can be harvest the last one you earn by selling you metal an crystal on the black market or with your planets.
If you got credit you can make ships which can take over more planets or attack enemies.
But you do not have to always attack your enemies, you can also make peace, this sounds familiar, but in Sins of a Solar Empire it works for the first time in RTS history, you get mission from someone to destroy another enemies buildings or give resources and you will become friends with the computer.
There are also big tech threes and 3 races, even though they control the same.
I think this game has finally made offline play interesting without making an campaign mode, the whole friendship system makes it fun to engage with the AI and not only a slaughter on both ends.



Controls
Maybe the most important thing in an RTS is the controls, Sins of a Solar Empire plays very smooth with a good looking interface, there is enough in it and it's all hideable, the games layout looks a bit like Supreme Commander's there is also an zoom function which can really get you way back or up close.
The game plays strangely enough just like an regular RTS like Starcraft, but it's all on a far bigger scale.

Graphics
Sins of a Solar Empire looks very nice, the game loads very fast for the graphics you get for it and maybe it's not the best looking RTS like C&C3 but it still is very good looking and totality lag free (on my PC)

Replay Value
Sins of a Solar Empire doesn't have an campaign, however the game is build so that if you play a skirmish mode the game begins evolving it self, it's not like WC3 where the AI just does the same thing over and over, no, the game is build so that's almost random, also LAN is much fun, you can even save your game to play for another day, cause damn Sins of a Solar Empire has long games and big maps.

Verdict
Sins of a Solar Empire is something new and fresh but still has the old tactics to work on, the game is what I as an RTS lover have been waiting for for an long time.

Score: 8,5/10

Links
Main Site
Wikipedia
Metacritic