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There are good 4x games and then there is this one.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 13 / 25
Date: September 14, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Greatest disappointment in a game in a long time. I highly regret the $40 spent and recommended you stay clear of SOTS. I'm a long time fan of the 4x genre and had my eye on SOTS, the trailers look good but the game falls flat. Graphics are decent, sound is nothing special, controls are tolerable, but overall I feel like asking "where is the game play?" I was intrigued by the streamlining as micromanaging in many other 4x games can be tedious and thoughts if nothing else the RTS combat portion would be good (The formula for this genre is more then developed at this point right?) SOTS feels like a beta that could have been had another 12 months been devoted to development. In summary: turn based portion is dull (streamlined to the point of dumbed way down), combat feels as if developers never played a RTS game before and were uncertain how to implement, and if your all about the eye candy you certainly won't even find that (personally I'll take game play over graphics any day). I really tried to like this game, I put the hours in with it trying to see what I was overlooking and in the end the only positive thing I can say is I like the idea of randomizing at least part of the technology tree. Impatiently waiting for SEV as I uninstall SOTS now.

A very different 4X game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 32 / 35
Date: September 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Okay, the previous review was very harsh and sounded as if they expected a MoO or SEIV clone. To get a better of idea of the strategy portion of this game, think of a boardgame. It's very simplistic (only one planet per star)in the sense that it is like controlling squares of a board. The planets are really there to fund your research and ship building. Of course, you can place defenses around them and station ships there, but there is no city building options like in most games of this type. The meat of the game is the RTS ship-to-ship battles. At first, they appear relatively simplistic, but as new technologies become available, you start to see the implications of ship building. For instance, ships have weapons banks on each side, top, and sometimes bottom with various firing arcs. So, you may wish to pass an enemy ship instead of going head-on to get a particular weapon group to deal damage. You can also target specific sections or weapons on the ship. So, if a particular weapon is giving you grief, you can target it specifically. As an example, I had a Tanker ship that the AI destroyed the refueling portion of the ship, which stranded my ships in that area of space. Finally, there are random elements to the strategic game that can affect planets in big ways (think of the episode Doomsday from Star Trek TOS). There's nothing like showing up in a system and finding a long-dead alien civilization's defensive structure still in operation.

Remember "Spaceward Ho"?

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 21
Date: October 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

For you long time gamers, you may recall a little game called "Spaceward Ho". It is amazing that after years of improvements in processing power, AI coding, video and audio improvements, this game is no more than a glorified, and far more expensive version of the old classic (which was a fine game for its time). My advice, for those without the time to read all this, find a copy of Spaceward Ho and play that instead.
I was very much looking forward to a new space based strategy game. The genre has been lacking for some time, especially with the intense focus on pure RTS types of games. Sword, from the box and some of the articles I read, seemed to be that game. My mistake.
The manual is poorly written. I grant that it gives you information on each icon in the game, but as for getting things done, how to accomplish things and the relative benefits of one action or item over another, it is woefully lacking.
The combat interface is terrible, to say the least. Controlling your own ships and seeing what is going on is difficult at best. Your POV is limited to the picture from a single ship (yours or the enemy's) if your ship is in the wrong place to see what is going on (it mistakenly or randomly wandered off), oh well, guess you'll just have to hope. The orders you have are very limited, and often are not followed by the ships you give them to. The so-called 3-D combat is really nothing more than a 3-D picture on which you fight in a single plane, i.e., 2-D without the clarity of what the heck is happening.
Industry and planetary economy? A few sliders and pie charts. How much do you want to spend on ship building vs. terraforming vs. industry vs. income/research? That's it.
Research? I like the way the research tree is developed, one of the few benefits to the game. However, there is no real information on what the research buys you (yes, weapons have little bar charts showing how great they are, but the bars don't relate to anything concrete, more damage, but how much more, etc.). Ok, I get green lasers instead of red, but how much better are they? How strong are those extra strong hulls, how much faster will I make things with that industry improvement? With no knowledge of the relative value of one improvement over another, it is difficult to direct research intelligently.
Ship design. Looks pretty, but here the problems with research, industry, and combat come to roost. You can't refit ships, so rebuilding your entire fleet may be needed whenever you make a major breakthrough (or is it? how much better was that again?). Building a sizeable fleet takes some time, and having it obsoleted every so often is a tooth grinding feeling.
How about diplomacy? The options here are pitiful. War, nothing (peace), non-agression, and allied. Little insight as to why one race will ally or non-agression with you when another won't and the classic problem of no apparent (maybe yes, maybe no) repercussions from a race breaking treaties with you (or you with them) are rife. You can give some fuds to allies only, but do nothing otherwise to influence those who aren't your allies, by direct choice at least.
Not worth the trouble, and I'd like the money and 30 or more hours I spent on the game back please.

Disappointed

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 17 / 28
Date: October 08, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I love Space 4X games: Pax Imperium, Spaceward Ho, Gal Civ and the first two MOOs. This one ranks with MOOIII- a promising idea very poorly executed with a number of unforgivables.

The Good- I like the cell shaded art, the 3-D universe is adequate, the tech tree is uniquely represented.

The Bad: Combat is atrocious. Either you have to let the computer fight it out (Inefficiently=Major losses) or wait for VERY long load times for player controlled combat to begin (Yes I have the recommended system requirements)

Once in Player controlled combat, you can't see what you need to see to make decent decisions. As a whole the experience is miserable. Nothing redeeming about it. Fleet management is mediocre- specialty ships without guidance on how they work together. Does a shield ship make a shield for the entire fleet or only for itself?

The manual: The makers of the game should be ashamed for putting this thing out. Poorly written (The Auto-Refuel button should not be confused with the auto-refuel button on the refuel menu- huh?), information poor and just plain bad. Weapons characteristics? Development trees? ANYTHING except icon ID?

Then I thought well they did give an SOTS appendix in a PDF on the disk, its likely all there! Wrong! It's back-story, but no useful operational information.

Hmmmm- The Website! The website will HAVE to have some sort of information about how to play the game. Wrong. Tutorial mode? Lame.

Guys this is just ridiculous.

Lastly, the voice acting! Sit yourselves down- Simple rule of thumb-

STAFF SHOULD NOT DOUBLE AS VOICE ACTORS!

The fake accents are exceptionally irritating and I could not find an off switch for the VOs except to turn down the volume on my computer. I don't know if they were saving money or having fun but wow is it bad.

No scalable graphics.

Ok I'm done. I'm heading back to the Dread Lords

There is a lot of potential in this game, but the overall execution is pretty poor. I WANT to like this game but I think these past 20 hours will be my only 20 hours with this game.

This game can be and should be fixed.

Amazing new take on empire-building

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: November 05, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Sword of the Stars is an incredibly well done twist on the 4X genre. It features a very clean and intuitive user interface that lets you manage your empire quickly and easily, and keeps the game moving. While the turn-based portion of the game isn't as deep or involved as other empire building games, it more than makes up for it with the RTS battle portion. The space battles that occur when your fleets encounter the enemy are somewhat reminiscent of Empire at War, but with more tactical variation that keeps it interesting. The dynamic tech tree keeps each game feeling unique, and with four races to learn, there is a great deal of replay value.

The only downsides are poor LAN support (I was unable to play it over a university network, but the internet play worked just fine), and a slighltly long load time for RTS battles. Make sure you have a decent graphics card to keep the loading time down.

Overall, a great game and a must-have for 4X fans.

sword of the Stars

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: November 09, 2006
Author: Amazon User

4x strategy games are my favorite genre and after reading the reviews of the game I was really looking forward to playing a game that sounded like a cross between Master of Orion and Homeworld. Sadly the 3-D map was so cumbersome to use I couldn't figure out where my ships were. The tech tree was almost as mystifying and it was totally unclear what the advantage of one advance was to another. The space battles were similarly disappointing. After playing for a couple of hours I got so bored I went back to GALCIV II. This is a genre that has really been neglected by the game industry. Hopefully Space Empires V will succeed were this game failed.

Sword of the Stars

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: November 10, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game is very fun after you get used to the unique interface. The 3-D approach adds a lot to the game, even though it takes a little practice to be good using it.

Version 1.1.1 patch review

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: November 16, 2006
Author: Amazon User

4x space strategy games are my favorite type of computer game. It has been many years since I have found one that was any good. (The last one that was any good was Masters of Orion II). The folks at Kerberos have really done a good job with Sword of the Stars.

After playing the game only once I looked to see if there were any updates or patches available. [...]

The one game I played without the update, I found the interface to be a little bit clunky and awkward. It was especially difficult to manage my fleet in combat. For example, while focusing on one of your ships during a battle it could be difficult to find your other ships. After the patch you can simply tab through your ships with the TAB and SHIFT+TAB keys. This is just one of dozens of things that were fixed/added in the patch. Virtually everything in the patch addressed and fixed issues with the user interface. After I added the patch the usability, as well as my lever of fun, was greatly increased.

What I liked:
After getting a colony started it requires very little maintenance. Other than building the latest defense satellites the colonies actually require zero upkeep. This frees up time to build your fleets to explore and exterminate.

The combat is done well. I'm running the game on a blazingly fast computer so I have not experienced the lag in loading the combat others complain about. At first I didn't think I would like real time combat, and it does take some getting used to. The nice thing is you can micromanage your fleet and try to control each individual ship, or put some on auto and just control a few.

Each race is truly unique and different form the others. A strategy that works well for one race will not work for the others. The biggest difference between the races is there mode of star travel.

The technology tree is unique and different every game. Even if you play the same race every time your technology tree will be distinctive each game. The random tech tree was a nice touch.

What I don't like:
The diplomacy is nearly nonexistent. Your relation with other empires simply has three states: hostile, non-aggression, and alliance. The hostile and non-aggression states are pretty straight forward. The alliance state plainly doesn't have enough benefit for being in the alliance.

There is only one planet per system. I would have liked to see multiple planets per system, even the potential to have 1 to 3 would have been better. Also the planet maintenance is just a little too simplistic. For example, it would have been nice if there were some way to designate a world as a science colony or industry world.

Overall it's a great game I highly recommend for many hours of fun.

Not a 4X game for everyone...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: December 07, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I love 4X "Conquer the Galaxy" type games, I was hooked from the original Starflight game. Then picked up the addiction again with MOO 1 and moved through Stars!, Space Empires III & IV, and Gal Civ 1 & 2.

Where other 4X games are going into detailed empire management (Gal Civ/Space Empires) SOTS is concentrating on Space Combat.

If you're a micro-manager type that loves to control every aspect of every colony you have, then this may not be the game for you. As others have said SOTS minimized the amount of colony management to work on the combat engine.

If you'd like a space combat game with a minimal amount of colony management, then SOTS if your game. That said, the game isn't perfect... but what is? The major issues I have are:

- Tech descriptions: It is hard to tell how much some techs will help your empire as the descriptions aren't fully detailed. (This however goes away a bit after you've played a few games and experiment with the techs.)

- Enemy Ships/Weapons: There isn't yet an interface to look at known enemy ship designs or what type of weapons they are using. What weapons did the Hivers use in that last battle? (The only way to tell is to pay very close attention in the battle and keep notes.)

Excellent Space Conquest Game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: January 18, 2007
Author: Amazon User

For anyone interested in the "4X" genre of space conquest games, this title is an excellent choice. The AI is decent, the size of the universe is customizable from 16 to 350 stars, and there is a random tech tree that changes from game to game. In addition, each of the 4 playable races has a different mode of FTL travel, which adds additional complexity. Finally, unlike many games in this genre the actual space combat is incredibly complex and well done, both graphically and in terms of game play. Ships (of which there are 3 different size classes) are fully customizable, and all three size classes are useful through to the end of any given game due to tech advances. All in all, this is an amazingly fun game with high replay value.

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