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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Almost as good as it gets

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: July 15, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Ok,I am reviewing the game from patch 1.1 or so, and perhaps giving it too many stars to even out older reviews. However, I personally feel that what we've got here is actually better than MOO2.

Yes, the diplomacy is very simple. Yes, there is no micromanagement. Yes, the 3d strategic map can be a bit confusing at times, although you get used to it much the same way I've gotten used to living in a 3d real world.

Many of the negative reviews here (and on reputable gaming sites)seem to indicate that people have not read the manual (by which I include the digital manual which was included in at least my boxed copy) properly: the "atrocious combat" problems can be solved with the click of the F key to refocus on any object on the screen, and setting the ships to be controlled by the computer in-game combat and expecting to have control over them yourself as well seems just silly.

The pros have been stated over and over already; but just let me repeat one: MP in a strat/tactical battle combo game. That's what the Total War crowds has been bleating about for years and have been continually told is impossible. Nope, kerberos figured it out, lads and lassies.

To be quite honest, the simplicity of the planetary control, after the dead boring Dread Lords debacle of building the same buildings again and again and again and again, is like getting air conditioning in a home where previously the temperature was in the tropical range and the internal humidity in the below sea-level range. Now you get to concentrate on playing a game. While a great fan of fiddling about on the micro level, I've been extremely disappointed at the last five years' attempts at making it work. Imperialism 1 made it a selling point. MOO3 and GalCiv 2 made me play those games for about a week before deciding I had better things to do with my time.

I'm looking forward to the expansion, but I still think that the fact that I'm still playing the original after over one and a half years more or less speaks for itself.

Macro Management fun!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: March 22, 2008
Author: Amazon User

After playing for quite a while I have found that this game is very entertaining and is hugely replayable. While the 3D star map does take some getting used to, the simple tech tree and simplified system development controls free the player to think about strategy, instead of micromanaging every single colony.

It reminds of Master of Orion, rather than Master of Orion II or III. Real time combat is exciting and more involved than just the rock / paper / scissors approach so many RTS games use. Each tech has multiple counters and there are no ultimate technologies that lead to instant galactic domination. Your early ships are never really obsolete and can compete even in the late game stages (albeit, not very effectively. Still, they can slow an enemy advance or thin out the enemy fleet to allow your main force an easier combat) which says volumes for thought the developers put into the technology tree.

The game itself is set in the earliest stages of galactic exploration and conquest. Each race begins without any real contact with the others, and default to a hostile reaction. Your ships are very small, ~30m for destroyers, ~90m for cruisers and around 270m for dreadnoughts. For size comparisons think about a WWII German U-Boat for Destroyers, Firefly's Serenity for a Cruiser and a modern aircraft carrier for Dreadnoughts.

This games most standout feature, however is the use of momentum physics in its real time combat. Ships have to fight inertia when maneuvering, which can lead to some interesting, even disastrous combat situations with collisions and radical evasive maneuvers. The graphics in combat are superb considering the low end system requirements and the developers active participation on their game forum is truly remarkable. Their constant attention to fan input and their efforts to improve their product are constantly making this game better and more fun to play.

I would recommend this game to fan of the 4x genre.

Beer and Pretzels

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: November 03, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This is a "beer and pretzels" 4x space game. It's simple, does not involve much micro management, and can create that "just one more turn" feeling that keeps you up into the wee hours. If that is what you are looking for, something light with cool RT space battles and interesting tech for different races, then this game will satisfy you. If you want something more like "Civ in Space", then move on.

Be sure and download the patches, as they apparently fix some important bugs and game elements. I DL'd after install and have had no crashes or other weirdness.

For more gameplay info you can go to this webpage:

http://sots.rorschach.net/

There's a lot of stuff there that really should have been in the manual, but finding a really good manual with full information these days (as opposed to a manual that is really an excuse to make you by a strategy guide) is becoming a lot more rare.

No Middle Ground, You'll Love It or Hate it

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: February 15, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I have listened and read quite a few reviews on this game. Here is what it comes down to in simple terms: If you like a game that gets in to specifics, quantities even going out two or three decimals, fine details in building a civilization - you will not like this game. If you don't enjoy working with 3D interfaces - you will not like this game. And, I don't care what the box says in specs, if you don't have 2 GB RAM, L2 Cache, and 256 video card - your computer will not like this game.

The folks who do like it enjoy the colorful and intense battle scenes. Oh yeah, lasers, phasers, EM pulses, graviton, positron, and-kind of right on weapons being exchanged by the combatants. They like simplicity in their battle interface. They like simplicity in their scientific progress interface. They aren't into heavy diplomacy sessions, or overly intense economic readings. It's simply a fun game, with some strategy and some arcade play, that demands a lot of memory (good luck if you have an older system to get beyond 30 star systems, the stronger ones get taxed at 75 star systems in terms of processing).

There you go...that's it. If you know what you like, and you know what this delivers, go for it. If it doesn't fit your bill, don't buy it, or cry over it. You get what you pay for in the long run.

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