The late 90s were an odd time in gaming. New technologies were coming out and the ongoing transition from DOS to Windows remained a thorny mess in the gaming space. For all that, there was definitely a more experimental vibe – a willingness to try new things and see if they stuck. Historically, Master of Orion was the gold standard in the 4X genre (and still is for some folks). Then came Emperor Of The Fading Suns. Its release was not without difficulty, and its sharp learning curve looked and played more like a cliff face. Now, almost three decades later, the technical bugs which plagued it have been ironed out, leaving only the punishing challenge.
Emperor Of The Fading Suns Enhanced begins a 1990s-quality pre-rendered cutscene highlighting the basic parameters. Far in the future, humanity reached the stars through ancient wonders known as jump gates. They spread out, built a far-flung Republic of high technology and higher ideals, then screwed it up and descended into neo-feudal barbarism. One man, Vladimir, ultimately crushed his enemies, got the Universal Church on board with his ambitions, bribed who couldn’t be conquered, assassinated who couldn’t be bribed, established a Great Charter to lay down the foundations of his Empire, and crowned himself “Emperor of The Known Worlds.” He died almost immediately after the crown settled on his head. The Empire has been paralyzed with civil war ever since. Into this snake pit, you must attempt to garner the votes needed to be crowned Emperor and hold on to it long enough to stick (and hopefully not suffer the same fate as Vladimir). Along the way, you’ll need to develop worlds, re-discover lost wonders both intellectually and physically, defend your holdings from your adversaries, avoid the sanctions of the Church, and keep from being murdered either by humans or aliens.
Visually, Emperor Of The Fading Suns Enhanced has what would today be considered a lot of old-school charm. The pixel art for different units is rendered well enough for players to easily distinguish what they’re sending into the field or into space. The various unit renderings, both 2D for infantry and 3D for armor and other vehicles, conveys the aesthetic of the setting as well as providing players with a good notion of what they’re dealing with. There’s little in the way of flashy special effects because there doesn’t need to be. Character portraits for different faction leaders, as well as stills for news events such as the conquest of a city by alien forces or the assassination of a noble, maybe slightly pixelated but they’re still gorgeous to look at even after all this time. Even the Archives function which details different technologies and factions has the look of an illuminated manuscript which is just a joy to read. It makes games of the same era seem almost quaint when it comes to how they present information. The overall quality of the UI is good, but at the same time, there’s a sense of information obfuscation, a complication which indirectly contributes to the overall difficulty of the game. If you want to get good, you need to be able to figure out all the nooks and crannies of the UI.
The audio elements of Emperor Of The Fading Suns Enhanced still hold up pretty well. Aside from the voice over during the cutscene and the announcements of your family House at the start of each turn, there’s a dearth of voice acting. What’s there is good, but compared to something like Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, it’s perhaps a little disappointing. On the other hand, there are plenty of explosions, weapons fire sounds, and other sci-fi flourishes to help sell the action, sporadic though it might be. There is a soundtrack which veers wildly from overdriven bombast to elegiac tone poems, and each piece feels right for the setting. The only quibble here is that there seems to be a lack of a shuffle option.
At the start of this review, I described the gameplay for Emperor Of The Fading Suns Enhanced as “punishing.” And I absolutely stand by that term. Even with the opponent AI set to “Beginner” level difficulty, you will get your head handed to you. A large element of this difficulty comes from the fact that you’re not starting with a typical 4X scenario of a single world with nothing but a scout ship and a galaxy to explore. You’ve got quite a bit to start with, with a detachment on the capital world of Byzantium Secundus which absolutely needs to be preserved at all cost, and your home planet which is not as completely under your House’s thumb as you’d like it to be. That’s your starting point, and it’s a bear because you have widely separated forces, both of which need to be supplied, along with hostile neighbors who want to destroy you. And that doesn’t even count the process of building up your home planet, along with others which you may touch down on. In some respects, the mechanisms for development sound simple enough for anybody who’s played more than one 4X game in their lives. You research techs, you unlock new structures to build or units to form, you build up, and life gets better. Sorta.
The single biggest hitch in all of this is that your logistics are not centralized. Normally in a 4X game, your resources are all in one big basket. Yes, you might have one world which is producing a lot of food and another is your industrial powerhouse. But mechanisms are occurring behind the scenes to make sure those resources are getting distributed to the right places within your domain. Not so in this case. There is no automated distribution, no big basket which everybody draws from. When you produce food at a Farm settlement, you have to tote the barge and lift the bale in order to get it to other settlements and large groups of troops. When a Mine produces Metal, you have to move a unit counter from the Mine to whatever settlement might need it. And as a general rule, it does not pay to simply move those defenseless “units” down the road without at least some sort of escort. At the same time, you cannot leave developed hexes undefended. If you don’t have at least a token guard force, the settlement on that hex has a chance to flip to becoming a rebel stronghold, which you then have to go in and retake. Expect to build a lot of militia units to keep an eye on various places. Even research isn’t centralized. Building a Lab structure doesn’t just speed up research efforts; each Lab can pursue a given topic independently, allowing rapid advancement within a given research field or slower but broader research efforts which can theoretically move your overall efforts ahead of your enemies because you’ve got so many more options than they do.
There are so many moving parts in Emperor Of The Fading Suns which are under your direct control, which means that you’re practically guaranteed to drop a stitch or ten while you’re trying to learn how all the moving parts work. The ancient maxim of “save early, save often,” has never been more appropriate, and multiple save files should be expected to fill your hard drive. Honestly, this game would probably be more enjoyable in a multiplayer situation, because all of your buddies will likely be as confused and hampered as you are. I will say it’s possible to learn all the different systems involved, but it’s not going to be easy, nor will it be swift. You will get stomped on a lot before you reach a state of “passable.”
Given all that, it’s equal parts frustrating and gratifying that there’s so much narrative meat in Emperor Of The Fading Suns. The gratification is on par with Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri in terms of depth and worldbuilding. Revealed primarily through the Archives function, and expanded by your research efforts, you get a decent (if not entirely complete picture) of life in the Empire. Fans of the TTRPG will certainly enjoy trying to create their own backstory for this particular period of setting history. You definitely feel like there’s a grand sweep of history that you’re not just a part of, but you’re also making. At the same time, the level of challenge hampers your appreciation of all the cool plot elements and lore tidbits. Sometimes, you’re just too busy to appreciate the fine details of the setting because you’re getting your ass kicked from every direction.
Emperor Of The Fading Suns Enhanced stands out, for good or ill, as an excellent example of games preservation. It’s informative to those who track the evolution of genres, systems, and even the industry itself to have games which run essentially unchanged from their original releases (save for bug fixes and stability/compatibility issues). It’s educational to the younger generation of players, particularly those who aren’t aware of the things older gamers had to put up with, and which held our attention. And for all the agony of the learning curve, it can be enjoyable if you’re willing to put in the time. If you’ve gotten bored with Stellaris or Sins Of A Solar Empire II, this might be your next big challenge.
Axel reviewed Emperor Of The Fading Suns Enhanced on PC with a provided review copy.
