It seemed like such an unlikely concept at the time. A 4X-style space strategy welded to fast paced RTS battle mechanics sounded, on paper, like a good way to screw up both halves. But Ironclad Games and Stardock Entertainment pulled it off with Sins Of A Solar Empire. Not just pulled it off, but improved the formula, expanding it, making it better, and giving gamers a lot of red meat to chew on. And now, Ironclad Games comes back with a proper sequel which manages to retain the basic formula, yet also manages to completely change everything you thought you knew.
Sins Of A Solar Empire II takes place a few decades after the first game. The factions between the three different species have matured and solidified, and they’re still trying to annihilate their neighbors throughout the cosmos. As before, you’ll pick a species, you’ll pick a side (which has their own unique units and tech options mixed in with the general stuff), and pick a map. From there, you develop planets, build up your fleets, and fling them through the void at your enemies before they destroy you. The basic formula hasn’t changed. It’s the little details that turn Sins Of A Solar Empire II into a much burlier prospect than its predecessor.
Flat out, Sins Of A Solar Empire II just looks gorgeous. The sense of the familiar and the new is strongly on display here. Ship designs which appeared in the first game look refined, as if the design had been iterated upon, a new mark but the same model. New ships have joined the fray as well, some of them replacing designs from the first game while still feeling like they fit with the design philosophies of their fellows. Orbital structures look like they’ve undergone some evolution as well, but still remain roughly recognizable from before, and the new structures fit the aesthetic much the same way new ships do. There is no shortage of eye candy to be found here. Flashy explosions, rippling photospheres of stars, shields flaring under weapon strikes, and backgrounds that look almost like the James Webb Space Telescope coughed them up make Sins Of A Solar Empire II a complete feast for the eyes. If there’s any complaint to be found, it’s in the UI, and even then they’re pretty minor. From a pure arrangement perspective, players have all the relevant data they need to manage their empire up at the top of the screen, with planet “thumbnails” in the upper right and “fleet management” in the upper left. There is, however, a bit of a visual disconnect between the thumbnails and the rest of the UI, with the font used in the thumbnails being very different than the font used elsewhere. Not game breaking, but odd. Ironclad mentioned on their Steam page that there was an AI process (trained on internal data) to iterate UI elements during development, so one wonders if that is an artifact of the process. Beyond that, the research/tech tree feels a little cramped. Granted, it felt the same way in the first game, but it’s a little more obvious now, particularly since we’ve got so much cool artwork tied to those research subjects now. Seriously, the art department just went all out making those research subject images beyond cool, and it really does add both enjoyment and utility to the research process.
The audio may be where Sins Of A Solar Empire II stumbles the most. Not a fatal stumble, but it’s the one rough area in an otherwise stellar game. The audio quality is good, to be sure. Nothing sounds muddy, no stutters that I’ve picked up, tones are nice and rich. There are distinct differences in the sounds used to signify the various weapon types, as well as special abilities. The voice acting is OK, but I kinda wanted it to be awesome. Again, it’s not a sound quality issue, it’s more the writing. A lot of the lines feel like they were either remixed or re-recorded from the first game. There are new lines, obviously, but they don’t necessarily stand out from the rest of the voice acting. As for the soundtrack, again, it feels kind of recycled from the first game. Given the variety of player options for different factions and such, I feel there was a missed opportunity to layer in leitmotifs as a means to give older songs a new vibe.
If you’ve sunk a lot of hours into the first game, Sins Of A Solar Empire II will have something of a learning curve. There are enough new wrinkles and adjustments to prior mechanics as to make jumping from the original to the sequel a bit of work. The first major change is the shifting connections between worlds. No longer static points and lines of advance, planets and “phase lanes” shift slowly over time, so what was once a safe rear area base could very easily wind up next door to a fortified enemy homeworld. Fortunately, you have a tool in the UI to see which way the planets will shift and prepare appropriately. Developing worlds is no longer quite as cumbersome as it used to be, but at the same time, it requires more attention to how much space is taken up around any given planet. You can’t “front load” resource extractors like you could in the first game while filling all the empty space with culture generators and research outposts. Now, each world requires a more tailored approach. Asteroid “planets” can’t do any research, but are great for getting resources. Desert and terrestrial planets offer up lots of slots and are great for research. New planet types such as crystalline and ferrous worlds offer up the potential for specialized resource extraction. Additionally, planets now have special item slots to allow you to customize a world even further. You can turn your homeworld into a fortress, or make it the linchpin of your cultural hegemony. Finally, each faction has a special “metacurrency” of sorts which provides universal benefits to their particular empire, but these are not as well explained as they probably need to be. Understanding how they work isn’t critical to getting the hang of gameplay, but it’s probably something to bone up on later.
Fleet development and management has also undergone some radical changes. In the first game, there was a stated expectation that you’d have your capital ships supported by lighter combatants. But, in practice, it just made more sense to build up fleets of nothing but capital ships (and later, titans), then fling them together. The lighter combatants didn’t actually provide any measurable benefit other than maybe serving as highly expensive decoys or a slightly faster planetary bombardment element. In Sins Of A Solar Empire II, the light combatants actually fulfill the roles they’re supposed to be performing. Going up against missile heavy opponents or those with lots of strike craft require vessels with lots of point defense to serve in the “escort” role. An opposing force which is full of heavier combatants which aren’t capital ships requires missile ships or the “cruiser killer” classes which have been added. You can try deathballing with nothing but capital ships, but you risk losing them, or at least heavily damaging them at a time when you can’t quite afford to have them out of the fight.
The loss of capital ships now hurts (and helps) in ways it didn’t before. The “command point” system from the first game is gone. In its stead, you have a number of “exotic materials” which are required to build capital ships (as well as perform certain research subjects and construct starbases). These can be found either by surveying your existing worlds, winning auctions from minor powers, finding “loose” materials in various planetary gravity wells, or by destroying enemy capital ships. Eventually, you’ll be able to manufacture your own exotics, but it’s a powerful check on building up fleet strength too fast. At the same time, it’s an equally powerful motivator to get out there, recover exotics, and build up experience against opponents.
Minor powers and diplomacy have been revamped from the “Rebellion” expansion for the first game. Instead of having to send emissary vessels (and keep them anchored in a gravity well to maintain the benefits), you now have an “influence point” system where you can slowly improve your relationships with the minor powers on the map and reap certain benefits from the relationship. Influence points also let you buy into auctions from minor powers. The diplomacy options for your opponents, however, seem to be a little more constrained than in the first game, and there’s a lot of information which appears to be excised. There’s only two ways a given scenario ends: nuking enemy homeworlds till they glow or (if you toggle the option) planting your flag in the most systems. No diplomatic victory, or any of the other alternate victory conditions which appeared in the expansions of the first game. I understand it’s a sequel, but the slate didn’t have to get wiped completely clean.
About the only glaring weakness in Sins Of A Solar Empire II is the same problem that the first game had. There’s no kind of narrative structure, no campaign, no personalities to rally behind. Just a bunch of maps and lots of potential multiplayer antics. I might not have minded so much if it didn’t seem like Ironclad Games was trying to set something up from a narrative perspective. Why have a cinematic teasing a looming threat if you’re not going to back it up with a good story arc? I can appreciate the little bits of worldbuilding buried here and there, but really wanted more. I’d hate to think we’re going to have to wait till the first expansion to get anything resembling a campaign.
In terms of pure strategy gaming goodness, Sins Of A Solar Empire II delivers, not by giving us “more of the same,” but by making substantive changes which improve on the previous entry while making it clear that this is its own game. It’s an engrossing evolution, about as close to a perfect sequel as you can get. I foresee a lot of hours spent as people work to get a handle on the new systems and how best to develop ships and worlds. Hopefully, Ironclad Games and Stardock Entertainment will take the opportunity to take the next logical step and give us some narrative chunks to help further draw players into this wonderfully well-crafted universe.
Axel reviewed Sins Of A Solar Empire II on PC with his own purchased copy.
