Combat Systems Online, Commander!
The game’s combat system is its highlight: each individual weapon system in each ship is simulated, and there are ships with multiple of these, and each individual projectile is also simulated. You can have ships whose sole job is to intercept missiles and torpedoes, for example. This system of simulating absolutely everything means that very few engagements feel repetitive because the composition of each fleet dictates how the battle will play out. So if the enemy had a lot area of denial weapons and you can’t penetrate their defensive line, your best bet is to retreat, reform your fleet and attempt to overwhelm them. You can do this by launching a massive barrage of missiles, or by launching hundreds of small fighters and bombers that are too fast to be shot by these defensive weapon systems. There’s a lot of deep mechanics at play, and I am glad to say that the combat system is the highlight of the game. It has a very solid foundation of “everything is simulated”, and from that basis intricacies and depth that are natural and intuitive to the way this system is designed. It’s also a system that doesn’t feel deterministic, allowing for a lot of experimentation, very different fleet compositions, and a lot of on-the-fly adaptations. It makes everything feel plausible.
Another thing that always screams good combat mechanics is how poorly balanced doomstacks don’t work, and can be defeated by a smaller, more effective fighting force. I have experienced this in Sins of a Solar Empire 2 more than I would like to admit. My first experience had me frustratingly close to a victorious scenario when my fleet wasn’t just big enough to overcome those last lines of planetary defences before being destroyed (the lack of long-range javelin units didn’t do me any favours). So what I did was to muster the largest space armada ever seen, maxing out my supply limits (worry not, the supply limitations in Sins 2 solely act as your population cap), and ordering my factories to create new units until their walls were glowing red from all the heat. Joined up my other two existing fleets together and an almighty, massive, hundreds-strong doomstack was ready to steamroll the enemy.
As soon as the hyperdrives were firing up on all cylinders, they hurried to capture the last, heavily guarded planet, with victory certain on their mind. However, the hubris of replacing area defence ships (imagine anti-aircraft) for aggressive missile flingers was a fatal mistake, soon to be realized- too late- in the heat of battle.
But the battle system isn’t also without its flaws: Sins of a Solar Empire 2 would greatly benefit from the use of battle formations because, as of right now, the ships will adapt themselves to whatever fleet composition you have, and having to constantly be microing their location can be rather exhausting, to the point where it’s really not feasible.
Each faction has its own unique unit roster that plays very asymmetrically to one another: The TEC, for example, have the most durable capital ships and the unit with the longest range in the game, the Javelis LRM, making them a great all-rounder and beginner friendly faction. The Advent have massive shields and they specialize in mutual ship-support and abilities. The Vasari have phase missiles that are capable of bypassing the enemy shields, and the massive Orkulus Star Base – that’s basically a massive, heavily armed spaceport and fortress… That moves. This is a very surface-level overview, but these unique features of each faction extend to every level of play.
The game’s AI is very aggressive, and even at low levels of difficulty, they’ll put up quite the fight. I’m happy to say that I haven’t seen the AI resort to fleet templates all that often, but maybe I just haven’t played the same map over and over again to see if that’s the case. This might also be because I might be bad at the game, but the AI appears to be far from the pushover. If, for some reason, I find this to change across my several, upcoming hours of playtime, I’ll come back and update this review.
The Beauty of Space
Nowadays it is not rare to hear people say “Graphics don’t matter”, and for the most part, I would agree, that graphics don’t matter, as long as the art style is aesthetically pleasing or consistent with the game world. But I’ll be damn if a great-looking game like Sins of a Solar Empire 2 doesn’t impress even the most sceptic of pixel art lovers. The ship models not only look amazing but also transmit an impressive sense of scale. Every ship looks like a massive, multistory building with hundreds of personnel living aboard. Even the smaller Corvettes, one of the basic units, look and feel huge when you look at them from up close. The larger the ship, the more awe-inspiring they are. In fact, they kind of remind me of the Warhammer 40,000 scale of ships. Everything looks ridiculously large, and that is how I imagine space exploration and combat would be, so I love it.
The only department that lacks a bit in visual fidelity is planets: they look basic and flat, no matter the kind of planet you’re looking at. But then again, you won’t be looking at them so close that you would notice this.
This childish sentiment of awesomeness by looking at big things going fast in space is amplified in combat. Now the big ship fire at each other and man, is it a goddamn spectacle! The particle effects in this game are something out of Star Wars: the lasers are colourful greens, reds and blues; explosions are massive; the shields absorbing shots are exactly what you would expect from a sci-fi movie. It’s an incredible spectacle. The game’s really good looking and it’s always fantastic hiding the UI and just watching the battles unfold.
I think the User Interface of Sins of a Solar Empire 2 works a lot better than Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion. Everything is pretty much always visible on a single screen, and whatever you need to access, you can do it with just a click.
Certain things could be improved, for sure. I would love to have a dedicated menu for each fleet, where I can manage and immediately see how much of each type of unit I have available. Currently, you’ll need to look at the top right of your screen for that, which makes very little sense, and the ship icons aren’t the most recognizable from the get go. The pause button helps a lot to sort things out and reduces this frustration.
Sins of a Solar Empire 2 Is Great, But…
I have very little to complain about about Sins of a Solar Empire 2, but one thing that had me quite sad was reading that the game’s single-player campaign is coming in a future DLC. So what you get, for 40 dollars, is the base game, a dozen or so premade scenarios, and a skirmish generator that goes up to 10 players. If you’re expecting a campaign, you’ll need to wait for it to come out and fork out another 30 bucks to buy the Premium Edition.
Fortunately – I think… – this Premium Edition has a bit more up its sleeve when compared to other, less content-rich twins from other titles. The Premium Edition also has the Digital Soundtrack for the game, the Paths to Power Scenario Pack, The Reinforcements Ship Pack, the Times of War Campaign Expansion (“a full single-player story-driven campaign that relates the tragic story of the TEC, Vasari, and Advent”), and the Harbinger Expansion, which will finally bring a new faction to the series, and by its menacing name, I suspect this faction might be the one the Vasari are running away from.
This is what most annoys me in Sins of a Solar Empire 2: The game’s setting, no matter how basic it might appear on the surface, is actually deeply fascinating, with very well-defined factions, each with their very own, unique design and playstyles, having their progression being locked behind another paywall that’s yet to come just doesn’t sit right with me. Now, even though I’m saying this, I know that I’ll be buying the campaign when it comes out, but I think this is a massive negative if you’re looking for a single-player experience, as you’ll probably find yourself lacking the available options mentioned two paragraphs above.
Sins of a Solar Empire 2 already has mod support implemented (not Steam Workshop, it works through mod.io), and you can download and activate the mods from inside the game itself. If the modding is half as good as Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, then Sins of a Solar Empire 2 has a very bright future ahead (I know you’re all expecting Star Wars and Star Trek).
Final Score: 9/10
As a game, Sins of a Solar Empire 2 is a clear 10 in almost every aspect. The game’s so well done and it pays a perfect homage to Rebellions while improving on almost every aspect. It’s hard to find flaws in it, and I’ve tried and nitpicked what I could. Aside from some questionable design decisions in the UI department, and the lack of any new factions, I believe Sins of a Solar Empire 2 is well worth your time and money investments if you’re looking for a space RTS with a good combat system, a competent 4X layer, and a lot of content. However, there’s a glaring issue that I can’t overlook at the moment, and that’s the lack of a campaign, I know that the game isn’t being sold with it (alas, it’s still in development), and as a single-player exclusive gamer I can see how the lack of a proper story and custom made missions can be a tough selling point, and I have no doubt a lot of players will wait for it to come out before buying it.
Pros:
- It improves on the original in every aspect, while working to fix most of the problems the original had;
- Amazing combat systems that simulate every weapon system individually and an amazing roster of different units;
- Some of the best graphics in gaming.
Cons:
- No single-player campaign on release, and it’s going to be a paid DLCÇ
- Lack of fleet formations;
- The UI could use a little more readability.
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