If you read the IGN review and want a second opinion from someone who knows what he is talking about, you came to the right place. Sins of a Solar Empire 2 is living proof that the recurrent anecdote “RTS is dead” is merely that, an anecdote. There’s no way a dead genre could have so many great games coming out just this year alone, even less releasing a game like Sins of a Solar Empire 2, which is by far the best RTS of 2024. Its unique mix of RTS with 4X set in space pioneered by Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion is fundamentally revamped and improved in every way possible.
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- Genre: Real-Time Strategy/ 4X
- Developer: Ironclad Games Corporation, Stardock Entertainment
- Publisher: Stardock Entertainment
- Release Date: 15th August, 2024
- Price: $49.99/ 48,99€/ £41.99
- Buy at: Steam
- Reviewed On: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X 3.70 GHz, 16GB RAM, NVIDIA GTX 2080
Now, let’s start by getting this out of the way: I haven’t played the original all that much. A couple of games, several years back, and I barely remember a thing by now. I know that I have a physical special edition of it in my games collection that comes with a massive, lovely, old-school manual. It would help if you read this review as someone looking at Sins of a Solar Empire 2 as a newcomer to the series because my memory isn’t good enough to remember every little detail of what I played nearly a decade and a half ago.
Rebuilding the 4X and RTS Mix
Sins of a Solar Empire 2 isn’t as much a direct sequel to Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion as much as it is a new, much improved, better looking, and perfected version of it. Sins of a Solar Empire 2 stays very close to the unique formula that made it a stand-out and highly innovative title, even after more than a decade of his unique 4X meets RTS formula has been out and about. I’m so glad to say that in 2024, this formula remains as engaging, as fun, and as captivating as it was nearly 2 decades ago.
You might be wondering, how that formula works. Well, let me explain: Sins of a Solar Empire 2 is a mix between 2 massive sub-genres of strategy: 4X (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate), pioneered by games like Master of Orion and Civilization; And real-time strategy. As the leader of one of 3 races (6 factions, 2 each), it’s your role to expand your galactic empire by using warfare, diplomacy, and economics. The game plays out in real time, and you control two basic unit types: planets (or asteroids), and ships. The first acts as your “base buildings”, where you’ll be building planetary and orbital structures. The second is your combat units, with which you’ll explore space, colonize new planets, and conquer your enemies. Let’s get a little bit more into each one of these.
Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate
You could say the game takes place between these two plains, but one thing is important to establish now: you can have an empire without any fleets but you can’t have fleets without planets. As a space game, almost every objective will inevitably come down to either conquering new planets to expand your empire or defending them against enemy incursions. The way that planets are handled in Sins of a Solar Empire 2 is very interesting. When a planet is colonized (by using a dedicated ship), you’re immediately able to start building, and you can do so on the surface, or on the planet’s orbit, each serving very different purposes. Planetary structures are limited by the kind of planet
There’s some variety when it comes to planets, with each offering different bonuses and penalties, and not all are available to be colonized from the get-go, as more challenging environments will require quite a bit of your typical 4X research. The buildings on your planet’s orbit mainly pertain to large ship-production factories, civilian and military research stations, refineries, trade ports, and planetary defences. Every planet starts with limited building slots, and those can be gradually increased. On the planet’s surface, a different number of buildings can also be built, but these are a lot less interesting, mostly providing stats bonuses to resource production, defences, and research speeds. It’s an okay system, it could be a little more interesting, but it would probably add another layer of complexity that would go against the faster 4X/RTS nature of Sins of a Solar Empire 2.
One thing I have to commend Sins of a Solar Empire 2 for doing is the simplification of economy and base building. Initially, it might look a bit complicated, but play for an hour or two and you’ll see that’s no different than something like Age of Empires 2 or Company of Heroes, just with a galactic flavour and futuristic coat of paint.
Expansion is probably the most straightforward of any game I remember playing. There are no convoluted requirements for planet colonization. As long as you have the necessary research unlocked, and no enemies occupy the planet, just send a frigate with the ability to colonize and it’s yours. In a matter of minutes, you’ll be able to set up building production and get your economy going. There’s also no awkward period where a new planet is a resource drain in your economy (like I believe it was in Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion). As soon as your mines are up and running, credits, metals and crystals will flow into your coffers. In turn, this means that expansion can happen rather quickly, and it’s actually incentivized, because there are no downsides to it other than having another colony to protect, and if your troops are spread thin, that’s the only time I can see expansion being a problem.
Research in Sins of a Solar Empire 2 is equally simple. There are two types of research: civilian and military. Build civilian research stations if you want to level up your capability of unlocking new civilian technologies, or military if you want to focus on the military. I’ve found out that’s probably better to have a middle ground, and continuously expand both at the same rate. Research is essential to the game’s progression, as this is what will allow you to colonize new types of planets, expand your troop supply (supply is just the unit cap), build new regular and capital ships, obtain new orbital buildings, new passive stats, new weapons, active abilities, and all manner of things. Unlike other 4X games, like Civilization, where most research happens across a lengthy period, in Sins of a Solar Empire 2, if your economy can support it, in a 2 or 3-hour game you’ll have everything unlocked.
The research aspect is tied to the amount of research stations you have (these are orbital buildings) also means that you’re encouraged to capture and conquer other planets to increase the number of stations you can build and ramp up research capabilities.
“Credits Will Do Fine“
The game’s economy is equally simple, there are three basic resources: 1 – Credits can be passively obtained by trading; 2 – Crystals that are obtained by building mining stations in crystal asteroids; 3 – Metal acquired from metal asteroids. These are rarely in short supply, and as long as you have a healthy pool of planets under your command you’ll rarely find yourself bankrupt. In fact, I even think that the game’s resource production might be a bit too generous, but it goes along nicely with the game’s forcing your hand into fast and aggressive expansion as it does with all other systems.
There are other types of special exotic. These can be obtained by either buying them at auctions with your influence points or by creating an exotic refinery to transform credits, crystals and metals into these, more rare resources. As you can already imagine, these are used to build massive superstructures like starbases and Titan ships. They are a nice addition, and the ability to secure them early before researching the refinery by getting them at auctions can give you some massive battlefield advantages.
Equip your planets with enough factories and watch in awe as they churn out spaceships by the hundreds and thousands. Ships are built individually and can be controlled individually too, apart from the space carriers, which automate their cadre of units (if you want you can manage each one of the carrier’s fighters, but can you really manage hundreds of barely visible ships in the heat of battle? More on that on the next page.
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