Not MOO3, but the closest thing since

User Rating: 7.8 | Sword of the Stars PC
By Osiris1975 | Review Date:
If you are like me, when you first play this game, you might be a little put off. Some of the voice acting is laughable (like the human scientist), the graphics aren't exactly cutting edge, and planetary management is very abstracted as a collection of sliders representing where your planet's resources are spent. Play Sword of the more then a couple of hours though, and then it begins to shine. The gameplay is the best thing about this game. I haven't experienced the thrill of pitting my massive fleets against an enemy to expand an empire since Masters of Orion 3, and while not quite as complex of a game as that was, SotS does capture the core gameplay that MOO3 had. The 3D tech tree, which in fact resembles a forest of tech icons and lines connecting them surrounding you, is well conceived. The game randomly including certain techs each time you start a new session, which helps keep the game fresh.

The strategic map is a nice, 3D map of galaxies that represents most of the information you would need with an attractive interface. Planetary management is a bit oversimplified for my tastes. I would like to have seen actual building construction on the planets similar to GalCiv, but the developers were seeking to simplify the 4x genre, so the absensce of it is understandable. What is not understandable, however is the inability to set ships to continuous build on your planets, and the inability to vector built ships to another planet automatically. With enormous number of ships you can build, it would be helpful if you could vector them to just a few rally points for easier fleet management and building. The Tactical Map is similarly informative, but this is where I have one big complaint. Their is a lack of control options when it comes to moving you fleet. While you can create a formation in a fleet management screen, ships often fall out of formation when they get too close to each other. There are no preset formations, such as in the Total War series, and for some reason, once you obtain dreadnought ships, your defending fleet doesnt start in a position the puts it between the invaders and the planets, which makes no sense to me. Fortunately, Kerberos Productions is very responsive to player feedback on their forums, and will soon release a patch with an enormous list of bug fixes and convenience updates. The game customization features are substantial, allowing you to pick from several different types of galaxies with over 300 systems, and allowing you to seed these systems with up to 8 empires for you to compete with. Unfortunately, there are only 4 races, but each has its own unique designs, travel technology and bonuses. There are several other customization features that I wont get into. Graphically, SotS isn't cutting edge, but still remains attractive, and the attention to detail is nice. Look into the windows of your human cruiser class ship, and you will actually see crew members. Tanker ships will have 'flammable' stickers on them, dreadnought class ships are an impressive sight to behold. In conclusion, if you loved Masters of Orion 3, then SotS is a must have, especially considering the lack of good 4x space games with tactical combat since the abysmal release of Moo4. More importantly, SotS has proven that the 4x genre is not dead, and Kerberos Productions will build upon its debut release to create the rightful successor to Masters of Orion 3.

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