An awesome action packed empire building game. However very difficult at times.

User Rating: 8.7 | Sword of the Stars: Born of Blood PC
By SunofVich | Review Date:
Sword of the Stars is a 4x game that features 5 (including Born of Blood Expansion) very unique races, SolForce (Humans) Tarka (Reptiles), Hiver (Insects), Liir (Fish/Dolphins) and with BoB the Zuul (Kangaroos of doom). Each race has its own unique look to each of the ships and how they transverse the galaxy is different as well. Humans use node drives which makes ships travel down routes that are connected to each star. And the Tarka use the traditional scifi method, warp. The game is turned based with RTS elements in combat. There are 3 classes of ship, Destroyer, Cruiser, and Dreadnought. Each ship has 3 sections, Command section, Mission Section and Engine section. Each can give more weapon hardpoints or do something special like ferry troops to a planet or bring mining equipment. Another thing about ship combat is that the game does not already know the damage the ship will do before it has fired its weapons. For example in Master of Orion 3 if you had damage count on the amount of damage done would sometimes be displayed before your ships fire. Not so here the ships have turrets (which you can visibly see swiveling to aim at a target) which aim and shoot. If the bullet hits the ship then its damaged if the bullet misses then it has missed.

I have had this game for 2 weeks now and still have not been able to win. Even with the game set on easy. Although it is not the AI players that are besting me it is the menaces. Every once is a while in the game an even will happen. Such as asterioids that need to be shot down to protect a colony or even more sinister Locusts. These add to the games overall difficulty because you are already battling the Computer players or other people (more on that later) when this sphere of death come rolling into your domain.

Also putting the game on easy does not mean the AI will not build monster large fleets. No matter what be prepared for a long drawn out confrontation if you see a fleet heading to one of your planets sometimes its just one scout ship. Sometimes its a Hiver invasion fleet of about 250 ships.

Although I have not played multi player it sounds very different then what has been done in previous 4x games. When you start you may be playing with 2 other people. if one person quits then the AI takes over if some one joins then he takes over an AI position. You can also set the AI policy to either expand the empire or maintain it and protect. So when you leave the AI will follow this policy. At first I thought, Jeez I can't believe I spent 50 dollars on a game that is impossible to win at. But I can't seem to put it down. Next I will try a custom game with no random events and hope that the locust will not come.

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