Reminiscent of MOO, with some nice modern-day elements blended in.
User Rating: 7.8 | Sword of the Stars PC
First of all I must say that I am a die-hard fan of the 4x space empire-building genre. I've collected and played many of them ever since the days of Master of Orion. Now, this IS because I love the idea of such games, firstly...secondly because I'm always curious about what each person's particular take on the old idea is gonna be. Each one is always different. That being said, no one 4x game is ever perfect, and no two ever truly the same. Some are deep and complex, while others are simple and fairly straightforwards. Sword of the Stars (SotS) is one of those games that presents a simple and straightforwards interface and design, yet hides a level of depth and complexity beneath it all. The colony management is simple, reminiscent of the original MOO, with slider bars to distribute industrial capacity between colony building and shipbuilding. Queuing up starships is similarly straightforwards, and research is carried out by manipulating yet another slider bar that manages your entire economy, dividing income between science and savings. New techs are selected via a fairly easy to read tech tree that gives you a fairly good idea of what you'll be getting. The game's four races are somewhat cookie-cutter, but distinctive enough to lend the necessary diversity to the game. Ship design is a simple matter of selecting the desired hull and weapons configurations you want. Underneath the simplicity of the gameplay, however, is a layered and detailed system. First of all, the basic four races all play very differently, since their methods of propulsion are all unique. This is quite different from most other 4x games, where everyone roams the galaxy the same way. Each race also specializes in certain technologies, and their ships have different strengths and weaknesses as well. The game randomly generates a unique tech tree for each new game you play, which is interesting...although it might be nice to have a full-tech option available for those of us who happen to be techno-addicts. Although ship design is simple and rather fun, SotS handles it much differently. First of all, there are only three hull sizes, and each ship is composed of three individual modules, instead of the 'filling an empty hull with components' method most other games employ. Since one module is an engine module, and the number and functions of other modules is quite extensive, this means that you must create a large number of different designs in order to meet all your empire's needs. A single fleet will require command ships, tankers, point-defense vessels, close-combat ships, and long-range torpedo carriers. There are some weaknesses to Sword of the Stars, though. The diplomacy system is rather weak, with only a few choices for communicating with the rival empires. Its often hard to notice approaching enemy fleets, and its quite easy to get into an unwanted war without having the chance to negotiate first. The number and types of ships you end up having to design and build, combined with the limitations of the colony list and the 3-D layout of the galaxy map, make managing and moving fleets cumbersome. Even more cumbersome is the fact that you cannot upgrade older ship classes when a new design is created, forcing you to completely scrap obselete ships and rebuild your battle groups from scratch each time you upgrade your designs. While space combat and research are rather enjoyable, the game as a whole seems to revolve around the race to acquire dreadnaughts before anyone else does, making destroyers and cruisers almost totally obselete at that stage. There are some problems with the space combat as well. Enemy ships are hard to see, given the limited sensor range of your ships, leaving you scrambling to locate the source of enemy long-range attacks. Your own ships tend to suffer from poor pathing in battle, often taking inordinate amounts of time to respond to move orders, thus taking inordinate amounts of damage in the process. Although command ships let you organize fleets into initial battle formations, these tend to fall apart quickly after combat begins, and the inability to put ships back into formation means that most fights degenerate into slugfests. Given the sluggishness and fragility of most ships, the limited range of weapons, the lack of formation, and the lack of an in-battle pause, there's very little room for tactics of any kind. The good news is that there are a number of options for auto-resolving battles. The game setup itself is fairly good, with a wide range of options for the galaxy size and shape, the number of players, your starting treasury, and even the economic and research efficiency of the various empires. There's even the option to turn random events, like slavers and meteor showers, on or off, which can help give you some practice with the combat system, though they tend to slow the pace of the game. More good news is that the developers seem very good at listening to player feedback, as the game has already been patched twice, adding some much-needed fixes and updates to the game, so it's fair to assume that more improvements will be forthcoming in the future. Sword of the Stars, like all 4x games, has its strengths and weaknesses. Overall, it's a simply-designed, surprisingly deep, and enjoyable game that has alot going for it, especially if you're the kind of player who enjoys space exploration and empire-building without a lot of interface wrangling and micro-management. It's easy to get into, and the wide range of options and the surprising distinctiveness of the four playable races give it alot of replay value. 
