Ordering a fleet of dozens of starships of various sizes and shapes to hyper-jump to a nearby planet, then zooming in to see them explode into existence on the other side, bearing down on the entrenched enemy as they scramble fighters and bring their guns to bear, is always a thrill for me as a lifelong fan of sci-fi battle scenes. Though few games allow you to conduct interplanetary combat on the scale of Sins of a Solar Empire 2, we have seen it play out numerous times in Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and other series. The result is magnificent, but building up to those big confrontations frequently requires hours of cautious and steady supervision across layers of grand strategy systems that are frighteningly complicated.
It’s crucial to understand that, despite being a confusingly complex real-time strategy/4X hybrid that allows you to zoom from a view of the entire solar system down to a single spaceship in a fleet of hundreds, you don’t have to be an expert to enjoy or even win. Even though I still have a lot to learn about the numerous, subtle, and significant differences between the six playable factions and how their fleets, structures, and upgrades interact, I’ve won more games than I’ve lost after playing for a few dozen hours, mostly against Unfair (the setting above hard) AI opponents, mostly in four-way free-for-alls.
Once you understand the fundamentals of developing your economy, research, and fleet management, I’ve discovered that you can focus on the things you enjoy most and ignore the things you don’t, and still enjoy expanding your empire and defeating adversaries—that is, unless you plan on playing at a high level against human opponents who have perfected their build orders and mastered the mechanics.
While all six of Sins 2’s playable factions essentially function similarly—colonizing planets, extracting resources, building orbital structures for research and production, and having comparable fleets of capital ships, frigates, cruisers, and corvettes—their distinctions are profound and intricate. Although both of the human TEC factions make money by establishing networks of trading outposts, Enclave is better suited for a defensive playstyle, while Primacy is more aggressive. These include the Novalith Cannon superweapon, which can bombard planets from all over the solar system, and the ability to make money by sending in raiders.
While their Exodus counterparts are the only faction capable of destroying entire planets as they deprive them of resources, the Vasari Alliance has no use for TEC’s money at all and is instead concentrating on diplomacy with minor factions that allow them to occasionally call in favors like reinforcements or upgrades. Reviving destroyed ships and mind-controlling foes are major themes in both The Advent Reborn and Wrath. Naturally, all of that is a huge oversimplification, but to keep this review from becoming a mirror image of the extensive instructions to each faction on the official website, you can be sure that they are quite different. There is a lot of replayability here simply by trying out all the different technologies and objects that they all have access to.
When big battles are joined and the lasers and missiles begin to fly, it truly does look amazing.
After you’ve stopped marveling at how much better and shinier all the ships look in an updated game engine that can handle cool things like all the rotating, target-tracking turrets you could ask for, Sins 2 may seem a little unambitious at first if you’ve played the 2008 original Sins of a Solar Empire (or its half-step sequel Rebellion). Although it takes some time to reach that position, it truly does look amazing when the main conflicts are joined and the lasers and missiles begin to fly.
Starting from a single world, using automated scouts to explore the map around you, and racing to colonize every planet and asteroid you can clear of local defenses with your chosen starting flagship and small fleet (while researching the technologies required to inhabit each planet type) are all very similar to the early hours of Sins 2 compared to its 17-year-old predecessor.
An exotic materials system that restricts the speed at which powerful military assets, like as capital ships and starbases, may be ramped up is the primary new wrinkle, but this eventually loses some of its significance. Since most major ships and starbases require a specific material, you may have to improvise with what’s available rather than starting with your favorite ships, which adds some variation from game to game. Initially, they are difficult to find; you must either unearth random ones from planets and asteroids you colonize or destroy enemy capital ships and salvage them.
All exotics actually do after that point is add to build times, but eventually you can research the ability to build refineries that slowly produce exotics out of the standard resources of metal and crystal you’ve extracted. After that, you can build anything you want; it will even automatically research the technologies and then produce the materials if you have the resources available.
Sins 2 really begins to highlight its differences from the first game around the middle of the game.
around adding so many various systems added, Sins 2 truly begins to show off what sets it apart from the original around the midgame. I had to play several hours-long games before I could even begin to interact with them all.
There is an overwhelming amount of things to keep track of, even after more than 40 hours of practice and a thorough series of tutorials (there isn’t a traditional RTS story campaign to learn the ropes). These include many planetary upgrades, two parallel research trees with multiple paths, buildable items you can equip on your individual capital ships and worlds, simple diplomacy with both player-controlled factions and independent worlds, resource management, pirate raids, culture expansion, other faction-specific mechanics like trade routes and castable powers, and unique Titan superships, among other things.
Planets will even slowly orbit the sun in the middle of the map at varying rates when using the default settings. This may seem intriguing, but it can get annoying if you don’t check the movement preview for a while and then one of your worlds ends up in the middle of enemy territory and is cut off from reinforcements. (However, when someone else experiences this, it’s hilarious.)
In fact, Sins 2 is deceptive in that there is almost always something you can be doing to make your empire better, even though it seems like everything is moving slowly when you watch a fleet glide across a planet’s gravity well before jumping to the next, or a progress bar for research or construction fills up.
It can seem like things are moving too fast to do all of that and build fleets to send on long journeys to where they’re needed to defend or attack once you figure out which menus to browse to manage equipment on individual planets, capital ships, and starbases, view and expand available build slots on your planets, search for which of the dozens of technologies to research next, keep track of your economy growth, and more. Although there are some enhancements, like the ability to build reinforcements straight from a fleet’s menu rather than searching for a shipyard, it’s still feasible because the fleet organization tools are straightforward and largely intuitive. I’m still happy that I can pause time (in single-player) to get things straightened out.
The fact that you are not required to micromanage your ships in battle if you do not want to is also advantageous. They will automatically cast those abilities for you by default (as long as you’ve taken the time to choose which ones to unlock when a ship levels up), but you’ll get more out of your battleships if you’re zooming in to manually do things like launch a massive missile salvo at a particularly annoying enemy ship, restore allies’ shields, or send out swarms of nanites to do damage over time.
In a similar vein, accurate placement is crucial because you can prevent your weaker ships from being hit by stationary defensive turrets or starbases, and it’s always a good idea to try to save your more seasoned capital ships for later by leaving a battle before they’re destroyed (you’ll receive regular alerts when their shields are down or their hull is crippled, so it’s difficult to miss those opportunities).
Making sure your fleet is properly upgraded and well-stocked is the key to winning wars logistically.
However, those maneuvers are most important when competing against an opponent of equal strength, and the secret to winning is to never do that if you don’t have to. War is won logistically when your fleet is fully upgraded, well-supplied, and composed of heavy cruisers and light frigates, as well as fast fighters, corvettes, and long-range support craft that support your capital ships. When you are outnumbered two to one because of your opponent’s stronger economy and more shipyards, no amount of micromanagement can help you win.
Granted, the AI of the opposing civilizations tends to make mistakes in the late game, which is one of the reasons I’ve been able to win the majority of my games without using all of my available tools. In several of my games, opposing fleets would unite against me by assaulting on two fronts at once, forcing me back to my core worlds. However, they would retreat while I still controlled enough land to allow me to rebuild my fleet. Although they were ahead of me in constructing the enormous Titan warships at the very top of each faction’s tech tree, I was eventually able to reorganize and then steamroll them.
Although it’s possible that in these instances, my opponents were too preoccupied with battling one another to deal with me while I reconstructed my fleets, it seemed a little absurd that neither of them took the time to strike my home world and take control of my territory when they had the opportunity. Until that moment, though, the AI puts up a good fight, with many possibilities for battles and trading blows throughout border worlds.
Theoretically, Sins of a Solar Empire 2 is best played in a multiplayer setting, as humans wouldn’t have any problems competing against each other. But in reality, because multiplayer games are so lengthy and complex, I’ve never been able to finish one. With dozens of planets and other celestial bodies to battle over, even a “small” game of Sins 2 with two players on one of the pre-built or randomly generated maps can take hours against an opponent who knows better than to leave his homeworld undefended. A large game can actually have up to 10 players and multiple solar systems you can jump between, so it takes a lot of dedication for a group to finish one.
To its credit, Sins 2 does make it simple for people to join and leave. AI will take over faction leadership until a human returns to take over, ensuring that you are never left feeling disappointed if your opponents have other commitments. This is all before you enter the modding scene, which is frantically producing adaptations that enable you to use the integrated mod manager to add Star Destroyers, Battlestars, and Romulan Warbirds, among many other things, to the mix. That community will continue to provide us with entertaining toys for many years to come, possibly even decades, if the original Sins of a Solar Empire is any indication.
Verdict
In exchange for allowing you to handle some of the most amazing space battles in gaming, Sins of a Solar Empire 2 is a massive real-time strategy game that requires you to stay up to date with its many intricate systems over extended periods of time. After hours of browsing menus and keeping a watch on what seems like hundreds of balls at once, ordering massive battleships, tiny fighters, and everything in between to launch full-scale assaults on an enemy’s home world is a satisfying reward. It will require several hours of tutorials, guide browsing, and explainer video viewing to fully understand the mechanics of its six factions, but don’t let that deter you from playing. Long before you completely understand all the subtleties required to engage in a multiplayer war, you may dive right in and have a great time, successfully conquering solar systems after learning the fundamentals of earning enough money to purchase a few spaceships.
