Age of Space
Age of Space offers a unique experience combining real time resource management and tactical combat in 3D. Step into the shoes of an interplanetary mercenary balancing on a knife-edge between the established might of the United Earth Alliance and the rag-tag band of Martian rebels. Grow your power as you fight for either side in the battle for control of the solar system.
Mining outpost
Build and expand upon your mining outpost as you gather resources in real time. Unlock new and unknown technologies salvaged from the wreckage of your enemies. Customize and build massive warships from your shipyard. Nudge the balance of war by accepting missions from your star map, fight pirates for fame and riches or become an outlaw yourself…
Ship Customization
All spaceships come in different sizes and fill different roles and purposes. All spaceships have unique bonuses that you should exploit in order to get the most out of your ship. A spaceship has a set of properties and three different sets of hardpoints where you can install modules and weapons:
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Passive modules boost primary attributes of the ships.
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Active modules are your backline of weapons and modules that are available all of the time
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Tactical modules are impactful tactical weapons that can change the tide in any battle, but require high amounts of energy to use
Character Development
Evolve your four captains into becoming commanders of massive capital ships. As they gain experience they will be able to pilot increasingly advanced spaceships ranging from tactical cruisers to motherships.
Combat
Put yourself and your crew to the test in instance-based combat scenarios. Design your fleet, execute your strategy and profit. Manoeuver your spaceship in 3 dimensions from a 3rd person perspective. The rest of your fleet will either be controlled by AI, your friends or a combination of both. There will be different types of contracts to choose from:
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Storyline missions
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Side missions
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Mining operations
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Piracy operations
Co-op
Play any contract (except a few solo missions) together with up to three friends.
Read More: Best 4X Strategy Games.
ENDLESS™ Legend
Good game, but I will give more preference to endless space 2 with more mechanics and more elaborate gameplay.
– Real player with 364.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best 4X Strategy Games.
Pros:
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Great strategy experience
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Interesting fantasy theme
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Enjoyable equipment mechanics
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Heroes add an interesting strategy layer
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Tweaking a faction to your play style is awesome
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Complicated subsystems that make the game always interesting to optimize
Cons:
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No in game encyclopedia to learn game terms and mechanics (tooltips aren’t enough)
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Game speeds other than standard are imbalanced
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Subsystems need better explanation
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Too much and too costly DLC
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DLC should not radically change the way the game is played (here it feels like what should be an update is DLC)
– Real player with 228.6 hrs in game
Star Ruler
Pros: Still one of the most ambitious rts games I have ever played, Star ruler makes up for bare-minimum graphics with mind boggling scale and complexity. Will your strategy involve fleets of ai controlled drones? Or a handful of superdestroyers? Perhaps you prefer to send carriers full of small, manned bombers? The ability to customize your strategy to your tastes is easily the best part of the game, followed by a galaxy generation system limited only by your hardware. Its the little details that make the ship building mechanic shine. Your free to design whatever ship you want, but you’d better pay attention! The game will hold your hand just enough to complete the ship design, but be sure to add enough fuel! I only needed to build one expensive fleet of ships that drifted into black nothing with empty tanks before I knew to check fuel specs EVERY time I designed a ship. Ammo consuption, power levels, life support, net acceleration- all important variables in your design. A ship that suffers a power outage every time it fires its main weapon will be an expensive coffin when the fighting starts. You get the idea.
– Real player with 97.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best 4X Strategy Games.
Before buying the game I ran across some reviews indicating that this is a 4X strategy game with a high level of complexity. Thats fine for me, after all that is what is intended to be for serious strategy 4X games.
But complexity needs the appropriate tools, interface and AI to work fine. Unfortunately this game lacks all of theme. Yes it is complex, but it turns out to become very chaotic in the end.
So you probably get fed up and let everything be managed by the AI. The AI governors will actually do a good job for you and the only thing left to do is designing ships (which is actually a cool part of the game), building them into thousands with out any limitations and penalties and sending them to massacres under a very aggressive AI which doesn’t give you much choices than to go into meaningless chaotic wars.
– Real player with 64.4 hrs in game
Stars Beyond Reach
Why Unlikely To Release?
We spent a long time working on this game, and ultimately it never reached the level of being fun. We had to step back from this in 2015, and moved on to other projects. We had over 100 testers in our alpha versions, and a lot of them did have fun, but the experience as a whole never truly gelled. Releasing into Early Access is not an option, because once we take your money we are obligated to somehow figure it out. Releasing it in a half-baked format also doesn’t seem like a great idea, even at a very low or free price.
So a lot of the great ideas from this game, the parts that worked, will probably wind up finding their way into the DNA of our other projects. Many of them already have, in AI War 2. Many of the technical achievements that we made with this game – or indeed with the also ill-fated In Case of Emergency, Release Raptor – went on to directly have a positive impact on AI War 2.
We actually have had many projects that went through some amount of R&D before being shelved, some with public testing and some without. Exodus of the Machine was one that had a huge bunch of art done on it. Starport 28 was a promising idea that wasn’t visually legible in the sort of art we could do. Cretaceous was a cool dinosaur-themed citybuilder/risk-like that gave some inspiration to Stars Beyond Reach. The difference with all those other projects is that we spent far less money working on them, and they never had any presence on Steam or any other storefront.
Stars Beyond Reach was to be our magnum opus, and so many things were going right with it, and we spent a ton of money on it, but ultimately it’s just another one for the R&D pile. The actual game itself, as it exists in these screenshots, is based on a UI system we no longer use or want to use, an art pipeline that is no longer compatible with how we make games, and a far older version of our codebase. There are also inevitable complications with rights on various pieces of the direct work here, which would make it hard for us to revisit it from a financial sense. We will inevitably revisit some of the same themes and ideas in the future in other ways, but it won’t be from digging up the code or art from this game itself (as good as both are).
TLDR: Its legacy will live on in various other titles we may do in the future, but this one was indeed beyond reach. (That pun is inevitable low hanging fruit)
Original Description
Crash-land on a hostile sentient world in this deep, turn-based 4X/citybuildier. Learn the languages of other trapped alien empires, explore, form alliances, and ultimately attempt the impossible: escape.
Features
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Manage your own civilization like a turn-based citybuilder, but in a 4X setting.
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Deal with other civilizations using force or more nuanced building abilities (“poison Narr’s water,” “invite Keleci to the opera,” “dump bodies on Strot’s populace”).
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The game takes place over four “acts” during which you have unique objectives and challenges: Arrival, Discovery, Alliances, and Doomsday.
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You have considerable freedom in how you build your empire and make friends or foes, but each race is filled with unique character under your control or that of an AI.
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14 alien races each have 3 possible leaders with their own personalities and goals. You will have to devise unique strategies for befriending or neutralizing them depending on their situation and exactly who is in a campaign.
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There are distinct degrees of victory that you can achieve. Just winning the game doesn’t mean you won well.
Info Dump Incoming!
There’s a whole lot of text down there. The trailer and the bullet points might be enough for you, and if so then go ahead and stop reading! But a lot of this game’s audience are the sort of grognards who – like me – would like to know as much as possible. So here’s the flow of the game as it progress through each act. Pretty cool stuff actually!
Act I: Arrival
When you first land on the planet, your minds and your computers have been all but wiped. You quickly have to learn both basic and advanced technologies and establish yourself as a new civilization. When you choose your landing spot, your citizens let you know what special objectives they expect you to meet in order to exit this first act.
During act 1, my interactions with the 13 other races on the planet are pretty limited. I can fight them if I wish. I can do things to them or experience things that they do to me. But I don’t speak their languages, nor they mine. If I want to capture more territories (think Risk), I can do so. I have a fair bit of freedom here, but only low-level technologies and buildings.
Whether or not I choose to go conquer or subjugate someone I can’t even speak to yet is up to me. My core goals are all about my own city, however. My citizenry is complex and I need to get them established and built up.
This is a living world where your own territories are as interesting and complex as the civilizations you encounter. Threats come as much from inside your own civilization as much as from outside it – and in Act 1, the focus is on threats from within.
Act II: Discovery
Now we’re starting to look outward. The abilities and needs of our own empire have just upgraded substantially, and we’re able to start learning the languages of our potential allies and enemies.
At this point there are specialized “natural wonders” scattered around the world that our scientists need to examine. There is key information about the world that we are able to detect in these places (and for fans of Arcen’s other titles, you can find some answers to longstanding questions about both AI War: Fleet Command and The Last Federation).
Problem is, a lot of those natural wonders are in territories controlled by other races. How do we deal with those? Maybe we get lucky and can snatch up enough territories that we can learn what we need without involving the other races at all just yet. Maybe we beat a few heads into the ground. Or, more intelligently, maybe we find out what their deepest-seated fears and desires are… and then exploit whichever of them we can.
I might be renting out mainframe time to Xermi, who desperately needs it, while at the same time dumping garbage all throughout the lands of Vesden until she gives us the information just to get me off her back. I might not trust the shifty and volatile doShal, and might militarily suppress him to the point that he surrenders and becomes an early puppet state for me.
Act III: Alliances
A sudden realization has hit us. I won’t spoil what is learned, but something becomes abundantly clear. I must attempt what all the other races have failed to do: return to the stars. Armed with my new information, it is time to set out and gather as many allies as possible.
Unfortunately, I can’t make friends with everyone. Isn’t it always the case where the most eager-to-be-friends folks seem to be the least useful in a disaster scenario? Well, some of the stronger folks come with unsavory demands: they might not join me if I don’t murder an entire innocent species, drive an empire into poverty, or bring them an enslaved race of fallen foes.
What mix of races am I willing to ally with? Even if I throw morality to the wind, what will set me up in the optimal situation for Act IV? Can I get those races who are determinedly neutral to actually take action? Some of them are incredibly powerful, but almost as hard to sway.
Act IV: Doomsday
I don’t want to spoil much about this one. The battle lines have been drawn. Everyone has declared their alliances or their neutrality. And the planet itself has put its own long-dormant plans into motion. It’s time to hope that my empire is robust enough to survive the all-out war that now consumes the world. Can I help my allies live through the assaults of their enemies? Can they help me against flying saucers arriving on my doorstep and monsters erupting from the ground?
All of the choices I have made in prior acts now either come to fruition or come crashing down. Either way it should be quite entertaining, as both my citizens, my enemies, my allies, and the planet itself will have plenty of remarks on what is happening (all unobtrusive and something you can skip reading with ease if you just want the meat and no dressing).
Degrees Of Victory
This is one of the few games where “winning” is not a black and white proposition. There are two overall goals for Act IV: escaping, and stopping the planet’s machinations.
But just what does it mean to “escape?” If only I and a handful of my higher-ups from the government make it out alive, and everyone else dies, is that a victory? The game will tell me it is, sure, although a pretty poor one.
How about getting more of my citizens offworld, and even allied citizens of other races offworld, and thus really saving some genetic lineages there – is that a good victory? Well, I suppose that’s not bad. But if I haven’t stopped the planet from doing… what it’s doing that I won’t spoil… then there are some pretty awful things that are going to happen around the galaxy. So… yay me, I guess?
On the other end of the scale, what if I stop the planet, but at the expense of my own life and everyone else living on the planet? I may completely fail to escape, but stop this awful planet for good. In the grand scheme this is actually a far more notable victory – but then again I have killed myself and everyone I ever knew in order to accomplish it.
In an ideal world I would get everyone to safety, stop the planet, and do so without committing any moral atrocities along the way. But there’s the question: am I good enough to pull that off?
A Note About Humor
This is a serious 4X and citybuilding/simulation game, despite the funny promotional videos. Let’s face it, when you play a game of this sort that has anything novel at all in it, the result at first can be death spirals and unintentional hilarity. May as well have some fun with that! Better a Memorable Defeat than a Forgettable Victory , you know?
That said, the game itself maintains the more serious tone you would expect, dark or wry humor aside. Sometimes you get hilarious things like a race of capitalistic amoral robots inventing a TV show they call The Sweatshop Comedy Hour , but it’s actually a useful upgrade that makes them more fearsome – so mock them at your peril!
We know that not everybody wants humor injected into their serious strategy game (our earliest beta testers actually made this pretty clear to us), and we have kept that in mind. But we’re huge fans of the LP called Boatmurdered, and we hope that this game will inspire similar tales of dark humor.
ENDLESS™ Space 2
Edit2: Running in a max sized galaxy that is now fully colonized down to the last planet and has eight well-developed factions at war on around turn 675. Still playing, only complaint is that the ‘end turn’ gets a bit bumpy due to so many ship battles being resolved in the background - but it’s still far faster than in early access. The AI is serviceable, good on 3 factions, meh to idiotic on the rest - Riftborn are by far the hardest, Vodyani are the dumbest always puttering around one system, definitely needs some work. No game killing bugs thus far thanks to that last patch. Enjoying the competitive/cooperative multi-faction quests, I’d like to see a lot more of that in future content.
– Real player with 1806.8 hrs in game
TL;DR: This title is -by far- the best 4X on the market. Each aspect, exploring-expanding-exploiting-exterminating is a constant challenge on higher difficulty levels in single player and multiplayer can be quite the expierence if you like very quick thinking and immidiate punish of mistakes. Each race is very different, demanding rather unique playstyles but offer a different strategy option. Best UI i have -EVER- seen. Right click to go back. Brilliant. I look dumb now trying this in other games. Collour coded sheets and unified symbols. A pleasure. A lore-universe to be hooked on and the occaisional humor to keep it fresh. Go Sophons! For Science! One Sentence: Its worth every penny. Guaranteed.
– Real player with 484.8 hrs in game
ENDLESS™ Space - Definitive Edition
I fell in love with Master of Orion II when it came out first (1996) and since then I look for a worthy successor. Played several 4X games and they had their pros and cons. Endless Space is one of the better 4X games and absolutely worth buying, in my opinion. Wouldn’t have played 300+ hours else, heh. I am reviewing it including Disharmony expansion.
Galaxy: Endless Space offers some variety of galaxy shapes and sizes, some favoring defensive players, some favoring offensive ones. Additional finetuning of the galaxy is possible. I miss the opportunity of creating a REALLY huge galaxy, but maximum size with just one opponent works ok as a sandbox mode. During exploring you will find nice bonuses, a few pirates, wormholes (basically dividing the galaxy until you can travel through them) and finally different wonders, so exploring is actually fun.
– Real player with 352.8 hrs in game
Review: Endless Space
_“Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world. . . .
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.”
Alfred Lord Tennyson_
The universe with it’s endless amounts of galaxies, stars and planets was born out of what we call “the big bang”. It took billions of years before the first life was given and further billions for the new rulers of space to conquer every star they could reach: The Endless. They traveled through wormholes, became masters of time and space, built outstanding monuments and structures and oppressed every lifeform that stood in their way, all with the help of a special gift called dust. The only ones who could make them fall were the Endless themselves with inner conflicts and arrogance. Millions of years later other empires arose from the stars. The Endless were gone but their technology, wisdom and Dust is still there, waiting for new conquerors. Which faction will dominate the others with science, war and dust? Hopefully yours.
– Real player with 196.1 hrs in game
Exiled to the Void
Not much to the game. Not very engaging.
– Real player with 2.8 hrs in game
Not much to get excited about - hopefully, subsequent upgrades/updates will result in improvements. So far, just stuck on one of Jupiter’s moons with not much to do…..hope I don’t run out of resources by the next update!! As it currently stands, I can not recommend this game to anyone until it becomes more playable.
– Real player with 0.6 hrs in game
Age of Wonders II: The Wizard’s Throne
Had trouble getting this to work on Windows 10 at first, but that was fixed by running it in Compatibility mode and going to my Nvidia graphics card settings and using “Add program” to add the Age of wonders II exe from the Steam folder.
This is an old game and the graphics and interface and general game design are clunky and difficult to use till you learn how. Once you do though the campaign is pretty fun, if hard at first.
Unlike in Age of Wonders III , where heroes can become strong but never wildly overpowered, Age of Wonders II heroes can get to level 30 even in the first mission, and along with items from quests, become killing machines.
– Real player with 193.3 hrs in game
There are lots of improvement to its predecessor, but there are some things which were actually done better in the first game.
The graphics, city building and combat are improved. However, the campaign is a far cry from the one in the first game. The original AoW had 2 branching campaigns, each with 3 different endings. Player’s character was fully customizable, leveled-up and learned new skills as you progressed through the campaign. You could transfer research, artifacts, heroes and units between campaign maps. Not only is the AoW2’s campaign completely linear, but you lose all your research, heroes and artifacts after 2 or 3 maps (depending on wether you play the optional maps or not). And player’s character is always Merlin, who can’t be customized, can’t level-up/improve and (usually) can’t fight at all. Leaders are little more than mobile defense objectives that are supposed to sit in a heavily fortified city (preferably one with a Wizard Tower, so they can actually support your heroes in the field).
– Real player with 98.2 hrs in game
Age of Wonders
=== Age of Wonders - Game Review, Turn-based Strategy - 10/10 ===
If you like turn-based strategy, whether it’s in a table top game or a video game, Age of Wonders is at the top of the list.
Age of Wonders was released back in 1999, so we’re getting pretty close to the grand 20-year mark in age. For such an old game, you might think it would look pretty aged and unable to hold up to present-day gaming. In my opinion, this game is a classic that is still plenty of fun to play and has a great art-style that still looks great even to this day. If you go back to the original pictures of this game before it was released, the art is so simple and would easily have gotten old pretty quick. Thankfully they decided to go in a bit of a different direction which I think looks like someone painted it by hand; this sort of painted-looking art-style is definitely my favourite. Of course the visuals are important when deciding whether or not to play a game, but there’s so much more to talk about.
– Real player with 385.4 hrs in game
Age of Wonders is a fairly old game, but I still very much enjoy its simple yet complex gameplay. While its sequels improved vastly on some aspects of the game, I still feel that combat was the most entertaining in the original.
The story is fairly straightforward, and unlike the later titles, allows you to play as the “Good” faction or the “Evil” faction for the story. At several segments, you’ll be presented with a decision to make, but only the second and third decisions will influence the Campaign any. These two decisions will also alter the ending sequence.
– Real player with 336.0 hrs in game
Interstellar Space: Genesis
After playing the game some more, I’m changing my review from positive but probably lacking replay value to very positive with significant replay value. On the surface it’s a standard 4x space game–nothing wrong with it, but nothing really novel either. However, as you play it, you discover a lot gems not apparent until the mid-game.
The game has very few defects and they are very minor–it’s become all too common for the first 6 months after the release of a game to be basically beta testing. One of the least bug-free launches I’ve seen in a very long time.
– Real player with 948.7 hrs in game
Let me begin this review by saying what Interstellar Space: Genesis (ISG) is not: A clone of XXX (replace XXX by any space 4X game, like MOO 1/2, Stellaris, …). You will recognise elements from many of its predecessors, but it merges these elements creatively into something new. On the surface, ISG is a standard space 4X game, 2D, turn-based, with free movement, galaxy size 30 to almost 300 systems, 1 to 7 (AI) opponents. But a closer look reveals a few features, which make ISG something special. For example:
– Real player with 184.8 hrs in game