Sword of the Stars II: Enhanced Edition
Recommended? Sort of.
I bought this at a steep discount years ago (less than 10 bucks), and have alternately loved and hated it ever since.
The game was originally released in a mid-alpha state, resulting in a lot of the rage evidenced in some reviews. After a free expansion, about 50 mid-sized patches and over a hundred micro-patches, what you have is basically a game in permanent mid-beta.
Most of what could be fixed without a complete redesign has been. What remains is an extremely time-consuming, mostly rewarding game that will occasionally infuriate you.
– Real player with 2953.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best 4X Strategy Games.
3/24/2014
I currently have over 1,000hours in this game.
Here a list of things within the game on a scale of 1-10
Individual race design- 8/10 (each race still feels completely unique and fresh like they did in the first game)
Artificial Intelligent race design- 10/10 (this was actually done flawlessly and very unique compared to
other artificial intelligent races created in the same and even other sci-fi genres. It’s a very fresh new look on AI playable races)
Story- 2/10 (there is no story, other than the lore you get from either the forums or within the encyclopedia their really nothing else.)
– Real player with 1290.7 hrs in game
Leylines
I am surprised this game has not gained enough attention as I will have to spread the word out about this game.
Here is what I like about this game:
It has a very interesting Hero System meaning as you gain experience points you can spend experience points to improve a number of skills along with improving your main stats of your Hero like health, defense, attack, resist and moving around on the world map. It has at least 20-30 skills you can spend your experience on .
Other 4x games when you gain a level you get some increases based on that new level but in this game you spend your experience as you see fit so there really are no levels in this game so I think it is actually a better system.
– Real player with 10.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best 4X Turn-Based Tactics Games.
Game lagging every 2-3 second. Playing is impossible.
– Real player with 8.7 hrs in game
Rising Constellation
Rising Constellation is an awesome game which is mixing strategy and role play at a perfect level.
It offers many distinct gameplay based on factions and its agents mechanics - however, remind it’s strongly depends on team play!
Indead, this game is part of those who are perfectly designed to work in cooperation with your mates, but definitely not alone.
Use Siderians and rule your teamates, just because you’ll get the economy power - or perhaps you’ll prefer bite everyone using large fleets lead by Navarques.
– Real player with 933.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best 4X Co-op Games.
Rising Constellation is 4x RST game still in developpment.
Created from a small team of Swiss developper, I was a player of thier first MMO RTS 4x game: Asylamba.
I see RC (Rising Constellation) like an MMO RTS 4x game based on Agents (Navarques – Ereased – Sidérians).
I really enjoy the game for is background story (lore can be added by players participation) , B&W graphic style and is MMO possibility !
There is now 1 mod to play : fast flash 2H gamemode , this is quite small with 1 or to 2 games per week with a small cummunity.
– Real player with 837.1 hrs in game
The Dwarves of Glistenveld
It has been a while since I posted this review and much has changed since then. Having played the game now for a total of 300+ hours (and there was me saying I don’t get much time to play games), I have explored many of the game modes. My favourite right now is the Skirmish mode where you can hand-craft your map options, such as the number of enemies, their initial strength, the map size and style, etc. I am currently working my way up to more and more difficult settings to see how good I really am. My other favourite mode is the cavern mode (the game’s sandbox mode ) where I have also spend many hours. In this mode you can slowly build your base to ever increasing size while improving your tech tree. The current tech tree is already in place for the upcoming next chapter of the game and it allows you to build a railway network so that your miners don’t have to carry everything back to your base, improve and automate your defences, build automated farms for farming roots and mushrooms, light up your neighbour hood with lanterns, build cooking stations and much more. I have also played with the map editor and will be uploading my own hand-crafted map very soon. ‘hwill’ has uploaded a new map to the workshop which I enjoyed very much. I must add a comment.
– Real player with 638.7 hrs in game
This game, is absolutely fantastic! This RTS adventure strategy game is about leading a tribe of Dwarves trying to take back their homeland from the goblins that have ran them down underground. There are so many things that you find out during every level, there are nice challenges such as the achievements and the schematics that you have to find to advance with technology, there are song hidden choices through your first play through (such as when you meet Fishbeard’s first guard) it’s amazing, it’s so replayable and enjoyable for sooooooooooo many hours even when there is only 6 levels at the time of writing this. Along with the mechanics in this game are so nice and fluid such as the base building part, and the class switching system, the AI is pretty on-point, it’s not one of those games where the AI struggles with some of the commands that you try to give it, in this game, it just does it immediately!
– Real player with 18.9 hrs in game
Sorcerer King: Rivals
After finishing game on insane difficulty I finally feel ready to write a review. In short, I think Sorcerer King Rivals is an amazing game. One of the best games I have ever played in fact. Having said that, I doubt it will appeal to people looking for a deep strategy game. Because this game is not that deep and not particularly hard, except, maybe for a highest difficulty. Also, I think it is important to mention, that I barely played FE:LH and did not like it at all so if you are looking for a similar experience, you may not like SC:Rivals. SC:Rivals is more like Eador: Masters of a broken world. So, as always, keep your expectations in check) Now, let’s talk about what is good, not so good, and pretty bad in this game
– Real player with 87.0 hrs in game
A great game. It’s fairly small in scope for a 4x, but I think this has allowed the developers to focus on producing a polished product. Sorcerer King: Rivals has lots of scripted story and events, which makes it different to other 4x games which rely soley on the quality of the AI players to pose a challenge. As Sorcerer King relies on heavily scripted events, don’t expect great AI. On the plus side, Sorceror King tells a great story with writing that is often hilarious.
You will see reviews complaining about lack of replayability, but I think if you want 300hours out of the game you need to look at the Civilization series or Galactic Civilizations 3. I’ve played Sorceror King for a total 65 hours. I will agree however, that the strategic map AI is extremely passive. It generally does not initiate combat and will wait for you to attack it. This means its not really much of a threat and this does effect replayability.
– Real player with 65.1 hrs in game
Galactic Civilizations III
NOTE: This is a review of the Final Release Candidate for the game, so it should apply to the released version.
Having been a long-time GC2 player, I eagerly signed up for the Founder’s Edition early-access over a year ago, and have followed the development of GC3 since then closely.
Let me tell you, getting a 4X game that incorporates all the features that hard-core strategy gamers want, while remaining both relevant and competitive, is really hard. As in, EXTREMELY hard. StarDock has done an excellent job with GC3. That’s not to say there still aren’t quibbles over the direction certain features have taken, but the reality is, that if you actually want to release a game, certain decisions are going to have to be taken, and you’re sure to piss off someone who wanted that feature and didn’t get it. But GC3 is a solid and entertaining game, if not a radically innovative one.
– Real player with 2842.9 hrs in game
First of all it is critical to understand that the game is still in beta testing and therefore has some glitches. That said it has been pretty stable for me. (Four year old dell xps 8100 with 16gb and a 750 Ti video card). At present the plan seems to be to a go for a final release in May. There will be frequent patches before then and perhaps a beta 6 release (beta 5, with enormous additions, was released yesterday (Mar26). If you don’t like encountering bugs and reporting them to help the game, then wait for the release. Of critical importance remaining is tuning the AI to be smarter and more aggressive, imo.
– Real player with 2285.4 hrs in game
Illyriad - Grand Strategy MMO
Before going into why I cannot recommend this game, let me point out that there are a couple of positive aspects to Illyriad. First, for a MMO, the game’s community is exceedingly welcoming to newcomers. Many of the established players are willing to answer basic questions in the chat, and even provide early game resource donations. The game world is suitably large and there is a strategic depth to the game that requires classic “guns vs. butter” decision making.
Those things said, there are two components of the game that prevent a recommendation.
– Real player with 4248.6 hrs in game
For starters, this game is free-to-play, with a good premium currency model that isn’t pay-to-win (and you can even win free currency on Trivia Tuesdays). The community is great and very helpful to new players, and due to game design, big players aren’t rewarded for griefing new players, and there are apparently big players who will punish those who try.
The game itself is for those who like long-term worlds that change slowly, which I like, but ultimately, I ran into a series of disappointments that convinced me this game wasn’t for me.
– Real player with 460.5 hrs in game