Sid Meier’s Starships
Sid Meier’s Starships (SMS) is NOT Civ-in-Space, as many people hoped, but rather, it’s as if “Heroes of Might and Magic” (HOMM) had a baby with “Strange Adventures in Infinite Space” and transplanted into Sid Meier’s CIV: Beyond Earth universe. It somewhat resembles the Civ Series in that it involves growing star systems, managing resources, and has multiple victory conditions including tech, diplomancy, population, and so on, but all the parameters are either preset or simplified into “levels” rather than micro-management choices that delighted Civ fans. And rather than building as many units as you want, you have to make do with a single fleet (which can be a swarm of smaller ships, or a few uber powerful ones) that you must continually upgrade as needed. As a result, it’s a bit of “neither fish nor fowl”. It’s not as complex as Civilization series (certainly not that this price point) yet it’s deeper than most games at this price level.
– Real player with 14.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Turn-Based Strategy Sci-fi Games.
Oh boy, when Starships came out, I was like a dang kid in a candy store in terms of excitement. It was my two FAVORITE things - space combat and Civilization - coming together. Or so I thought. Like with Beyond Earth, I had a very negative first impression of Starships, but when I changed my tune on Beyond Earth after revisiting it a few years after release, I decided to give Starships another shot, too.
Sid Meier has said that he envisioned Starships to be a stand alone expansion on the concept of Beyond Earth. We’ve left the Earth and colonized other worlds, but we’d have to have interstellar travel to do that, so why stop at controlling a new planet? Why not expand that to other star systems? Well, that would be great if that’s what the game ended up being. It’s not. You do conquer other star systems and expand your empire’s borders, yeah, but don’t expect this to be like Civilization. Imagine if Civilization were confined to a 10x10 map, and you could only have one unit.
– Real player with 10.5 hrs in game
SPACE BATTLE: Humanity
not bad. I wish there was a way to turn the music off or at least lower the music volume without also lowering the sound effects.
– Real player with 22.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Turn-Based Strategy Tactical Games.
Good game. Addictive.
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unusual gameplay
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fast paced action
– Real player with 2.9 hrs in game
Alliance of the Sacred Suns
A thousand years in the future, humanity’s last empire stands on the brink of collapse. Noble Great Houses compete for control over the decaying feudal state, while the lives of ordinary people have already begun the descent into an interstellar dark age.
You are the young emperor or empress, preparing to ascend the throne. You carry the last glimmer of hope for a brighter future among the stars.
Alliance of the Sacred Suns immerses you fully in the role of ruler. You will create your character, selecting from a variety of backgrounds and abilities. You will engage in conversations and develop relationships with your officials. You will make hard choices in illustrated narrative events, some threatening the stability of your fragile reign, others shining the faintest hope of a new dawn for your dying empire.
Your empire’s long decline means that you begin as ruler in name only. The nobility has coalesced into a handful of Great Houses, and their power has been growing for generations at the expense of imperial control. Members of the Great Houses dominate the imperial bureaucracy and complicate your rule. Yet, the strength of the Great Houses also provides critical support to your empire. A council of nobles serves as a check on your authority, but also a chance to build consensus for your policies.
You cannot micromanage the daily affairs of each planet in your empire, and you do not have omnipotent control of the economy or military. Instead you can only wield your authority as a real emperor or empress would, by managing relationships and politics to rule through appointed officials. Some serve as your governors, ruling planets and star systems in your name.
There are no build queues to micromanage. Instead, exercising wisdom in whom to entrust with official appointments will be critical to the development of planets within your empire. But you must tread carefully, and you cannot make appointments on merit alone. The scion of a powerful House may prove an incompetent governor, but stripping them of position may have consequences far worse than a badly run colony.
You too are a member of a Great House. Your House and those of the other noble families will each employ a unique playstyle. For example, Houses with a technocratic tradition will research advanced technologies to grow their power, while those with a mercantile culture strengthen their rule through economic growth and trade.
These factors will play out differently depending on which of several available scenarios you choose. Each scenario includes unique political situations and victory conditions.
Mods
Alliance of the Sacred Suns is built to support modding. Players can access much of the game mechanics and content through text and XML editing. We are excited to see what worlds modders will create using our politics-in-space framework.
Read More: Best Turn-Based Strategy 4X Games.
Ancient Frontier
The voice acting and storyline start off really really bad. But like a fungus it grows on you and now I’m quite liking it. I had originally complained of it being awful, but a few missions in, the dialogue between missions starts making sense in the style it’s presented and after a while it comes into it’s own and you start to appreciate these characters making the journey with you.
Botom line it’s pretty fun. There’s plenty of RPG elements, battle damage and mission consequences carry over from one mission to the next and there’s a nice tech tree and progression for all things from ships to ship components to crew. I’m enjoying the ways I can use a few ships with tech and crew or just a large fleet to go about my missions. There’s a lot of random elements that can happen so there’s replayability too. You can go about the campaign mission a second time using different ships, techs and strategies and there looks to be a few unique mission choices that you can do differently.
– Real player with 79.0 hrs in game
Turn-based tactical goodness… in SPACE!
For a game out of nowhere, Ancient Frontier offered me a highly pleasant surprise. Good turn-based tactical games are not overly abundant to start with, so I decided to bite the bullet and buy on a whim. Something I rarely do, but boy am I glad to have done so.
The game is all about the tactical missions. There are two main campaigns, which apparnetly can take around 100 hours to play through. No multiplayer or skirmish mode.
Missions bring you varying quantity of one of the three main resources (“material,” “fuel,” and “research”). The first allows is used to buy new ships or components and repair battle damage. Aside from being required as well to purchase new ships, the second resource is an all-important balancing mechanism. Since each ship class (and modifier components) alter the cost of deployment for each mission. Take too many expensive ships too often on missions, and you will run out… which will probably end your playthrough. The last allows investing in upgrades to each ship class, or to research new and more efficient modifier components.
– Real player with 66.3 hrs in game
Galaxy Admirals
Wow, this game is fun. Basically I had some money in my steam wallet and this looked interesting, so I picked it up, at first glance the UI looks like a mobile port, but the game works fine with mouse and runs really smooth on my PC, looks pretty good too when you have the graphics cranked up.
Gameplay: This game is a turn based strategy game set in a solar system, unlike a lot of turn based space strategy games this game has no extra fluff, no CCG elements, no 4X style campaign mode, just a simple to learn, but suprisingly complex strategy game. The twist with this game is that everything on the map rotates around the center, although it seems like this wouldn’t matter as relative positions would stay the same, that actually isn’t true, because everything orbits at the same speed things closer to the center go around faster than things on the edge, these rotations really add new depth and it takes some time to get used to, but the devs have really taken advantage of this with delayed attacks and timed bombs that can take advantage of the orbiting system.
– Real player with 56.5 hrs in game
“Even if you don’t think you’ll like it, just spend the 2 dollars to buy it. It is worth WAY more than the 2 dollars it costs, and even if you don’t like it, it’s only 2 dollars that you wasted!”
-Original Review
Alright, I decided I should put more effort into it. This game is better than all other turn-based space strategy games because:
*Doesn’t do too much behind the scenes, so using the highest quality setting won’t affect performance 90% of the time, and means most computers that aren’t 5 years old and slow as fuck can run it with no problems, even at the highest quality setting.
– Real player with 16.3 hrs in game
Outer Frontier
Cute game but overpriced. Not much content that I can tell.
– Real player with 0.8 hrs in game
Sid Meier’s Civilization®: Beyond Earth™
Alright, here is the lowdown.
I had been anticipating this game since it had been announced. I also had played a bit of alpha centauri, so I was interested to see where this game would go.
The Good:
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Some of the issues with 1UPT have been solved. I am still not a fan, but floating units helps you siege cities easier, which as somebody who has 500+ hours in civ (playing emperor/immortal) I appreciate this greatly. This effect comes in more late game.
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Cities don’t get built instantly, which is great. I think we can all agree that it is annoying when you are 1 tile away from a settler who makes a city right before you get to him, and now suddenly, you have to come back with an army. Instead, they have an outpost, which is far easier to assault. This prevents the computer and other players from making low-risk, high reward cities all the time. They have to actually consider where they are building this outpost and defending it.
– Real player with 214.2 hrs in game
Writing this review to give my take on the “mixed” state of the current reviews.
tldr; If you’re a die-hard Civ fan like myself, then heck yeah. If you’re uncertain, just get it on sale because it brings alot of new stuff to the table. And also, space.
I’d like to adress one point first of all, which is a reoccuring thing I notice in the review; I see people saying it should be a mod for Civ V rather than a full game which is something I strongly disagree with. I’d even go as far as to say Civ 6 is more similar to V than BE is to V.
– Real player with 78.6 hrs in game
Battlestar Galactica Deadlock
I don’t know where to start. And I don’t like that I can’t give a thumbs up AND thumbs down. But this will be a long review.
First, for a game billed as a strategy game, there is but one strategy. And that is to build enough ships to make seven ship fleets to protect each of the four quadrants of your map. This is not difficult with the exception that you play on the highest of three difficulty modes. Once you figure this out, this is where my biggest problems comes into play
- This is not a strategic game. It’s a reactive game because the Cylons always have the initiative. They will attack your fleet or your planets and you simply react to the attacks - the entire campaign, until the very end.
– Real player with 1824.5 hrs in game
“Sometimes you have to roll a hard six."
- Commander William Adama, Battlestar Galactica BSG 75
INTRODUCTION
While “Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock” it’s own game, the basic mechanics of the previous game “Starhammer: The Vanguard Prophecy” are there, with vertical movement now more refined and group moves, making the movement of fleets early on much easier. Players of that game will feel right at home, and if you don’t have the previous game, it’s a crime not to pick it up on a sale - it’s that much fun.
– Real player with 435.9 hrs in game
Interplanetary
I’ve been following this game since late 2013 when I got it, and since then it has turned out to be one of the best $5 I spent. Granted, that was on sale when it was in beta, so it’s increased to 15, with a good sale going probably from 10-12, but the game is still a very good, if not an amazing buy.
Pros (As of May 13, 2015. Initial release):
+No issues with large lobbies anymore. Large lobbies are supported and quite awesome.
+Cool graphics. You can see every shot with very little FPS drop.
– Real player with 183.1 hrs in game
This is a good game with quite a lot of potential, but several things annoy me to the point where I’ve stopped playing:
1: THE GAME HAS A HUGE MEMORY LEAK.
Now I don’t normally type in all caps, but I haven’t been able to finish a game yet due to the memory leak growing to eventually 3 gigs+ and causing all sorts of bad behavior, then crashing. I’d expect this in a pre-alpha, but for $15? Really? I feel like a Kickstarter idiot lately as the amount of half-baked not ready for release games lately is amazing.
– Real player with 24.7 hrs in game
Mecha Tactics
a complex mechanics driven hidden gem 3
– Real player with 0.4 hrs in game
Only played a few minutes
I like the 4x game with Mecha idea,
but it needs a Tutorial of some sort
I have know clue whats going on
or how to play I know this game has potential
but in think it needs to go back in the oven for a bit.
Any ways not bad for less than the cost of a cup coffee
– Real player with 0.2 hrs in game