To review Shattered Suns, I'll do a review of Sins of a Solar Empire as well. Both are 3D Space Sim/RTS, commonly called 4X games.
Sins of a Solar Empire
SIns of a Solar Empire was supposed to be THE new defining 3D Space RTS, however, it fell short to virtually no real customization, the "Epic Battles" weren't so Epic. They were large and even huge, however, you were too busy switching back and forth to different systems and managing the empire after waiting for your fleet to finally arrive somewhere. It doesn't help that in that game, the winning scenario is usually hit and run to keep the other opponents down (they do that to you too) and then once you become so big, that it doesn't matter, you just keep sending in reinforcements and grab planets.
The graphics were pretty good, and fit the presentation
Sound was merely alright, like most 4X games
The AI was annoying more than challenging. I had to use sheer numbers of opponents to draw out a game.
Features were fine I suppose. There was no real customization, no real tactics and even the formations seemed very superficial.
The only feature that was neat, were the "super weapons" that everyone can get. They aren't so powerful that you can decimate the enemy with it, but it is enough to give you an advantage.
Shattered Suns
Shattered Suns was sort of a promise that a good 3D Space RTS would be released again. The game was supposed to be very customizable. You see, us 4X guys like to make our own designs, both tactical and visual. Games Like
Space Empires, which gave you too much detail to design and then a crappy AI and boring battles and the legendary (and what got me started on this genre)
Master of Orion 2, which gave you simple, but meaningful things that you could customize your ships with. And of course the
Homeworld Series was the last, best 4X experience, so much so that even after all these years it still keeps kicking.
So basically, everyone who makes 4X games knows what we like, but usually fails to deliver something big. With Shattered Suns you are greeted with your on-board computer that tries to be charming and your advisor. But its in a chatroom-like environment and tends to just be annoying. Even in its talking parts in the actual gameplay. However, Shattered Suns promised real moving, immersible space. And the planets do orbit and such, however, even as the game developer's admit it can be disorienting, because unlike Homeworld's GOOD controls, and camera, and even its tactical sphere-like view, Shattered Suns tried to be a little different. Most of the time you are moving your camera more than your fleets and it becomes annoying as well. The units are rather annoying as well, because when they are built, they default to "stand down" and "follow", which means that it won't attack anything automatically and it won't dock, it'll just follow...even the enemies. In the campaign I redid the first real mission where all you do is try to dock up ships to repair them. Your space station has no resources, so you need to use them from other ships, however, you station, even with its own builders fail to repair ships 75% of the time, which is bad with a time limited mission, where you must repair an armada quickly. The game is forgiving and allows you to lose and go to the next mission however.
Shattered Suns' characters are all mostly text and also just as annoying as the computer. The game does not add in the immersion that it promised. The customization, which was touted, isn't very good. You have a very simple upgrade system, where each space station must research and then be upgraded to be able to build your simplistic custom ships, which are just a + and - of different levels of weapons and weapon types. You can tell that the game was probably made with mostly a programmer, as the weapons are very balanced, down to ones that you must actually plunge into the enemy like a drill to lasers, to missiles, to uploading viruses, to area of effect weapons. However, you don't actually get to do much with them. You basically just spam enemies with whatever you want. There's no armor that's strong against certain types or anything like that. The AI is rather focused and its goal seems to just be to send ships your way in numbers, which is a valid strategy and unfortunately, about the only strategy that you'll use as well.
The planets are also pretty useless, as you just use them to orbit your Space Stations and to mine generic ore and crystal. You can't build, colonize or otherwise use them at all. Up close they look neat, as with earth-like planets, the cloud cover is independent of the planet, so that its more realistic and almost visually pleasing. The reason that it isn't very pleasing, is because the graphics seem to be from around 2001 and they are glitched at that. If they would have had real graphic artists, I think it would have looked much better for sure, but here again it looks to be mostly the work of a programmer, all function and realism, without presentation to be visually pleasing or intuitive for tactics.
The sounds are very functional and the music is very boring. It seems that while they tried to spice it up by having different music depending on how much you are zoomed in on a unit, it comes up as just repetitive and annoying as well. When you zoom in on the units, the music is upbeat and it seems like enemies are around, because the music seems to prompt you of immediate danger, but its the same track and always plays, even when there are no enemies around. Zoomed out the music is a generic loop of ambient music.
All and all, this game comes up short of what it was supposed to be and is boring. But beyond being boring, it can also be very annoying to play as well.
I'm hoping that since the Homeworld license was purchased again last year, that we will be getting a good 4X game again. No need to do anything too new. So it goes, if you want to actually fly your own ships and maybe have AI pilot the rest of your armada for trading or escorts with a seemingly boundless universe, and with elements of
TradeWars then you'll look to
X3. If you want a good 4X space RTS, then you'll have to look to Homeworld, but you'll have to be willing to settle for some security measures removed and still be unstable in Windows Vista, or play it on XP. And if you want mind-numbing customization with your ships, you'll need to visit
Space Empires V, not to be confused with the ridiculously out of date and ancient Space Empires IV that Steam offers. And if you want just about everything the way it should be, then you'll have to visit Master of Orion 2 and play it on
DosBox and it won't look pretty in high resolutions either.
I'm not sure why a company can't come up with a good 4X game anymore, just as similar happenings have happened to all of the
XCOM clones. Maybe its that companies want to market a game that is very much different and its own from the same games that they considered great. Maybe its that there isn't a lot of budget for these games yet, because they aren't mindless, or maybe its just that they are trying to tell us that
Microprose should have never gone out of business. It could be argued that the genre doesn't have enough of a community, even though there are many of us out there, but I think you haven't seen a lot of support because of all of the broken promises and crappy games thrown at us over this decade.
Our next promised savior for 4X is another expansion for Galactic Civilizations II, but probably not, because its really not a very good game at its core and each expansion promises to bring, what should have already been done.
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Topic: Shattered Suns and Sins of a Solar Empire (Read 518 times)