If you're a fan of the series or strategy in general and are willing to put up a few minor flaws and some bugs (which will hopefully be patched), then I highly recommend this title.
There's a vast array of technologies to research and build, but the true joy lies in lovingly crafting your empire, species and ships. [Apr 2007, p.73]
An excellent choice for anybody who enjoys 4X games, it has everything from research and development all the way to designing your own ships, creating you own empires and interacting with other empires. This game puts so much detail and options which include designing, research, facilities, diplomacy, starting a game, creating an empire and much more. Go get it, It's great.
This game gets an 8 from me out of the sheer ballsyness of scope that it plays at. You go from, "Look we have ion drives!" to, "Hold on a sec, I'ma make that star into a power factory for my civ, Brb." Woah! Mind blown.
Warning though, it's complex and very arcane. It's a joy if you absolutely love spending hours working very hard to understand large complicated systems. Not so great if you just want a video game to sit down and blow some steam off with.
SEV doesn’t bring anything new to the table but it is a refinement of the genre. It has all the features you’d expect or want from a turn-based space strategy game and it does them all very well.
Space Empires V is a space strategy game with plenty of depth and complexity, but it's so riddled with bugs and issues that it is ultimately tough to recommend.
Slow paced and processor intensive...Saying that, like swimming in a vast body of molasses attached to a couple of long-necked ungulates, once dry land is spotted, the drive to continue is strong. [Mar 2007, p.73]
If you stick with the smaller campaigns, you can focus on mastering the interface and designing the ultimate space fleet. Sometimes Space Empires V takes its commitment to customization too far, but there’s never any doubt who the emperor is.
An incredibly deep and complex game. The problem is that to really get your hands on the deep and complex stuff, you have to go through gameplay hell and we’d be surprised if many people had the stomach to do that when there are so many other games out there that do it better.
It's a decent 4x game. It has some deepness indeed and vast modding capabilities. What I disliked most is the user interface. Just too many unnecessary clicks. Some things regarding your empire could be seen and done easier. The graphics is not the strongest thing in this game, although I understand, that it is not very important thing in games like that.
I wanted to give this game more than a 6, I really did. However, there are a few things that keep me from doing so.
Some of the glaring problems the game has:
Buggy multiplayer and bugs in general. I spent 6 hours trying to play this with a friend and couldn't get it to work. Believe me when I say we tried everything. Sometimes when you end the turn, the game will crash for no apparent reason. Don't expect any more bug patches coming out either, as this game is nearly hitting the decade old mark as I type this.
Terrible AI: I put it on hard with a low bonus (I assume this means the AI cheats) for my first game, and there was absolutely no challenge involved. The AI will accept and send treaties for absolutely no reason. I was getting smashed by one of the AI's in a sector I didn't have a fleet in, and while he rejected my first three peacemaking attempts, he accepted the fourth for seemingly no reason. I hadn't destroyed any of his ships and my fleet was still nowhere near his. Now I would have written this off as him being involved in a war somewhere else on the map, but it consistently happens with ANY computer opponent.
That being said, it's still a heavily enjoyable 4x with unique mechanics you wont find in any other game, such as being able to modify the map and cut off entire systems from computer players/your opponents, isolating your systems until someone else manages to go down a very, very research heavy tree in order to reopen warp points. You can even create your own planets! Which is what makes it such a shame that the multiplayer doesn't work.
I recently downloaded both Space Empire IV & V from Steam and am not sure why there is so much praise here for V. Both games are played in a two dimensional plane (galaxy layout & space battles) but whereas IV had a clean layout V tries to add 3D visuals and ends up with a very cluttered interface. SE-V does offer a technological tree with amazing variety, a multitude of ship building options, and many planet improvements as well, but the time required to drill down to see details or to govern your entire empire from an overview is tedious at best. I spent a lot of time in this game turning planet labels on/off just to be able to see other planets in the same vicinity.
It almost makes me sad to have to give this game such a low score. It has great potential but the only problem is the glitches you expieriance make the game unplayable. In fact I can't even get past turn 1 as it gets stuck on the processing player turns screen.
SummarySpace Empires V is the latest edition in the Space Empires series. This latest chapter completely updates the user interface, and takes the player into a real-time rendered 3D universe. Watch space battles play out in glorious detail with realistic effects. Expand, Explore, Exploit, and Exterminate in a huge, living, breathing galaxy. Ne...