With its massive scale, broad customization, and entirely solid core, Star Ruler 2 has everything that you’d expect from an indie-developed 4X strategy title and then some.
When it comes to the realtime elements Sins of a Solar Empire is more defined. But the economical and political aspects of the galactic conquest make this one an interesting choice. Not to mention the individual construction of your fleet. There is enough substance to spend a lot of time in this universe.
In an era of crap sequels (Star Drive 2, GalCiv 3) which degrade the genre, Star Ruler 2 reinvents the wheel by making it a hyperdrive.
The game is immediately accessible, and you can play against the AIs effectively out of the gate, mostly by guessing your way through as the face of the game is very straightforward. The underbelly is considerably more complex. Expect to drop about 10 hours into just learning how to play if you want to be credible in multiplayer.
This game is FUN!
As long as you can find a multiplayer game here (which can be tricky - poor marketing means many people missed this one), there's no reason to touch any other 4x on the market this year, and likely for years to come. Enjoy. =)
Not sure why this game isn't up in the 8's and 9'. It's one of the best 4X games I've come across so far. Others have written it up better than I can/will, but I wanted to add my weighting into the score. After the dissapointing lack of innovation in Gal Civ 3 (so far. I'm hoping that will change!) I was really pleased to find SR2, and highly recommend it. The community and dev are also good.
where are negative reviews?where are negative reviews?where are negative reviews?where are negative reviews?where are negative reviews?where are negative reviews?where are negative reviews?where are negative reviews?where are negative reviews?where are negative reviews?where are negative reviews?where are negative reviews?where are negative reviews?
At sub $25 and with a tiny budget, its a good game with room for improvement. The problem is that it is not all that deep (in some aspects) compared to say, Galactic Civilizations but is well on par with other competitors like ****. This game is very much centered around ship design with some economy features thrown in that are not fully realized imho. I enjoyed designing ships and forming massive fleets and I enjoyed the RTS style of combat and having to intercept enemies. In this game, things like flanking an enemy matters since its costly to place armor all around a ship thus most design have weaknesses to the back and sides. I had success at both creating fast fleets that I control and flank with as well as tank fleets that are more hands off allowing me to focus on other problems.
Despite the fun combat, the game is weak on the economy management side of things. Most planets in the game are fairly useless except for the one item it can export. Once you have it, you connect it to another planet to create higher level planets. At the end of it all, you will have about 30 planets shipping to a main planet and aside from making sure they are not conquered, there is nothing else to do with them. The game does not encourage you to build things on other planets due to the fact that it is costly and most will never be able to level up to higher tiers making their output limited.
I am neutral about the diplomacy mechanics. Diplomacy is basically a card game. You use diplomacy points to buy randomly generated cards that cycle, fairly quickly, in real time. I like how it plays a bigger role in the game and I actually like the card battle idea (though it is simple) but the real problem is the snowball effect. If you decide to focus on diplomacy you can completely overwhelm the AI and by midgame you will own them in every way. With diplomacy, you can systematically take all their planets without ever lifting a finger. It sounds fun, but the problem is that the AI will waste a lot of its cards on meaningless challenges leaving them nothing to fight with when you decide to challenge for one of their star systems. Once you drain them of all their cards, they have no way to recover and you will win every battle from there on with very little effort. Its a good idea, but not well implemented and if were up to me, I would just turn off all diplomacy.
Some things I didnt like. Not enough customization of races. They are only a few things to pick from and none of it changes during the game. The tech tree is looks messy graphically. It need some UX optimizations such as a way to distinguish what was already researched and what is actually locked (they are both just shaded out). A line showing what paths had already been researched would be good. More unlockable equipment and abilities would be nice as well.
All in all, some really cool things in the this game and despite its weak economic and explorations aspects, I enjoy playing the game. Above average easily and if these guys ever resurface, I would love to see this game expanded and improved.
Its obvious based on the lack of posts, community, and online presence, that I am not the only one who thinks this game was a miserable excuse for a sequel. Much like supremecommander 2 and sword of the stars 2. Miserable tech, combat, and colonization systems that were designed for strategic rejects who would do better playing chess or stratego
A game with potential. It had a lot of interesting ideas and I was inclined to give it a shot. Little did I know what was in store for me...
The first hour of my time with the game was pleasant. Then, the game crashed for no reason. "Oh well", says I, "at least I've got autosave". "No, you don't", Star Ruler 2 answered, "in fact, you don't get any working savefiles. Ever."
I tried. I experimented. I looked around on the forums, Steam and otherwise, for a solution. The result of this search was almost a bigger upset than the original issue: The issue has been around for months and the developers stopped responding entirely and before that, all they did was point to mods, old drivers or hardware incompatibility for any and all issues (none of which even remotely apply to me).
If the devs can't be bothered to fix this, neither can I (if there even is a fix).
On a positive note, Steam's refund system works like a charm.
I played many 4x games. Ranging from Master of Orion to the Endless Space.
More horrible art and design interface I've yet seen.
The entire game runs on rule - send all resources to the capital, about the rest of the planet forget.
Very boring..
SummaryMassive scale 4X-RTS set in space. Control hundreds of planets, manipulate galactic politics, research numerous advanced technologies, and command thousands of units and hundreds of planets in your quest for galactic dominance.