Starships condenses Sid Meier's knack for turn-based strategy into a short, two-to-five hour burst of board game-esque tactics that's as satisfying as it is approachable.
It’s the same game on PC and iOS, which explains its simplicity and low difficulty level. It just wasn’t designed to steal months of your life, but works great in short, relaxing sessions. [05/2015, p.64]
I would actually recommend it ,on the account of me having fun playing it.
These days my patience for learning new and complex games are (perhaps unfortunately?) at an all time low.
Starships was a surprise, in that it was -really- easy to get into.
You don't have to read a manual 10 times the bible just to undock your ship, or learn how the economic's work.
Sid Meier's Starships pretty much puts you right in the middle of things, yet giving you some help along the way.
There's only a few tech-trees if you compare it to the Civilization games, and as such things do feel quite a bit simplified.
The good thing about this is that it makes the game easy to get into, and still as you learn by playing, you soon find that strategy and thinking helps a lot.
I would love for Firaxis to add to this game, it's practically begging for a good Hot-seat mode (Like the Old Master of Orion games (MOO 1+2) more diplomacy options ,more ship / customization options, and actually, a little more of everything.
It's the first space strategy game I've tried in the last 10 years I haven't needed to will myself into playing, but now that I like it? I want more, lots more.
There positives are :
Easy to get into
Smooth gameplay
Interesting setting / technologies
The many different kinds of missions , in addition to thrilling space battles
A sheer joy to play (when you're winning difficult fights)
The negatives (for me)
NO FULLSCREEN?!!! ...... That's uber-annoying, what are Firaxis thinking?
Alt+F4 to quit!?? Where's the QUIT TO WINDOWS (or DOS) button????
No multiplayer? ..**** why???? It's a turned based game that practically begs for a Hot-seat mode
GUI , this -really-really-really- needs work ......I thought they knew how to do this after Civ and X-com
Lack of gameplay depth, options like setting up diplomatic treaties, alliances ++
Though the game can quickly pull you in, it soon leaves you wanting more
I certainly hope the game gets better With patches / fixes and addons
Mobile game released for PC, just so we're clear. Streamlined, light-strategy experience focused on tactical starship battles, big on unit positioning and angle of attack. It's not meant to take two weeks to finish a game. Where it succeeds is distilling classic Civ features into their basic fundamentals for a Civ-light (very light!) feel. I'll tell you how I feel about this: personally, I'm a Total War game kind of guy, and ideally would spend days on careful worldwide strategy and minute positioning in battle. But now I'm also a parent with a full time job, and I don't have that kind of time. So to me, getting the same general strategy fix in a fraction of the time by shaving away some of the complexity is not a bad thing. I still wrestle with optimizing territory control, determining research tree path, ship loadout and overall playstyle strategy, preventing AI moves that could cost me the game, etc. It just happens a lot faster. For $15 that's kind of a selling point now. As long as this doesn't become the future of Civ games (and it's clearly NOT Civ-6, so I don't think we have to worry), there's a place for this as a light-strategy companion piece.
Sid Meier's Starships is a good introduction to 4X games or a good way to entertain yourself during long trips. It doesn't have Civ's depth, but it still is a enjoyable game.
Connection to the Sid Meier's Civilization is just fake, this game doesn’t even offer any strategic orgies. Lower your expectations and you can have some fun making war not love... That counts, right? [Issue#251]
Had it been released as a good sized piece of DLC for Beyond Earth, it might have felt completely different, but as it stands I cannot help but feel a bitter aftertaste in my mouth.
It's fun intuitive gameplay, but simple. It's worth the 15$ and will be even more worth it when firaxis ties it in with beyond earth creating another layer of game mechanics to and that unique feel that we've been looking for from Sid. I would totally get it. Its repetition doesn't really deduct from the gameplay and its oddly satisfying.
- If you like turn-based combat, you must try this game.
- A lot of missions (one or more missions per turn)
- Very easy to play turn-based combat
- Combat with good options (torpedoes, laser, plasma cannon).
- Good graphics and sound
- Quick to learn, easy to play
- But, become to easy to play when you learn all
- Good managament options. Easy turn-base management (build cities and wonders, just like Sid Meiers Civilization series)
- Is not a huge game, to spend hundreds of hours playing. Is a casual game, for fun and relaxing.
People need to stop rating and reviewing this as if it were a $60 PC game. I paid 12 bucks and am enjoying it quite a bit on both PC and tab. It is what it is. No more, no less. As far as mobile games go, it's one of the best out there. As far as PC games go, it's actually not too bad either. This has more gameplay and replayability than a lot of full-price games. I only wish they HAD made a full AAA PC version of it!
If you don't know anything about Sid Meier, look him up and what games he did. He and Civilization are probably the biggest names in the genre ... and then comes Starships.
At first I thought I was missing something but it's really that simple. I'm not saying simplicity is a bad thing but for a Sid Meier title this is more than just bland. The core gameplay feels as interesting as the space age in Spore. Instead of moving spices and terraforming you get missions on each planets. About 5 different. Considering that this is pretty much all you do the entire game it's fair to say that it gets old very quickly.
Research, outfitting ships and managing planets is linear and just as uninteresting.
The fact that this is also a mobile game really shines through. Graphics are really basic but at least the window can be rescaled freely.
It doesn't pretend to be a full Civilisation game but still, for having Sid Meier in the name it just doesn't deliver enough.
4 points for being a game (with almost no content) and working very well on PC (and not being a bad port)
I'm pretty underwhelmed, especially for $15. This is clearly an uninspired direct port of a mobile game (which I didn't discover until after I bought the PC version), and even the mobile version is underwhelming & shallow as a game. All the 4X concepts are there -- exploration, resources, research, diplomacy, combat -- but most of them are shamefully underdeveloped. You have only limited control over the victory conditions -- either all them, or any one, but not subsets -- and the opening splash screen is actually miselading: it says you can win by controlloing 51% of the galaxy, but you actually need either 51% of the total population _or_ every single star system. Domination victory turns into a grind, yet a simple one (hint: focus on torpedoes). As a $3 mobile game, it might have been worth it, but it is vastly overpriced at $15. Avoid this. [Reposted: somehow my original score of 4 got changed to 2]
SummaryAssemble and helm a fleet of starships and travel between planets as you explore, build, negotiate, and fight to preserve your vision for humanity.