The Good
- Tremendous scope
- Combines all of the content from the original game and the expansions
- Includes new races, new victory conditions, and tweaks to tech trees
- Added ships like the massive Titans and corvettes that wreak havoc on foes
- Enhanced visual engine makes everything look better and move more smoothly.
The Bad
- Expensive for a stand-alone expansion
- Still no campaign mode.
Sins of a Solar Empire reaches new heights with the stand-alone
expansion Rebellion, which is the best way yet to play this 4X space
real-time strategy game. Developer Ironclad Games hasn't reinvented the
wheel, choosing to tweak the four-year-old franchise's fundamentals
instead of tearing things up. This results in an ingeniously refined new
experience that leans on a number of adjustments and additions to
features like victory conditions, ship classes, and even the graphical
engine. All of this fine-tuning of the feature set doesn't quite warrant
the $40 price tag (although owners of the previous games in the series
can qualify for a $10 break), but for that cash outlay you get a greatly
modified version of a classic RTS game that will keep you forging
galactic empires for many hours.
Virtually all of the material in the original Sins of a Solar Empire and
its previous Diplomacy and Entrenchment expansions is front and center
in Rebellion. Gameplay remains focused on building a space empire in the
far future through constructing massive battle fleets, colonizing
planets and asteroids, gathering metal and crystal resources, stuffing
the bank account full of credits, engaging other species diplomatically,
and even spreading your culture across the spaceways like some kind of
interstellar Roman Empire. The user interface is still terrific,
allowing you to keep balls in the air without everything crashing down
due to an excess of information.
The heads-up display looks a little cluttered, especially the left side of the screen that tracks vessels, but it lets you avoid micromanagement hell. The main drawback in the core feature set is the continuing absence of a campaign, so you're stuck playing one-off skirmish matches against AI opposition or human players in the online and LAN multiplayer. These skirmish scenarios can take many hours to play, however, depending on the size of the map you select.
While the core of Rebellion remains familiar, the gameplay has been stretched in significant ways. The three races of the earlier Sins games--the Advent, the Trader Emergency Coalition, and the Vasari--have been expanded to six with the creation of Loyalist and Rebel factions for each group. All are tricked out with new capital ships and unique tech. This isn't the typical expansion where each side gets a handful of new ships and guns. There are radical changes here. Vasari Loyalists, for instance, have a hate on for pretty much all other races, and can eat planets. The Vasari Rebels, on the other hand, are more easygoing when it comes to buddying up with other species, and they specialize in nanotechnology.
TEC Loyalists are all about defense, with cheaper starbases and the ability to deploy two of these behemoths around planets, while the TEC Rebels are all about conquest and can ally with pirates and neutrals to go on the offensive. Advent Loyalists are aggressive mind-controllers out to assimilate enemies, whereas Advent Rebels are a little more on the spiritual side and can revive destroyed ships. So you get a lot of replay value courtesy of the many differences in how each faction takes to the stars.
Extra ship types are some of the best new feature in the game. Massive Titan-class battleships unique to each faction can now be constructed as counters to enemies who might be turtling with starbases, minefields, and gun platforms. Titans are supremely useful when you want to assault a barricaded enemy system. This greatly aids in eliminating the drawn-out endgame that was sometimes a problem in past Sins games, with fleets endlessly smashing into one another in an effort to break defensive logjams. Titans also play into the distinctiveness of each faction. The Vasari Rebels' Kultorask Titan uses the group's nanotech to bleed power from enemy ships, for example, while the TEC Rebels' Ragnarov Titan is a huge rail gun that can shred enemy fleets with targeted and splash assaults.
The heads-up display looks a little cluttered, especially the left side of the screen that tracks vessels, but it lets you avoid micromanagement hell. The main drawback in the core feature set is the continuing absence of a campaign, so you're stuck playing one-off skirmish matches against AI opposition or human players in the online and LAN multiplayer. These skirmish scenarios can take many hours to play, however, depending on the size of the map you select.
While the core of Rebellion remains familiar, the gameplay has been stretched in significant ways. The three races of the earlier Sins games--the Advent, the Trader Emergency Coalition, and the Vasari--have been expanded to six with the creation of Loyalist and Rebel factions for each group. All are tricked out with new capital ships and unique tech. This isn't the typical expansion where each side gets a handful of new ships and guns. There are radical changes here. Vasari Loyalists, for instance, have a hate on for pretty much all other races, and can eat planets. The Vasari Rebels, on the other hand, are more easygoing when it comes to buddying up with other species, and they specialize in nanotechnology.
TEC Loyalists are all about defense, with cheaper starbases and the ability to deploy two of these behemoths around planets, while the TEC Rebels are all about conquest and can ally with pirates and neutrals to go on the offensive. Advent Loyalists are aggressive mind-controllers out to assimilate enemies, whereas Advent Rebels are a little more on the spiritual side and can revive destroyed ships. So you get a lot of replay value courtesy of the many differences in how each faction takes to the stars.
Extra ship types are some of the best new feature in the game. Massive Titan-class battleships unique to each faction can now be constructed as counters to enemies who might be turtling with starbases, minefields, and gun platforms. Titans are supremely useful when you want to assault a barricaded enemy system. This greatly aids in eliminating the drawn-out endgame that was sometimes a problem in past Sins games, with fleets endlessly smashing into one another in an effort to break defensive logjams. Titans also play into the distinctiveness of each faction. The Vasari Rebels' Kultorask Titan uses the group's nanotech to bleed power from enemy ships, for example, while the TEC Rebels' Ragnarov Titan is a huge rail gun that can shred enemy fleets with targeted and splash assaults.
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