Anything redeeming?

[PCPhoenixGaming]

As it says, is there anything redeeming about this game? I've been thinking about getting it, but I only hear bad things about it. It's like with Master of Orion 3, where a LOT of people say its bad, but myself and a few of my friends enjoy it. So yeah. Anything good about this game?

[Overread]

Most of the bad is divided into a few groups

1) People who wanted SOTS2 to be SOTS 1 with graphical overhaul. The mechanics of this game are different to the original - some quite majorly so. This changes the style of the game and the nature of play and some people have just failed to like the new system or learn how to use it.

2) The interface is not intuative - you will need to read some guides (not much work but some reading needed) to get the best out of the game. Then again this is often the same for many 4* games where its expected of the player to know a bit more about the games mechanics to really get how to play.

3) Bugs - lets face it this game launched a year ago and wasn't alpha ready at that state. It has improve massivly (and the dev have had almost weekly patches that whole time). So many of the big bugs are gone, but some still remain - this can become more of a problem in the latter game stages where it can lag the game turns.



Overall my view is that its a decent 65/100 rating game for most people - upping it to a 75/100 for those who like the visuals/genre. There is still some room for polish but if you like the style of game itself you should be able to have some very good and fun games here. Furthermore the dev are still working on the game (a patch came out not a few days ago) so there is still very active support for the title.

Sadly there is no demo, but with a free expansion the games base price is very cheap - although you can wait till the Easter Sales (it normally ends up on sale at some point). If you've not played Sword of the Stars original you might also want to consider picking this up to get a flavour of the game series (remember many things have shifted but the flavour is still there and the original is still a very good title). There is also a demo for the original.

[RandomBlue]

I think it's probably worth the $20 now. At a minimum you'll probably get 40 hours or so gameplay where you're learning the game, exploring the tech tree, having fun designing ships, etc.. and then you find out the AI is terrible and can't fight it's way out of a paper bag and multi-player is still crash-happy. At that point many of us just stop playing and wait for patches.

But 40 hours of fun for $20 isn't a bad price at all and you can probably find it elsewhere cheaper if you look.

[Quartz]

Origineel geplaatst door Zane:

I think it's probably worth the $20 now. At a minimum you'll probably get 40 hours or so gameplay where you're learning the game, exploring the tech tree, having fun designing ships, etc.. and then you find out the AI is terrible and can't fight it's way out of a paper bag and multi-player is still crash-happy. At that point many of us just stop playing and wait for patches.

But 40 hours of fun for $20 isn't a bad price at all and you can probably find it elsewhere cheaper if you look.

This is not true. Most likely, you will either spend either (up to) 20 hours of pain hating it, or you will find it's confortable to your personality and will spend hundreds of hours of fun.

IF your case is the latter, 20 bucks is an excellent investment, but there is a significant proportion of people that spent ~20 hours trying it and hating every moment of it, then giving up and deciding it was not only not worth any money, it was a waste of 20 hours.

[Overread]

I think a lot who spend 20 hours trying and hating the game are those who launch into it and try to learn it all within the game itself. Sadly the interface just doesn't really allow that and even though you can work out a lot without some key info you'll muck up or miss out major (and fun) things.

Sword of the Stars 2 is like many bigger 4* games where time spent reading the manual and a couple of guides (interspaced with playing to put theory into context and practice) will net you a massive return on the speed at which you learn the game and the amount of fun you can get out of it.

[Avidian]

So as someone who is just starting out, where would you suggest we go to learn some of the important but unclear mechanics? Thanks

[DCBenton]

I have 400 hours played so far, so there must be something of value in the game, you just need a little patience to find it. There are links in the launcher to all the official manuals and also a beginners guide. You can also open a global chat ingame via a little speech bubble button on the bottom left, lots of people get help in there.

[Postron]

but the best of them is clearly the wiki

[seth]

I've found the game to be quite good. Most of the bugs have been fixed. Those weekly patches weren't only fixes, they also included UI enhancements and AI upgrades.

[Quartz]

Origineel geplaatst door Overread:

Sword of the Stars 2 is like many bigger 4* games where time spent reading the manual and a couple of guides (interspaced with playing to put theory into context and practice) will net you a massive return on the speed at which you learn the game and the amount of fun you can get out of it.

I've played lots of 4x games without ever reading one of their manuals, including the first Civilization, the first MOO, Master of Magic. It did take me a long time to figure out per-citizen allocation of resources, but I never found it to be irritating.

I also played the first SotS without a manual... hundreds of hours. In the beginning, I was annoyed with the lack of panning, and I missed the planetary development part a bit, but I never turned to ragequit or "borderline troll personality disorder" for any game prior to this. Not even for Legend of Pegasus, piece of ♥♥♥♥ it was!

It was annoying because the foundation of a great game was there, the successful ideas of the previous game were there to reap, but no, they had to fix the part of the game that wasn't broken (still no panning the map, though, unless it was added in the last year). I think a lot of rage would have been avoided if they hadn't capitalized this as being a sequel. You can tell me they haven't, but years of convention in the whole industry show they did.

[stripe7]

Manual? There is a manual for this game?

[Ike]

i havnt gotten the game to work bot i played the first one and loved it ive had that one for a little over 2 weeks and ive played it over 20 hours

[Honorable_D]

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND THE 20TH TIME - the manual is linked right from the game launcher which appears before you load into the game. Also linked from the launcher is a beginners guide and video walkthrough.

[Llamedos]

Origineel geplaatst door Honorable_D:

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND THE 20TH TIME - the manual is linked right from the game launcher which appears before you load into the game. Also linked from the launcher is a beginners guide and video walkthrough.

not even god can overcome this sort of ... thing

[PCPhoenixGaming]

Origineel geplaatst door Quartz:

Origineel geplaatst door Overread:

Sword of the Stars 2 is like many bigger 4* games where time spent reading the manual and a couple of guides (interspaced with playing to put theory into context and practice) will net you a massive return on the speed at which you learn the game and the amount of fun you can get out of it.

I also played the first SotS without a manual... hundreds of hours. In the beginning, I was annoyed with the lack of panning, and I missed the planetary development part a bit, but I never turned to ragequit or "borderline troll personality disorder" for any game prior to this. Not even for Legend of Pegasus, piece of ♥♥♥♥ it was!

LoP... holds the record for most terrible game in all existance according to me.

[bloodkin123]

its very system demanding it glitches a lot just like sots 1 and expansions so it causes error right in the middle of good gameplay but overall its a good game the space combat sucks compared to the first series you could compare the space combat to master of orion 3 which was simplified in a way but ultimately takes away from gameplay