The game that saved space strategy for me
The game has received a rather lukewarm reviewer score for some reason, which makes little sense when compared to the glowing reviews the above-mentioned titles got. I can only presume that the reviewers did not appreciate the TBS/RTS combination. As a pure strategy game, SotS does not rise that much above the rest, although the empire management, research and fleet movement and ship design is intuitive and well handled. Neither does the RTS space combat element stand out on its own. The combination, however, works like a charm and while the release, which lacked an autocombat key for some encounters, could sometimes overwhelm you, the developers fixed this quickly - Kerberos' reminds me of Paradox Entertainment in their dedication to good product follow-up practices, and that is high praise indeed. SotS also stands out in that its MP possibilities, due to the TBS/RTS combo, are nearly limitless. This is more than enough to make you forgive the graphics, who, although they are not actually bad, can look a bit out-of-date in 2007. What could be improved upon is the diplomacy, which of course matters mainly in singleplayer. While the "first encounters" can be tense and interesting, as two explorer fleets glare at one another and the player considers whether a quick strike at the enemy to hurt him early on is preferrable to waiting it out (since your first encounter with an alien race is what activates the speech translator techs, you can do precious little in terms of communicating beyond not firing or firing), the three options of war, non-aggression pacts and alliances are perhaps to simplistic. I eagerly await the expansion, which seems to include more diplomatic features.