Are you seeing this? I played this game on a three year old gaming laptop. Wow.

For those of you with computers and an itch for some space strategy, the original Sins of a Solar Empire took galactic civilization building to a level not seen since the Master of Orion series. For those of you that are unfamiliar with Sins of a Solar Empire, it is a great smash up of both real time strategy and 4X gameplay (explore, expand, exploit and exterminate) that focused around planet building and star fleet management.  The original kept me up many nights,  convincing myself that I was just going to play a few more minutes before going to bed, only to next look up and find that it was next Tuesday.

In Sins, there are three “races” of players to choose from: your generalized human coalition known as the TEC, the psionic based Advent religious whacknuts, and the invading Vasari aliens. Each have their own unique play style and research trees.  In a game, you’ll start on a homeworld, where you begin building both military and civilian structures to expand your presence, while maintaining a defensive fleet.  Eventually, while scouting out neighboring systems, you’ll bump into your neighbors, at which point, the fun begins, as the race is on to out “fleet” each other.

One of the big problems originally with the Sins franchise was that it was focused primarily around fleet combat.  There really was no way to “win” without wiping the floor with your opponents. In Stardock’s first expansion, Entrenchment, they boosted your defensive capabilities. In their latest expansion, Diplomacy,  they have addressed this in a $10 pack that adds a whole new layer of complexity to the game.  One of the primary updates to the game rule set is the ability to win a diplomatic victory, which is a great non-aggressive way to win a match.  Through the brand new diplomacy screen, you can see all the factions and detailed information on their feelings for your race.  Eliminate the factions who don’t like you or can’t be won over through negotiation, then join forces with the remainder, and you can handily cruise to a win.

Before Diplomacy, if you were in front and way in the lead, the computer AI would focus on you relentlessly.  One way around this was to disrupt your opponents by bribing pirate forces to go after another player. The problem was that it was a crap shoot and there was no guarantee they would go after the target you wanted. Besides bribing pirates, there was little you could do to get your opponents fighting amongst themselves.  Now, in Diplomacy, you can set bounties against other players that they can complete.  What a great way to get the rabble to dismantle each other, as opposed to almost automatically ganging up on the leader!  In Diplomacy, you can quietly sit back and get your opponents to beat on each other, which is vital at higher difficulties.

The game does not have a campaign or story mode (booooo!), but it does have dozens of scenarios and modes you can play against human, or computer AI players.  Too easy?  No sweat, because they just added a variety of AI difficulty levels.   Done all the scenarios and tired of randomized start ups?  No problem,because Sins not only gives you the ability to create your own maps, but the Sins community is ,an active modding community, which the developers support.  Bottom line, between single or multiplayer, you’re not going to get bored any time soon.

Another thing I have to point out is the game’s low system requirements.  For a game this detailed and intricate, with as many working parts as it does, it still ran on my Dell gaming laptop (purchased in 2006) with little, to no, grief.  It may have been at a lower 1028×720 resolution and hitched a bit when zooming in and out, but when you see the number of things going at any one time on the screen, that’s quite a feat.

One of the only complaints/issues I personally ran into was with your actions not souring your allies’ diplomatic disposition.  Most disturbing is that even when you go in “whole hog” and bombard the bejesus out of a civilization, they can still maintain a positive diplomatic rating.  Shouldn’t that be considered negative “military actions” and cause my rating with them to plummet? Then again, why would you bomb a friendly civilization when you’re going for either a military or diplomatic victory, but it was worth mentioning in the review.

Bottom line: If you own a computer (even an old crappy one, apparently) and enjoyed (or still enjoy) either the Master of Orion or Civilization series, do yourself a favor and pick up this game.  The game is also being packaged as Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity, which encompasses the original game and now both of its expansions, Entrenchment (defensive focused) and Diplomacy, for $39, which you can get digitally or in retail stores on February 9th.

Author’s Note:  I received a review code for the full Sins of a Solar Empire trilogy, including both the Diplomacy and Entrenchment expansions.  If you don’t believe me as to how good of a game this is, get a second opinion by reading through PacManPolarBear’s review of the Sins of a Solar Empire expansion, Entrenchment.

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