Sins of a Solar Empire (PC)

Sins of a Solar Empire is definitely a good looking game and brings to mind the early Homeworld titles in terms of design/look. The graphics of the ships are excellent and the three factions all differ visually as well in the design of their ships. The game features superb lighting effects and textures, with excellent rendering on the solar systems themselves. The game’s camera is fully 3d and can be manipulated flawlessly, never leaving you far from the action.

There was one area that I felt needed a little bit of work, the weapons, shield effects and the explosions, battle effects all seemed to be toned down. I was expecting a lot more from those areas, but it’s a minor niggle that has actually been solved by a recent mod which I will link to at the end of the review, because it’s worth a mention. This just goes to illustrate my earlier point about the Sins modding community and the level of modding that the game supports.

The audio in Sins of a Solar Empire is of an excellent quality, with the special effects and explosions having good solid sounds and various spot effects when the camera is close. Sins lacks a lot of vocals, the voice work is great, but the chatter between pilots and so on seems to be missing and a lot of those vocals are repeated as per most RTS’. I really miss those chatty pilots from Homeworld.

One of the golden stars of the game is the music, the music to Sins is simply stunning, with each race having their own distinct thematic soundtrack, once again, the TEC feels very Babylon 5 and their score is a sweeping dramatic orchestral one with numerous stirring pieces and even some quieter sad moments. A point to note is that all the music is nicely presented in the game’s sound folder, so you can listen to it outside of the game. This is the kind of soundtrack that I’d purchase if one were available; it’s got a big budget feel to it and excels in every area regarding that score.

I have to admit that I didn’t know what I’d think when I opened up this and put it on the PC, 4x + RTS without turn based, would it ever work? Well, I can tell you right now, it does and it works really well. Well enough to replace Galciv II as my favourite space based strategy game for now, this is how the 4X RTS genre needs to proceed, with other companies or even Ironclad and Stardock building upon this game type and shaping it into something truly stunning, not to say that it isn’t stunning to begin with because I’m pretty impressed with it, but it just needs a little bit more before it starts to really shine.

And just because I promised earlier I’d link to this mod, I really think it deserves a mention as one of the best Sins mods out there so far, it’s a visual mod that sharpens up the battle graphics, has some great shield effects and really does add to the game. You can find Bailknight’s work here at: Sins of a Solar Empire 1.3 graphics mod

And that about wraps things up for me here, I’m off to go play Sins of a Solar Empire some more. There’s a pesky Advent presence that needs to be wiped out before I can proceed further into the nearby system, and to think, they used to be my allies!