i disagree, i dont think this is a good game. its not a totally bad game neither - just it does not offer anything that has not done better in other space 4x games.
let me go a bit into detail:
-the races are very generic and all play the same. yes, there are minor differences if it comes to the ships (later more about these) and of course the default races have some minor boni and mauli, like slightly faster or slower production rates.
but they all play excactly the same, and the customisation follows the moo2 sheme by the book - though it has fewer options.
-game balance is rather poor. the mentioned ships are a good excample. some races just have much less space on their ships. this is expecially crippeling for races that have shitty colonisation ships. (humans are a good excample, with cant have more then two colonisation modules on their colonisaition ships before midgame, and also have very slow colonisation ships.)
often, later tech thingies are arguably worse then lower tech thingies they suppose to upgrade.
-the ai is very retarded. not a surprise considering the devs also made the space empires series. well, at least in this game the ai is not COMPLETELY inactive, it will build some colonies and build weak defense forces everywhere.
its worth noticing that the devs claim the ai doesnt have to cheat to be competetive. with is a blant lie. not only knows the ai all the map all the time, it also doesnt have to bother about ship layouts or fuel, and it can build and research faster.
despite all this, the ai still fails hard. because it knows all the map, it early will just cherry pick systems around all the galaxy thus leaving itself usually with a scattered empire it then cant defend.
at war the ai is usually mostly inactive. it will send weak fleets of tiny ships at you once in a blue moon. it will not react to attacks exept with begs for mercy.
in tactical combat, the ai fails too. it will just send all its forces after your weakest unit, usually the fighters. you then can use these ships to make the ai ships go where you want while killing off single ships. the rest of the ai fleet will keep chasing its favorite target like mindless zombies.
-there is some alien mystery race, very much like the antereans in moo2. however, unlike the antereans in moo2, this mystery race is not fun at all. instead of an escalating force that will be a challange through out the game, its a doom time clock. once the race shows up, it will attack random systems and then destroy all the colonies in these systems if not defeated.
now the thing is, these fleets are realy tough and the normal ai players have no hope to ever win the defense battles. thous, once the mystery race shows up, its game over for the ai. consequently, at this point all the ai players will force peace on the player and with each other. victory condition changes too at this point. to win then, one has to research a few techs, build a special ship and send it to the mystery race to pacify them.
imo this is a very bad game design. it makes most of the game before the mystery race shows up irrelevant.
-the combat is quite shallow. 2d plane, realtime combat with variable speed. ai manages to have path finding issues in empty space if enough units are around. getting your whole fleet to fire proably is the most challanging part about this game.
-the techtree is a bit of a mixed bag. mecanic whise, it follows birth of the federation, and presents it on a single page with is nicely done.
but i is rather short, and its rather borring. yes, you get better guns. you get better engines and generators. but there is almost nothing that is more then a straight upgrade from something you already had.
-map generation just blows. proably the worst map generation since SE:V. you can generate a large map with 2 players, and have them start directly beside each other. on hard, there is some minor gimmic 1 planet ai race, with can trap the player in a tiny pocket of space. the map generation does not check the distribution of planets that can be colonized with early techs. its very common that you wont find anything to colonize within range.
as said. i dont think it is a realy bad game. i would call it medicore, 5/10.
anyway. there are many games in this genre that are just better in every aspect. i would not recomend this game.
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Topic: Polaris Sector - Space 4X Combat Galore (Read 7315 times)