Which points to another problem I had with the game: the pacing is terribly slow for such a short game. It takes it a while to really get going and like a lot of Eurogame designs, it ends right before it becomes interesting. I actually found it pretty boring through the first half since the economic model wasn’t challenging or compelling enough, the production facet was fairly limited, and the exploration element boiled down to picking the best tile from a bunch of face-up systems and putting it where I could take it with the least resistance. Halfway through the game it ratchets up a little but it still has this almost-there-but-not-quite feeling that prevents the game from being engaging as either a Euro-styled development game or as an Ameritrash-styled game of conflict, theme, and narrative.

Where GALACTIC EMPEROR fails the most for me is in that in its drive to be an abbreviated version of an epic-scale game that it manages to jettison the very things that make a game like TI3 such a beloved and iconic benchmark for the hobby: the epic scale, the richness of a game world created both by players as well as the game, and a strong sense of story and atmosphere. In TI3, Races are markedly different, they all have their own story and the players are directly engaged in creating it. Technologies, expansion, conflict, and development are not just mechanics…they are the story of a civilization. GALACTIC EMPEROR reduces all of that to an assembly of mechanics that feels almost completely generic. I think it’s very telling that the only artwork in the game is on the box cover and the theme rests mostly on the plastic ships, deep-space map background, some generic planet illustrations, and a sci-fi font. The depth, scale, and story of a game like TI3 are a lot more than just a set of mechanics with a theme.

It may not be fair to compare GALACTIC EMPEROR to TI3 even though that game is Joy Division to its Interpol. GALACTIC EMPEROR is much closer in scope to Eurogames like PUERTO RICO (its other primary influence, which the designer calls “the perfect game” in the design notes) despite the inclusion of more direct conflict and a stronger-than-usual theme- a very high-level and generic theme, but theme nonetheless. Yet I don’t think that the game succeeds completely enough either as an Ameritrash-style space opera game or as a Euro-style efficiency game to really attract attention away from the important and more groundbreaking games that inspired it.

Questions or comments for Michael? Send them along to gameshark.feedback@yahoo.com .

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