One of the more depressing things about my status in the gaming industry is that I find myself belonging to many “niche” genres. For some crazy reason I can’t even begin to fathom, it turns out the gaming populace at large actually isn’t enamored with giant robot simulators that have crazy 40-button controllers with foot pedals, or awe-inspiring space-fighter games with beautiful capital ship combat – were this untrue, maybe we’d be blessed with more games on par with Steel Battalion or Freespace 2. But thankfully, some developers out there are still keeping the faith, which is why I feel happy to have been appropriately blessed with a copy of Sword of the Stars. A contribution to the “4X Strategy” genre (“4X” being defined as “eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate”), Sword of the Stars is a turn-based galactic conquest title. Players can choose from one of four separate races and set forth to make their mark in the galaxy and survive by any means possible, in a variety of scenario, custom, or multiplayer-based environments.

The game’s premise seems simple enough, but this belies a surprisingly complex backstory. In the wake of devastating wars and scientific breakthroughs, humanity is finally taking its first major steps into space. After exhaustive effort is spent launching their first colony ship, a race of alien beings called the “Hivers” suddenly swarm into the Earth system and begin razing everything in orbit. The vigilant Terrans (being ‘us’, of course) finally manage to fight them off, but only barely, and with a much more renowned understanding that the galaxy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and a heavy lean on military might will be required to survive. That’s basically it, except a quick look through the available reference materials actually yields a surprising amount of detail that has been placed into each of the four playable races. The two have already been introduced; the Terrans and the Hivers (the latter of whom are bent on blindly serving their designated “queen” and the survival of their species), but there are also two others of note, including the enigmatic “Liir”, whom can literally be described as a race of space-dolphins focusing on stealth and surgical strikes, and the war-hardened Tarka, who are basically reptilian Klingons. Really though, the written synopsis the developers created for each race is actually quite fascinating for anybody at all interested in getting ‘into’ the game, and helps add a good deal of perspective to the universe.

But enough on plot, let’s tackle the actual gameplay systems. Sword of the Stars can be played mainly in one of two ways; in a pre-set scenario with set objectives (such as a situation where the “Hiver” race is engaging in a massive exodus that just happens to bring them into a busy part of the galaxy, and the other races are tasked with trying to hold them off), or my own personal favorite being the custom campaign. When setting up a custom campaign, players can choose elements like the overall galaxy size (as well as a selection of different “cluster” types to choose how the galaxy is laid out – my favorite is “spiral”) and how many character slots will be in the game, nothing that if it’s a multiplayer match, then as a neat touch other players can optionally come in mid-game and assume the AI positions. Other variables also include the starting technology and capital levels and even universal industrial and research output adjustemnts, which can drastically affect the overall pacing of the game. My general preferred settings involve a “clean slate” and slower pacing, so most of my games start out with a larger universe and a single colony out in the back-end of nowhere to begin building up from.

It’s the process of getting started in particular that each race’s unique options really come into play, as the primary difference between them is how transportation is handled. The Tarka rely on the most straightforward warp technology to go from one star to another in a relatively quick manner, with the Liir also employing a similarly basic-to-implement “Stutter Warp” drive (which from a technical sense involves a very rapid series of micro-teleportations that occur over and over again, moving a vessel incredibly fast with no inertial concerns). Meanwhile, the Hivers have a moderately slower rate of pacing for initially exploring systems, but once explored, they can send a “Gate” vessel which will enable the Hivers to deploy ships anywhere inside of their empire within a single turn (subsequent upgrades increase how many ships can be ‘gated’ at once). Finally, the Terrans (while being my most favorite) have to rely on “node” travel. Terrans can explore out very quickly when getting started, but are dependent on using linked nodes to move between systems (which are randomly determined each time a new campaign is started), and Terran ships trying to travel to a system they haven’t discovered a node path to will suffer incredibly long travel times. This interesting balance can have a profound effect on how each race starts off in their conquest of the galaxy, and they all receive research options unique to them to help improve the manner in which these technologies are implemented.

With this in mind, the game progresses pretty much as one would expect for a turn-based 4X title, with a player’s main objective being to expand out to other worlds, establish colonies, and avoid being wiped out by some other race with the same goal. However, one of the most critical aspects in a game of this nature is how the interface is handled. Past games in this genre have shown a wide variety of implementations with mixed results (I have a hard time finding arguments in favor of the ill-fated Master of Orion 3, for example), but ultimately the way information is presented to the player on how they can manage their empire is critical in keeping the game interesting – a complex interface can offer a tremendous level of depth, but might also turn people away, whereas a game with too much simplicity just won’t be any fun once the novelty wears away. In my opinion, Sword of the Stars strikes a good balance in this regard, although I feel it’s still geared a little too much towards a “simple” bias (then again, this is coming from someone who owns two copies of Steel Battalion) and lacks some of the flexibility I’ve come to expect from similar titles.

The good thing is that the interface is very simple to grasp and I was able to jump right in and begin fully managing my empire with barely a glance at the documentation. Players manage their empires from a mix between a 3D interface and 2D overlays indicating empire information, and it’s incredibly easy to get at-a-glance details on how much money your empire is making or expending, and from where exactly. A simple slider adjusts funding from going directly into the empire’s savings or research project (only one item can be researched at a time), and when developing a new colony, sliders similarly exist to adjust priorities between developing a planet’s infrastructure development or any needed terraforming, as well as adjusting the “Overharvesting” rate. Overharvesting is a bit of a novelty in colony development, as each colony has a finite number of “resources”. By default the higher the resource count on a planet the better it’s output, but if players set the planet into overharvest mode, then it will start to consume these resources and rapidly accelerate its development – technology can also eventually be researched to mine resources from uninhabitable worlds and drop them at a specific planet. Aside from this and the ability to construct custom-designed orbital defense platforms, that’s about as far as colony management goes. There is option to construct individual buildings or improvements on a specific planet – any researched colony upgrades are universally applied, so there’s very little degree of required micro-management. At first this seems to work fine, but once players start reaching the upper echelons of the tech tree, it pretty much turns into a game of who can bring the largest, heavily-armed fleet to bear and wipe out their neighbors. Speaking of which, when the time comes to engage, the game loads up a 3D combat sequence in which you can either have the AI automatically manage your ships, or take manual control of each vessel. This is really cool to watch, especially when you can custom-design your own battleships and upgrade their weapons consistently, but some of the pathfinding and navigational elements tend to make moving your ships around a bit of a chore.

Which brings me to another complaint on the game involving a further lack of strategic options. After encountering a race for the first time, players must first research their language, after which options open up to send an alliance or non-aggression treaty request, which the AI will randomly decide to accept or deny depending on a number of underlying factors – the problem is that these factors aren’t really apparent in any way. Allegedly they are based on a player’s overall rankings (in terms of technology, military power, etc), but I’ll be disappointed if it turns out that’s the only real deciding point. The real problem I found was one situation where an AI ally who was essentially backed into a corner suddenly turned around and declared war on me, even though I was sacrificing millions of Terran lives trying to keep their pitiful colony in existence – of course, I responded by “accidentally” hurling a gigantic asteroid at their last remaining planet, but that’s another story. What I would have loved to see most from Sword of the Stars is more detailed interactions with the other races – as the game is, you can only declare short-term alliances (which the AI will break on a whim) and only really get anywhere through military might. Having a more verbose way to gauge how another race sees you, as well as what kind of interactions you can have with them would certainly be a welcome addition.

I say too often that there aren’t nearly enough additions to the general space-oriented genre of gaming, and taking this into account, Sword of the Stars is more than a welcome addition. Both the singleplayer and multiplayer options are quite verbose (and even tie into each other, so you can have a similar singleplayer experience to that of multiplayer and engage in scenarios or custom matches), and apart from a known issue of the game taking a very long time to process each turn in larger maps with lots of AI, runs quite fluid and stable. I’d strongly recommend players hit up the official website after buying the game to pick up the latest patches however, as they make a tremendous number of improvements. Ultimately, Sword of the Stars is one of the best “pick up and play” renditions of a 4X space strategy title I’ve seen to date, and with the possibility of third-party mods opening up and even an expansion pack, I’m looking forward to seeing that the future brings for this interesting title.