PC Game Review: Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion

Sins if a Solar Empire: Rebellion is a good Real Time Strategy game. It is a well built game by Ironclad & Stardock Entertainment.  It looks & feels great, and is complemented by solid mechanics.  These mechanics center around large tech trees, balancing between building your fleet and economy. As with any good RTS having the right composition of units to counter and over whelm your opponents is a must. The main reason why Sins is so cool is because huge fleets, composed of massive fleets of space ships blowing each other to kingdom come. Oh, and you can zoom in on the explosions.

Iron Clad is trying to change some of the mechanics from the previous iterations of Sins of a Solar Empire games. They pushed the envelope a bit in rebellion by adding new factions but not any new races. Also unique research options to the tech trees that are epic and, of course, a new unit.  The new unit is the corvette, a very fast and mobile ship, somewhere between the strike craft, and the frigates.  Kind of how the cruisers are between frigates and capitol ships.  The corvette specializes in hit and run tactics, that being cheaper.  You can build a lot of them. They are harder to hit than the rest of the ships in the game, but can't take as much punishment.  The corvette is a step in the right direction to fix one of the problems the franchise has had since the beginning.  Combat feels too static.  The ships get in range of one another and just sit there shooting at each other.  Think of the battle ships during the First World War but with a few variants like different weapon types other than just cannon.  The ships were constantly trying to get a better shot at their enemies while trying not to be hit themselves.  The edition of the corvette makes the battles feel a little less boring.  I have always wanted to see more of that in Sins and the corvette gives it just that bit more.  Combat feels more involved with their constant motion, and I like it a lot better than what it has been.  It would still be nice to see some simple combat patterns added to the fleet menu. Also, having defensive maneuvers to protect planets or the ships themselves would be wonderful. Maybe even an attack pattern to have fleets be more aggressive when the situation calls for it.

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion is a solid Real Time Strategy game. Fans of such games should check it out.  It is solid and pretty, but the problem with rebellion is that it does not feel like a full game at the moment.  It feels more like an expansion than another game in a series of games.  I like the changes that they have made, I just think they need to make more to encourage more players actually buying the game.

Maturity Rating: 

The game is really only limited to whether you can understand what real time strategy is and how to play it. Unlike other RTS games there is very little graphic violence. In fact, it is limited to ships blowing up rather than there being blood and gore. As such the maturity rating is PG for Parental Guidance. 

Final Analysis:

Despite the things lacking in this game, it has shown a marked improvement over previous iterations of the game. Further more, Real Time Strategy fans love it for what it is. As such the game gets 2 1/3 out of 3 Triforce.

For more information on the game check out our video review.

PC Game Review: Krater

You may not have heard of the company FatShark, but after playing Krater you will agree with me that they should be a gaming company to be watched. This game has a lot of the features that make a game a classic. While there are some things lacking, this is a young company so they have room to grow. 

The Story

Krater is a top down RPG dungeon crawler set in a post apocalyptic world.  Humanity has settled around a giant crater created by some long forgotten war or cataclysm.  This crater leads into the Underside. This is where treasures of ancient technologies can be found and this is what drives conflict in the game. Everyone wants a piece of the pie. Those who have the pie don't want to share. The resulting tensions drive deadly competition. Top this off with mutated animals and you have a recipe for awesome! Krater has a great feel. It's pretty, quirky, and everyone wears masks & dress weird. Its this atmosphere is what drives me to go deeper in to the game.  The problem with this is that the story is not driving me deeper. The story is not compelling. The world is. But good games are defined not only by the quality of the graphics and mechanics, but also by the story. I get the tingle of a potential good story but it feels lack luster after a while.

Game Play 

The combat mechanics in Krater are very well done. You control a squad of three soldiers. You choose between 4 classes to fill the ranks. They are
1) Bruiser: This is your damage soaker, your tank, your decoy.

2) Slayer, melee damage per second unit. 

3) Regulator, ranged damage per second unit. 

4) Medikus, the medic/healer of the group. 

Each soldier has two skills and a gadget. This allows you to manage 9 different skill sets at one time with them from different sources.  The squad tactics are well thought out and fun. This makes you think about how you use your soldiers and their skills & tech. Large battles can get really frantic, since you are making sure that the right soldiers are taking damage, getting healed while the others are dealing damage. This is why I feel the 3 unit squad is a good limit. Additionally, you can add depth to your characters and their skills by upgrading each soldier and skills. You find boosters and implants, or craft them as the game progresses.  Krater gives you a ton of crafting items and taking advantage of the crafting system is simple and strait forward. While I haven't found any weapon blueprints, I have relied on what is dropped in game to put things together. This isn't that bad because a lot of the weapons are pretty epic. The names for them are awesome as well.

Culture

The beauty of this game is it makes a lot of Nerd culture references.  I have seen Star Wars, League of Legends, and Clutch references in the game so far. I am sure I have probably missed or not understood others as well.  It adds to the quirkiness and fun of the Krater.

Final Assessment

This game is fun, but a weak story holds it back, as well as a fair number of bugs.  When this article was written multiplayer was still lacking. Since the video review below there have been some updates that have solved some of the graphical bugs and added a boot camp was added to give some tutorial where it was lacking. This in turn helped to to understand how to use certain items and level up a couple of my soldiers that would not otherwise level up. Still. something that I don't really like is the lack of variety in skills.  You can find unique characters with different skills, but most of the soldiers within a class all have the same two skills.  It gets a little stale after a while.  Krater is still a great game for the price paid.  The music and sfx are good, the gameplay is fun, and the atmosphere is well designed.

With bugs and all I give Krater a solid 2 Triforces out of 3.

You can get Krater on Stream for $14.99 for the standard edition and $19.99 for the collector's edition.

Video Review