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.