Hovering just above the ground, the Sins of a Solar Empire float rolls by.
Sins of a Solar Empire is an epic real time strategy game; instead of the frantic pace of a traditional Starcraft-style RTS, Sins has the longer pacing of a 4X turn based strategy game.
The effect is a really deep and addictive game. You can smoothly zoom from the details of a battle, as shown above, to viewing your whole empire with ships and planets represented as small icons, with a quick spin of the mouse wheel. The AI is pretty effective at running battles, so as long as you have a good mix of different ship types, you can let the AI handle a battle while you manage another part of your empire.
The AI opponents are tough, especially when you have a large map with a half-dozen opponents.
What makes this game truly awesome, however, is the fact that it runs on lower-end hardware. My laptop, while great in most other aspects, has a terrible on-board video processor. It can’t handle most modern games, but it handles Sins of a Solar Empire masterfully.
And because Stardock has taken a much more enlightened view of copy protection than the average game publisher, I can run this game without having to keep a CD in the computer.
For being a fun, addictive game that looks good without needing top-shelf hardware, and for trusting fans of the game to do right by them, Stardock gets one of the larger floats in the parade for Sins of a Solar Empire.