Space Empires V

This game is awful. It is ancient, buggy, unstable and requires mods to make it remotely playable. It doesn't have half the features Stellaris has. I don't know how I've played it for 600 hours or how the ship design and combat is somehow better then games with 100x the budget and time. This game is a trap. You need to not play it. In fact, you need to run, right now before this buggy crap takes 600 from you too. It's too late for me, save yourself!

I've gotten 3 copies of this game because it's just that good, two on CD and this copy on Steam. The culmination of the Space Empires series, it's a wonderful game with a lot of depth. Unfortunately, it does come with some bugs and balance issues, most of which can be fixed with Captain Kwok's Balance Mod. Absolutely worth checking out!

While I like the complexity of options and the level of control you have over ship design, this game did not age well since I last played it when it was new, and I don't mean graphically. I was greeted by a host of technical issues. At first the game simply refused to even start. Once I figured that out, I still get hit by random crashes that aren't that uncommon, along with times where the FPS of this ancient game drops down really low and it just runs terrible. I have to restart. I have multiple monitors and while the game's launcher lets you select which monitor it plays on, if I change it away from the default the game doesn't load. At least it defaults to my main monitor. What is interestingly bizarre is the game seems to configure itself using elements from all attached displays. It'll run on monitor 1, using the max resolution of monitor 2, and locks itself at the minimum refresh rate of the attached TV. So if my TV is connected to my PC, the game locks itself at 30fps for some reason even though the TV is set for 60Hz. If I disable the TV in NVIDIA control panel, it goes up to the refresh rate of my main monitor at 144. So I have to disable the extra displays even if it's not using them. Tedious, but oddly fascinating. I like most of the music from this game, but it and the effects sound almost like you're listening to them through a phone. Perhaps the engine just has a low quality sound engine? It's odd because if I go into the game folder and listen to the MP3s of the music tracks, they sound fine. It's only in game where they sound a bit muffled and with low fidelity. The game itself despite being run on a PC that is so much more powerful than what was available at the time the game was made, it still runs poorly. From random losses of FPS, to sustained losses of FPS that are only resolved by restarting the game, to your ship list menu freezing the game upwards of 7-10 seconds before it opens even if you have about only two dozen ships on the list. The AI turn processing time start getting fairly lengthy as well, with all the issues all compounding together it really make it more difficult to enjoy playing. However, I get too many random crashes that have no obvious cause or correlation between them that I can't solve, so I can't recommend this game. Keep in mind this was after messing with it for quite a long time to get it to even load in the first place. It's a shame there was never a sequel that refined the experience, underneath all the jank and technical issues, there is a pretty solid premise for a game. If you still want to try it, only get it on sale and make sure you use a mod that improves the AI like CaptainKwok's Balance mod. The base game AI isn't good.

Шедевр. Игре уже 20 лет, а ничего даже отдалённо близкого по глубине в этом жанре так и не вышло. Огромное кол-во возможностей, вариантов отыгрыша, работающих тактик и игровых ситуаций.

A classic 4X game that was one of the most moddable games in its time. Users can easily write text mods for everything. Python scripting allowed for non-core game mechanics to be added though significant, lengthy changes could produce end turn lag as they are processed after the core code. Still, want a hyperspace jump drive - script it. Want the ability to create shelled Dyson sphere planets - write the text and introduce it. Combat mechanics are somewhat primitive but given its age numerous user mods were created that made the AI better. At one point I scripted a supernova type event that would damage other stars, planets and colonies in a X-light year radius (a timed, random event) complete with a stellar stabilization tech that could be used to mitigate its impact. Your imagination is the limit.

literally just stellaris before stellaris

This game is a serious retrograde step. SEIV was clear and concise. This is covered in dancing salami. Nothing is clear. It may be an improvement in game play, but I'll never know as I can't be bothered to play this cluster.

В отличии от других частей эта не играбельная. Даже бородатая первая часть без проблем запускается... А тут при загрузке уровня начинает моргать монитор и начинается бесконечная загрузка уровня, которая не в итоге не загружается...

Игра всех времен и народов!

New buyers do not buy this unless your familiar with running in linux and the hassle this can include. Apparently runs well with Proton so should be simple to run on Linux, another good old windows game thats now a Linux only game. This game no longer works on latest windows 10 release. I also just tested the GOG version, and same issue. This seems to be a windows change thats killed the game, could be an AMD driver issue to (not tested on intel or nvidia yet) It has some kind of gpu driver/windows access issue that I've been unable to resolve. I used to play this on and off a few times each year but seems those days are now gone. Even admin/windows 8 compat/disable cleartype/DDrawCompat/adding missing folders. all fail to fix the issue. So although its possibly the best 4x game made, its also unplayable on modern platforms. I believe this will run ok on linux still but i need to keep windows for work reasons and cant be personally bothered with dual booting currently.