Stellar Monarch 2

An excellent game that runs out of itself a little too early. It is, broadly speaking, what it claims to be; you don't manage planets, you don't control the fleets, you don't assign anything. You just claim the planets and watch your High Command scramble to do your bidding. You don't talk to the other alien races, you have your diplomats for that, they merely come to you to ratify treaties (which are always benefitial to you). You don't construct individual buildings; instead, you invest in processing, or expand your Ministries while they take care of things according to their ability. So then, what do you [i]actually[/i] do? I'm tempted to say "nothing" as a snide comment about how such absurdly powerful leadership positions are completely superficial in the face of the actual work the people on the ground do, but... I'll instead say "point fingers and suck up to nobles". Well, there's more to do. You can divide up the budget. Expand facilities. Manage ship blueprints and decide on squadron composition (it's actually the most micromanagey thing in the game). Pass laws, pass reforms. I guess you need to convince nobles to support them first, but that's a trivial matter. But perhaps that's the point. Just watching your empire expand by your royal decree while you do nothing, since you already claimed all those planets anyway, is actually kinda satisfying. Oh, and before you say "lol just watch water spread after being spilled on the floor", know that all the battles in this game are quite deeply simulated. There's a LOT under the hood, and you'll only stumble upon it if you dig; for example, reading the detailed flow of the battle in the battle simulator or looking at your fleet crews' skill levels. I'd almost call this overengineered. All this complexity which the player almost never sees. This would be good if other parts of the game were more engaging. But after some 10 hours of play I noticed that there's nothing new happening, just old events cycling over and over. Occasionally a new galactic threat appears, but... so what? Minor losses, in the grand scale of things. You don't even need to do anything, the High Command will retake everything for you, "as instructed by the royal order". Wait, minor losses? The genocides that happen in this game make the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Holocaust look like a statistical error. "Oh, there's 400 mln of Terrans per planet in this area? Well, we can't retake it right now. Guess they'll die lol". And of course, same thing happens to the alien races. 200 mln cyberians on this planet? Nuke em. Invade. Purge the Xenos. Exterminatus. The Emperor Protects. Wait, I'm the Emperor. Do I protect? Eh, too busy throwing a banquet to convince Lord Fluffybutt to support my fiscal reforms. Note that you don't get a choice in this. Xenos are Xenos. You don't talk to Xenos, your diplomats don't do anything with them. Your only option is total war. You can ignore some of them, but the only meaningful way of interacting with them is eradication and repossession of their planets. Or, perhaps, using them as a buffer against a more aggressive Xeno race. I actually kind of like this. The game is very openly satirical about how messed up the Empire is, like Helldivers 2. For example, "We don't look down on the inferior races" is such a sentence. Or "Ripping off gullible aliens is moral, because we protect unfortunate Terrans from losing their savings". And it's not just the ruling class: if you declare that aliens are equal to you, it fuels dissent! Makes rebels stronger! "This beta cuck Emperor just said that [strike]America[/strike] [strike]Super Earth[/strike] the Empire isn't the greatest! SCANDALOUS!". Amazing. And that's what makes this so unfortunate. If there were more events, maybe some kind of storyline, more things to do with the court, more interactions, more focus on what the game wants you to focus on, it'd be [i]insanely[/i] good. So you might wonder, why the negative review? Let's say you go to a movie theater and watch the new Sonichu the Edgehog: Robotnik's Snupingas. You're having fun, Robotnik is saying the famous line "Snooping as usual I see", you laugh; and then, roughly 80 minutes in, as the protagonists are collecting the Sonichu Balls you get from your seat and leave. Afterwards, your friends ask you, "so what did you think of the movie?" "Awesome! Oh, I loved the PINGAS moment! It was so funny!" "But you left in the middle?" "Yes, because I was bored during the Sonichu Balls part." "But you said you liked the movie?" I hold this apparently exotic opinion that if the game doesn't manage to hold your engagement through most of its length, it's not a very good game. Either its pacing or fun factors are way off. And in this case, I just think the game runs out of stuff to do far too early. There's a DLC coming up which is supposed to spice the internal intrigue up a bit. I might check it out, maybe it will fill this unfortunate hole that's preventing me from truly enjoying Stellar Monarch 2. Still: I think the game's definitely on to something. I applaud the effort, and if there ever is a sequel, I'll be sure to grab it as well. So it's less of a "yes" or "no". It's "almost". Unfortunately, in absolute terms, "almost" is ultimately a "no". Thanks for reading. [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/42922988/]this beta cuck reviewer said that (insert popular game) isn't the greatest[/url]

I get that it's supposed to take out the micromanagement but it feels so hands-off that I don't feel like I'm actually playing anything. I don't feel like I'm actually managing my relationship with the noble houses I just feel like I'm min-maxing the "opinion" stat in a mechanic that is divorced from the management of the empire Paradox DLC style. Why is it based on thresholds? Why is 201 opinion so much different than 199? Similarly the ministry management is further min-maxing stats. Instead of allocating a budget I spend budget points (?) and I have to spend money to get more budget points (??). The military management system is supposed to be hands off but I feel like it's not really that much easier to use than a micro intensive system. Some ideas: a) The noble houses have agendas; except all of these are related to getting more ministries, getting more titles, etc. I would like to see them have actual policy agendas (one wants the empire to go to war against the aliens so that that family can earn glory through warfare for instance) b) Change the budget system to something more conventional. Balance by setting the budget each audience like squadrons rather than up to X amount of times each season so it won't be OP. c) I find the system where you allocate military resources based on a compass in space to be clunky and irritating. I'd rather everything be centralized and have the noble houses fight to get their family's friends in high positions in the military command like in the imperial court system d) Have rebellions actually be based on specific goals rather than how many rebellion points you have e) More dynamic civilized aliens f) Have ministers have their own policies and ideas about running the empire so it's not just min-maxing stats g) The fiefs system needs an overhaul. h) I don't like how I upgrade food and resource refining through increasing marginal cost upgrades like I'm playing a mobile phone game. i) I think research should take longer but have a bigger impact. For instance, right now it takes a long time to get a new type of ship but once you get it it can be a game changer in battle. Some positives so this review isn't singlemindedly negative: a) I like how it is difficult to micromanage the planets; really gives a sense of scale b) The variety of interesting mechanics for the permanently hostile aliens c) The squadron system d) The wonders system (projects). Simple and effective. e) The reform and law system TL;DR actually playing the game feels like meddling with a disconnected pile of mechanics many of which need a rework.

Solid 4X game and I really enjoyed the "macro" level game play. The only change I would make to this game is drop the turns and make it real time with active pause. About half the turns I really did not need to take any actions, that is a lot in a 500 turn game. RTWP makes it a fast and fun 4X where you can watch your decisions play out. Maybe something to consider for SM3. One late game event was really excellent, what a fight that was....................... [spoiler]The Mechatrons event, loved it![/spoiler] Everything else about the game I really liked and recommend the game. Well done.

All criticism aside - I like the game, and will keep playing it. It isn’t a slam dunk recommendation, but that I’m still enjoying figuring it out says enough. This space 4X/GSG is streamlined - maybe too much. If choosing between excessive micro and minimal micro, minimal wins for me, but SM2 goes slightly too far. If it did a better job of communicating what my advisors/ministries had done each turn (eg verbose reports), it would work a lot better for me. Eg when a ship design or fleet design is updated, maybe tell me more about what that means - how does the newest one compare to the last one, or the current fleet average, etc. In general I think this is the closest to my ideal space 4X/GSG out there. Better reports would help enormously. Slightly better graphics would help a bit (modding?). Again, I'll keep playing it because of what's good - so tentative thumbs up.

It is overwhelming at first, perhaps due to the interface and the fact that you start with a fully baked empire, but the game does not disappoint once you learn it. Do not expect it to hold your hand. This is a grand strategy game for people who prefer grand strategy. If you like Crusader Kings or Stellar Dynasties, then you will be in familiar territory to at least some degree. It actually reminds me of Anacreon, though I imagine no one reading this will know that game. Some feedback for the developer: 1) Without spoilers, I appreciated the end game challenges. I had to restore my empire, and fight to keep the fringes together, all while expanding. Keep it, and maybe expand on it. 2) The other major empires are too docile. I would recommend to provide more diplomatic content, and allow for border aggression from other races besides the obvious ones. 3) Consider allowing us to have multiple squadron templates active at once, and to create our own ship templates from scratch rather than relying solely on modernizing ship templates. 4) Allow us to reassign core worlds, perhaps with a temporary penalty, so we can fix poor selections that were defaulted to at game start, or poor choices we ourselves made in the past. 5) I noticed some alien races have city worlds as an actual planet type, but I don't think our Megalopolises ever become city worlds. It would be cool to change the planet type to the same as those alien worlds. 6) Allow me to assign 1 Megalopolis per house, or have the game do it for me. If I can directly appoint a governor or give it to a certain house, then the mechanic wasn't obvious to me. It makes sense to me to allow 1 / house, and maybe 2 or 3 for the ruling house, which means I would recommend considering to up the cap from 7 to 9. 7) Add a filter which highlights planet types rather than star types, or revise the existing one for Astronomy. The current one forces me to mouse over each planet to see the type, so I have to make assumptions based on the star color (which does seem to follow a trend, so not a useless filter, but could be better). 8) Allow us to terraform planets. If you want to limit the action, I would suggest it as a construction project for core worlds. 9) Add more construction projects, and empire-wide projects. In particular, consider construction projects for civil use rather than solely for the fleet/military. Trade outposts, sensor arrays, space laboratories, those sorts of things. Could also consider more defensive options like minefields as well. 10) Add more laws and reforms for end game flavor. In particular, I would suggest having some reforms/laws that lock one another out, forcing you to pick one over the other. 11) If I recall correctly, the empire summary page is buried behind a tab on the first button at the top left. It would be much more helpful if that was the first thing I saw when clicking that button. Alternatively, put the core world cap and Megalopolis cap somewhere on the main interface. 12) I would strongly advise creating a summary popup at each turn which gives a basic overview of what happened last turn (combats, etc). Right now, you could consider the "All" popup to be that, but the information is presented where you have to thumb through everything to understand what happened. I think it would benefit from a short summary saying "You lost X planets to Y" plus a list the planets, and "You gained X planets from Y" etc. If you need ideas, I would suggest looking at the various iterations of Anacreon 4021 over the years.

gud 93mb whole game - gud, much skill furry dev - bad

Хорошая игра, сделанная одним человеком. Надо бы вернуться и пробежаться ещё пару партий.

Overall a fun game clearly inspired by Dune, the Imperium of Man, Battletech and others. Mechanics are simple, UI is functional and there is quite a lot of flavour and character. However, there are a few drawbacks: - Sound and music are just horrible. Three bad electronic tracks on a loop, no audio cues on most of the actions. Turned music off and just put on Fading Suns OST in the background. Hope the developers change the music in the DLC. - Interactions with Noble Houses, Governors and other characters feel a bit limited. Sometimes it feels too pasive and reactive, there isnt much to do when you run out of your focus points. - Your own House dont really play any role other then sending you a notification that you can arrange a dynastic marriage once and forget about it. Which is really a shame, because interhouse intrigue would really add to the neo-feudal setting of the game. Heirs who are too eager to inherit, a spouse who wants to influens politics, interactable Royal Guard, relatives who need to be placated, there is so much opportunities to add more interactivity and narrative to the game on that front. Despite those flaws would still recomend the game, very few pieces of media younger then 20 years old give you that neo-feudal space-opera feeling.

Ever felt like Hearts of Iron 4 and similiar games tend to go in the wrong direction? You are supposed to manage the bigger picture and not get bogged down in determining how many fuel tanks each specific airplane type should have or what kind of support companies the various infantry divisions should have. Don't you have a whole governmental agency for that? This game scratches that very itch, it takes a step back from the crazy micromanagement and instead forces you to rely on other people - as any ruler of a vast empire ultimately is forced to do. You can still determine general fleet compositions, research, wars and even mark individual planets for conquest. In the end however, you watch the A.I do the nitty gritty work while you do your best to aid from your strategic side with the right spending choices. The intrigue and corruption helps keep you on your toes as it's not easy to keep the perfect court going with the rebellion threat. The negative side of the game lies in that it lacks depth, once you beat he game you'll have figured out most mechanics already and replayability is a diminishing return. However, when considering the fact that its a solo developer working on the game and slowly releasing more content - you'll find yourself in a more forgiving mood and hopefully return once in a while to give it another go with some fresh mechanics to go. The game is a guilty pleasure of mine, it's nowhere near as polished or detailed as its studio competitors yet it does tackle the space 4x genre with a satisfyingly unique twist.

It sits at an interesting hybrid between a game like CK3 (managing your dynasty, rebellions being one of your biggest threats) and Stellaris (4x in space, aliens to conquer, different planets to push your colonists towards). The theming makes it fit nicely with grand empires like Empire of the Fading Sun or Dune. At the default difficulty things are fairly straight forward. As long as you're paying attention and use the tools available it will be hard to lose the game on "normal" difficulty. The game is built heavily on success/fail spirals. If you do well, that increases the chance of continuing to do well so higher difficulties can put you on a death spiral that will be VERY challenging to pull out from. Overall a solid little 4x game that is different enough in theme and focus to carve a little niche for itself between the titans of space 4X like Stellaris / Gal Civ / SotSE etc.