Sword of the Stars II: Enhanced Edition

[b]TL;DR:[/b] No, I don’t recommend this game. Sword of the Stars 2 is a confusing, overcomplicated mess that feels like the developers tried to reinvent the wheel—and ended up with a triangle. [b]Sword of the Stars 2: A Real Razor Review[/b] If you’re here expecting the streamlined fun of the original Sword of the Stars, buckle up, because this sequel takes everything that worked and throws it into a black hole of overcomplicated mechanics. Want to move a fleet? Prepare for a scavenger hunt through obtuse menus and extra steps. Thinking about clicking and dragging to navigate the galaxy map? Forget it. Intuitive controls? Never heard of them. [b]The Shift from Simplicity to Chaos[/b] Sword of the Stars 2 turns what should be an engaging 4X space strategy game into a frustrating exercise in patience. Moving a fleet? Here’s your process: Select the fleet (again, even if it’s already selected), sift through a menu of actions with vague names (why is it “relocate” instead of “move”?), confirm your choice, and THEN close the menu. Oh, and don’t forget to click “confirm” again just in case you enjoyed the redundancy. And navigating the galaxy map? Instead of letting you click and drag like a normal human being, the game opts for a mystery control scheme that even the NSA couldn’t crack. Right-click? Nope. WASD? Wrong again. By the time you figure it out, you’ll have lost interest—or your sanity. [b]Notifications and Nagging[/b] Every turn, the game delights in reminding you about “inactive fleets.” Thanks, I know they’re inactive—I left them there on purpose. A simple “Don’t show me this again” checkbox could’ve solved this, but instead, I’m bombarded with pop-ups like it’s Windows 98 trying to update. If the goal was to make me feel punished for leaving fleets idle, mission accomplished. [b]Menus: Where Immersion Goes to Die[/b] Sword of the Stars 2 has a menu for everything: fleet manager, planet manager, diplomacy manager, station manager. While variety sounds good on paper, in practice, it’s like navigating the DMV of space games. Nothing flows. There’s no hotkey for escaping menus; instead, you have to click a tiny “close” button every time. Who thought this was a good idea? Then there’s the encyclopedia. Calling it a mess is generous. It’s a maze of poorly designed tabs and sparse information. Want lore about a species? Tough luck. Expect a single, lazy sentence about their tech with none of the creative depth you’d hope for in a space game. Worse, the menu often breaks, freezing on the wrong screen or refusing to load. Did they even test this? [b]The Aesthetics - Blurry, Not Beautiful[/b] While the ships and planets look decent, the background starscapes are a blurry, uninspired mess. Somehow, they managed to make space look bad—a feat I didn’t think was possible. The original game had better visuals in some areas, making this downgrade all the more baffling. [b]A Design Philosophy Gone Wrong[/b] It’s clear the developers wanted Sword of the Stars 2 to feel more sci-fi, more futuristic, and more technical. Instead, they overthought everything and left out the fun. Instead of delivering the smooth turn-based flow of a Sid Meier’s Civilization, they created a game so foreign and alien, it’s barely playable. Immersion doesn’t mean burying basic functions under 10 extra steps. [b]A Broken Legacy[/b] Surveying planets could’ve been immersive, but instead, it’s tedious. While I appreciate the ambition of including multiple planets per system, the execution feels like a chore. The charm and simplicity of the original game are gone, replaced by an overcomplicated mess of mechanics that don’t work well together. [b]Real Razor Recommendation?[/b] No. Sword of the Stars 2 is a massive letdown. Its clunky interface, unintuitive mechanics, and glaring lack of polish make it a painful experience. If you’re nostalgic for the original, steer clear. This sequel breaks everything that made the first game fun and buries it under unnecessary complexity. 1/10. Huge disappointment. Save your money, and shame on the developers for this disaster.

I followed this game years ago. I was a big fan of the first, and even though it was tedious, I bought the second. Big fan of space RTS games in general. There was a lot of excitement over this game. It was supposed to be more complex, with better mechanics. Things like crew requirements, missions, customizable space stations and the like. We were even going to get to learn who the notorious Suul'ka were. When the game released, it was half-baked. Many of the mechanics didn't work. The UI was a buggy, unfinished mess that hurt your eyes. Documentation of mechanics and lore were sparse. If you wanted to know how something worked, like the requirements needed to summon a Suul'ka, you had to navigate the official forums and pick through hundreds of pages of passive-aggressive developer posts. Eventually, after a year of patches and fixes, they created the Enhanced Version. The game actually worked, kinda sorta, but it still had memory leaks. They even included all of the DLC as an apology. But the game was still borked in numerous ways, like the AI needing to cheat the economy to stay competitive with the player. And it still is to this day. I don't recommend this game. I use this game as the best example of what it means to over-promise and under-deliver. Whenever I hear of over-the-top promises from wide-eyed developers in the context of crowdfunding games, I remember this piece of garbage. I remember how much grief this game caused me trying to figure it out, how much abuse I went through to get answers to basic questions, and how much time I spent fantasizing about a game that never came to be.

I would recommend this game only if you add the following fan-made mod, which tweaks and cleans up various tedious aspects of the game and makes it more stable: https://github.com/zerk-js/SOTSII-SOS/releases/tag/v2.0.0-beta0 It is obviously, as mentioned elsewhere, not a complete game. What it is however, is basically a repository of interesting ideas about how to make a highly detailed, military-focused 4X-game with AMAZING ship design, interesting technology tree and state management. If you try to see what the game could have been, and is very close to being, you might see the flawed gem that this is. Is it tedious at times? Yes. Is it prone to crashing if you are late-game and have seven other players? Yes. Does it require too many clicks to upgrade space stations? Yes. But the ship designer, the differing FTL-systems for each race, the detailed solar-system spanning battles and the ability to completely tailor your ships into an integrated interstellar war machine... it is just intoxicating when you learn to play it. Example: How to deal with the fleet-system. - Fleets are tasked with missions, instead of just being moved around like Total War-armies. - A fleet has a "home base" (ideally with Naval Stations), and will return after the mission is done. - The type of mission is decided by ship types (one colony-ship will unlock the "colonization" mission) - This can be changed with the "relocate"-mission (warning: the system needs enough Command Points: build naval stations for those) At first this is very tedious, but after a while it feels quite seamless and nice to discover that your light cruiser fleet just finished scouting a system and is ready for another mission, three other scout fleets are in-transit for their targets, while both colonization fleets are busy at work, your battlefleet is 1 turn away from arriving at its target and you see two incoming enemy fleets which you need to respond to in time. *Warning: It may cause you to regularly curl up in a fetal position, thinking about how much poorer the failure to complete this came made the 4X-genre...

Sword of the Stars is one of the few space 4X games, in my opinion, that isn't eclipsed by the Master of Orion games. Here's a list of the things that made it unique on launch, most of which are still unique: - each race moves around the galaxy in a different way (different FTL drives), and therefore they tend to play pretty differently; - combat is fully tactical (and real-time), formation matters, every projectile is simulated; - tech tree is partly randomized, with lots of interesting techs; - some techs may lead to AI rebellions, or even greater menaces; - really good "random events" that make each game unique; - streamlined planet management. Of course, this is a combat-heavy 4X. There's a good amount of exploration and diplomacy, but it is at its best when you're fighting. It feels great, flows great, and IMO it still looks great. Remember some of the precious big battles against the Minbari in Babylon 5? Well, if you ever face the Morrigi in SotS, you will remember. :) The lore of the game is pretty cool as well. There are lots of things that remind me of Babylon 5, and I consider that high praise. There are loads of little things to discover in the game, and there's always a new tech or strategy to experiment with. It is one of the best space 4X games ever made and a very special one for me. If you like space 4X games, or if you are interested in game design, this game is a must-have. It sits there with Master of Orion 1 and 2 and Distant Worlds in the very short list of "best space 4X games ever made".

Frankly, this is worse than the first game in terms of playability. Better graphics, sure, but worse in almost every other way. Again, my biggest gripe is going to be the interface, which is admittedly better than the first game as well, but the lack of information given tends to hamper efforts to figure out what everything does and how to use it.

This is a failed game. Launch was a mess, as the devs claimed to have "lost the finished build" and released a "build that was several months old". Even if you believe that, in it's current state after years of patching, this game is barely what it should have been on release. In it's current state it has been abandoned by all but modders. I paid full price for this, and now I would not buy it at a deep sale.

this game would be fantastic if it wasn't for the admiral mechanics, the amount of times my fleet was stuck half way across the map when the admiral just dies of old age and my fleet becomes stranded drove me up the wall

Giving up on this game pretty much. I played the first one a lot. There are something I saw on the second that I liked that I wish would have been introduced in the first. I watched a few YouTube tutorials on how to play. The user interface is way worse than the first one. TBF the game never crashed on me yet... I shouldn't have to watch hours of how to play in order to get the basics of the game. Here's hoping maybe someday we'll get a Sword of the Stars III with what people actually wanted from one and two.

Assim como o primeiro Sword of the Stars essa segunda versão também envelheceu mal, apesar de ser minimamente mais bonito é tudo meio complicado e bem bagunçado ainda, é mais fácil de entender o jogo, mas não mais divertido (infelizmente), acredito que outros jogos 4X atuais fazem um serviço bem melhor tanto no quesito de diversão, quanto no de clareza da interface. Pra idade desse jogo, eu acho o preço cheio uma afronta, mas deixo claro que essa é a minha opinião. ------------------------------------------ Just like the first Sword of the Stars, this second version has also aged poorly. While it's slightly prettier, it's still a bit complicated and confusing. It's easier to understand, but not more fun (unfortunately). I believe other current 4X games do a much better job, both in terms of fun and interface clarity. For this game's age, I find the full price an affront, but I want to make it clear that this is my opinion.

trying to play this game after many hours on the first one was difficult. the pacing was slower, overly complicated interface, alot more micro managing. but the depth in ship design is where the game shines. Honestly, play this game if you like spaceship designing. stay away if are use to playing stuff like Endless Space.