Review:
Sword of the Stars: Complete Collection Review

Sword of the Stars is a game about space combat, much likes Sins of a Solar Empire. Whereas Sins focuses on fast gameplay, Sword of the Stars instead focuses on personalisation of your fleet. Your entire space armada can consist of destroyers, cruisers and dreadnoughts designed entirely by you. The Complete Collection gives you not only the original game, but also the three expansions: Born of Blood, Murder of Crows, and Argos Naval Yard.

The Story

Humanity, having ascertained that it is alone in the galaxy, finsihes its first starship, set to colonise a distant galaxy. However, just after leaving orbit the ship is attacked and destroyed by an unknown fleet of enemy ships, which proceed to assault the earth. The invaders are repulsed with staggering costs for humanity. Now aware of the threats amongst the stars, the human race begins expanding its dominion over the stars with stronger and tougher ships, encountering more and more species.

This is all merely backstory, though much more information on each species and their philosophy is provided in the manual and a tie-in novel, all written by Arinn Dembo. The races on offer are Humanity, the reptilian Tarka, insect-like Hivers, the space-dolphin Liir, a warrior race known as the Zuul, and the Morrigi (bird-people from space!). Each species has a distinct theme, which is reflected in the way it plays in the main game.

The Graphics

Originally released in 2006, the game has an aesthetic that seems almost cartoonish at times, especially in the case of the ships. However, this is rarely an issue as each species has a distinct look for each of their ships, easily allowing the player to identify the different types of craft in the midst of battle.

Combat tends to be fluid, with no drop in quality, especially on today's computers, although it's generally inadvisable to build an entire fleet of carriers or missile boats, lest your computer crash from the strain of trying to track over a thousand missiles or attack craft.

The Gameplay

The game is split into two halves – one part consists of you managing your fleets, giving them orders, researching new technologies and the like. This is all done on a turn based galactic map, with the control of planets being the aim of the game. There is no micromanagement of your planets however, as economy, terraforming and trade are emphasized through the use of slider bars, resulting in faster infrastructure growth, greater population increase or decreased research times.