Stellar Monarch

I'm not giving it 3 stars because I dislike it or the concept, but because the game itself is at a concept stage, and the concept doesn't quite match the idea. The game is more of a hint at would it could be. I didn't realize there was a sequel, I'd be willing to buy it if I can see it executes the concept better. The game has a light weight court system, whose meetings decrease in interval, and a light weight administrative/economic management. It would have made more sense to me to just focus on the former. Personally, if you're a star emperor... well how much does a Star Emperor fiddle with an galactic economy (using very broad brush strokes mind you) It would make more sense to me to set policy according to narrative system with sweeping changes being more expensive. You can fire, move or promote individual court members sure.... but the proposals presented by the court are limited and tend to have more to do with the court itself. it would have made more sense as a political game more broadly managing factional interests, receive more in the way of proposals for it's economic and administrative side rather than presenting it traditionally.

I would cautiously recommend this game to people who really enjoyed 4x strategy games like the venerable Master of Orion, Stars in Shadow or Interstellar Genesis. While the game claims to be a departure from other games in that genre, so far I haven't found that it required me to drastically alter my mindset from playing those games (some diplomacy, colonization management, fleet management, technology management, etc), though for the most part it requires you to manage diverse aspect of those other games with less granularity, but not enough to be drastically different. Still, enough aspects are different to make it interesting regardless, at least for a game or two. The game does feel rough around the edges in terms of art direction and how the mechanics have been throw together with the user interface: the game requires you to mostly make broad strokes decisions, but inferring enough about the state of your empire to make sound practical choices there is far from obvious. However, assuming you don't get discouraged initially, more and more will make sense as your initial game progresses (but not all, that might require several games) and assuming that you are a 4x space strategy veteran, the default difficulty will be forgiving enough that you'll do reasonably well even if you make very unsound tactical decisions. I just won my first game and clocked what feels like 10-20 hours. I'm not sure if I'll play the game endlessly like I did the initial MOO, but it piqued my interest enough to want to clock at least one other game at a higher difficulty to explore the mechanics of the game in more depth. However, I don't think it will have the staying power that some other games in the genre have with a chunk of their audience. Maybe in a future iteration of that game will if the devs persevere. The game has a lot of partially realized potential. I cautiously recommend it for 4x enthusiasts who want to broaden their horizons a little.