GoG Reviews always tend to bias towards the high side, I suspect because many of these games are quite old now and the only people seeking them out are people who had fond memories of them. I normally don't care. However to see this game get a near 3 1/2 to 4 stars is insane. This is one of the worst ARPG's around, awkward across all fronts. Cringe animations, cringe story, cringe voice acting, cringe writing. The combat is the most basic "Click as fast as you can" fest you can imagine. There is little to no strategy to it, the enemies are twitchy and random with seemingly broken AI. Almost nothing is a threat, and I was able to start a new game and simply run into the end-game areas without being killed by anything. This game makes Gothic 3 look good, so if you think Gothic 3 is a good game... well, maybe you will enjoy this. These sorts of games are examples of taking on WAY more than the developers can handle, but also shows that the developers lack any sort of vision. The game is standard high fantasy fare, and even then its incredibly bland.
Star Ruler 2 is very close to being everything I want in a sci-fi empire management game. I absolutely love the combat, for one, as it has the freedom yet the compactness to be satisfying both as an action experience and a strategic one. The idea of a lead ship with tons of small followers is great, and creates massive looking battles without requiring tons of micromanagement. The abilities you gain over time, such as a skip drive, allow for some very good tactical gameplay that can help turn the tides against more powerful enemies. I've had some awesome battles with tactics that completely paid off and I love it. The huge universe is also great, with the entire game playing off in real time, its demanding on systems, but if you can handle it, you really get a great sense of scale with each game. You get everything from small freighters to ships that can destroy suns, so there really is a ton of depth in the combat. The diplomacy being a card game is odd at first, but does work well in terms of gameplay. Allowing people who focus on 'influence' to have an advantage over people who focus on war. Such as being able to annex planets, and even entire systems, as well as other disruptive capabilities. It's a great idea, but I still doubt that the card-game style system is the best way to handle it. The economy is where things start getting a bit rough. With each planet acting as a single resource that you create trade routes between. It winds up playing like a puzzle game, more than anything else. With the focus being on finding the next resource you need to increase the tier of your capital planet. Although I don't entirely mind the planet only exporting a single resource I really wish that planets had multiple resources to choose from, as it just feels a bit unrealistic and gamey to only have 1 per planet. The upside of this system is that each planet is critical, and if one is taken it can have a dominoe effect that greatly reduces your power, so it's important to have a backup plan once youre in a war. On the other hand I do like how money is managed. You don't amass sums like you do in most other games, rather you have a specific amount you get each month based on your upkeep/profit and so on. This prevents people from simply sitting back and amassing huge amounts of money, and pushing the constant need to increase the size and power of your empire. The freedom of the game seemed like an upside at first but it comes with some very bizarre balancing issues. My biggest gripe is the idea of increasing the size of ships. This completely arbitrary system allows you to increase the size of a ship to increase its overall power as well. Were there an exponential increase in upkeep for a system like this, I feel like it would be fine, prevently world-sized ships from dominating you, but there isn't. And these ships don't suffer any real downsides. They aren't slower, or less mauneverable because the thrusters also increase in size. Also, the ability to add any ship to any fleet seems arbitrary as well. Rather than having a fleet focus on a single thing, such as missle boats, or rail guns, you can mix and match as much as you want within the fleets size limit. I feel like this makes fleets far too adaptable to any situation. It would have been far cooler to see bomber squads that you have to defend with fighter fleets and so-on. The UI is very simplistic and I feel like it could have been made to be far more modern, it's not a big issues but the presentation does suffer for it. The graphics are just fine, as well as the sounds and music. All totally what you would expect, though nothing really stands out as great. I really can see how this series can become one of the best, but its currently held back by a few issues that I think would throw off most players. Giving players way too much freedom in areas that in my opinion greatly imbalance the experience, but it also provides a unique experience that you cannot get from any other title in the genre.
This is essentially the answer to every gripe I've ever had with 4x games in one great package. It has a story, it has gameplay depth, and none of its weaknessess overcome its strengths. It's old, and the graphics are vague representations of a sci-fi world, but it's full to the brim with flavor. It has great automation that creates a seamless gameplay experience. If you want to focus on war, you can place governers to manage your cities, and visa versa. While it is fairly clunky it has some progressive ideas that modern 4x games have yet to latch on to. I love it.
