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Space, and a massive real-time strategy game, seems like the perfect combination to me, and if you are saying the same thing then this game is definitely for you: Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion. One of my personal favourites, SoaSE: Rebellion is the second game in the Sins series, the original game had two expansions, and Rebellion acts as a combination of the original games / expansions, whilst adding additional teams, abilities and ships to the game.

First of all, time to cover the basics and the teams / races involved within Sins. As you might expect, from most RTS games, Sins focuses on base building, base defense and building large fleets of cruisers to attack your foe, only instead of focusing on one map with different spawn locations, you start amidst a star system with dozens of planets, one of which is your homeworld. From there you will develop your beginning fleet, and expand to the nearby planets, kill the inhabitants and plant your flag on your new planet – the beginning of what will be your empire.

There are three basic factions in Sins, which have carried over from the first game: the TEC (Trader Emergency Coalition); the Advent; and the Vasari – in Rebellion each race has two factions: Loyalists, and Rebels; where the different races have become split down on the middle, granting unique abilities and ships to each sub-faction. The TEC is essentially the human race, which was focused mainly on expansion and trader, but they eventually were forced to convert their massive trade fleet into a combat fleet, because the Vasari arrived in their space, and the Advent returned to enact revenge.

Revenge? Why are they wanting revenge? (I hope you’re asking). The Advent originally lived on a planet in human-controlled space, but due to the fact they were so different from humans they were forced out into space, and forcibly removed from their homeworld thus they came back to enact revenge.

The final alien race is the Vasari, an ancient race that has been on the run from their old and extinct empire, being chased across the universe for over 10,000 years by an unknown and unstoppable force that destroyed their empire from within. They arrived in human space, and aggressively attacked in an effort to survive, but the TEC didn’t know why…

Now that the players are set, it is time to delve into the ships, and structures utilised throughout the game. There are four overall types of ships that are used in the game: Frigates, Cruisers, Capital Ships, and Titans. Frigates are the smallest and quickest ships in the game, and normally act as the backbone of most fleets and can fill a multitude of roles from combat, to planetary bombardment, thus they can be vital in combat.

Cruisers, are also a back bone within the fleet, only a stronger and larger back bone that are designed to last longer in battle than Frigates, most of which are designed for support roles, rather than combat roles. As you would expect there is a combat specialised cruiser, which is the Heavy Cruiser thus it is the most popular, but other classes include repair ships, command vessels, and carriers.
Capital ships are, as you might expect, the flagships of any fleet and taskforce which normally turn the tide of the battle, and hold the fleet together – when playing against AI this is literally the case, without Capital ships, the AI fleets run like hell. All of these ships are able to be constructed from the get go, but they require more fleet supply than ordinary ships – fleet supply is the “currency” that affects the number of ships you have, based off your current fleet supply level. There are 6 different Capital ships for each race, with their own unique abilities each ship has their own effect on every engagement.

The final class of ship was introduced with Rebellion, and that is the Titan. Every race has two titans (one for Loyalists, and one for Rebels), and as the name suggest it is on the larger side of the spectrum, with the strength of an entire fleet – once fully upgraded. As with all Capital ships, Titans have the ability to gain experience that allows players to upgrade their titan with different bonuses, and abilities. Due to these two classes of ship having experience, they become more valuable the more experience they have, but unlike Capital ships, when a Titan is destroyed the experience isn’t lost – phew – they cost a hell of a lot of resources, fleet supply, and capital ship command level, but they are certainly worth it.

Now onto the structures, and development within the game. Every race has 4 research trees: Military, Defense, Economy / Civilian and Diplomacy – with each race they are named differently so I tried to generalise the naming. Military tree is just as it suggests, it focuses on military advancements, i.e. new ship classes, weapons and health upgrades. The Defense tree is also self-explanatory, and focuses on upgrading and unlocking different defensive structures and upgrades, including the large Starbases. Economy / Civilian focuses on economic bonuses, planetary bonuses and also culture upgrades – this is one mechanic I haven’t mentioned, which focuses on the spread of your culture through the map, and helps you neutralise enemy planets without even firing a shot. Finally, the Diplomacy tree focuses on upgrades, and unlocks for the diplomacy system within Sins, which allows you to develop alliances and cease fires with different opponents within your matches.

To access the research trees you need to construct one of two research facilities: military (which unlocks the Military and Defense trees) and Civilian (which unlocks the Civilian and Diplomacy trees) – for every 1 research station, you unlock another tier in its respective research trees. Broadcast Centers are the structures that spread your culture, and propaganda throughout the galaxy, the more you have a single planet the greater the culture spread is from that planet, but it will diminish when it spreads beyond the nearest planets to the broadcast center. Trade Ports are structures that create trade routes between your planets, generating credits based off the number of trade ports you have per planet – the longer the trade route, the more credits you will receive. Finally, there is Refineries which focus on collecting extracted resources and refines them to get more Metal and Crystal from extractors around the planet, and nearby planets.

That pretty much covers most of the game, the structures and ship types, I personally would vouch for the game, and would easily say it is one of my favourite strategy games of all time, so I would say it is a definite pick up for any space-strategy fan. One of the noteworthy things about this game is the longevity of possible every match you will play, as I recently completed a match with two friends, which in total culminated to 7/8 hours of gameplay time – not all at once I might add – and even a single-player game, with around 15 planets and a lone AI took me around 2 hours, and thus isn’t particularly quick to complete.

Another point to mention is the mods available for this game are generally amazing, varying between all the main sci-fi genres (Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica etc) the game gets better and better – no matter which series you’re a fan of the most, there is always a good quality mod available for you.

Now that I have broken down all the key mechanics of the game, it is time to move onto the scoring of the games different sections, my scores out of 10 are as follows:
- Aesthetics = 7 – overall the game looks great, but it could look much better, but some of the mods out there do have outstanding models, and textures, the standard game has enough to make the game look great.
- Mechanics = 7 – the full mechanics for the game can be quite complex to someone who hasn’t got any experience with large RTS games, but with tutorials available it is easy to pick up the basics.
- Community = N/A – whenever I play this game, I either play it by myself or with friends so I rarely interact with others in the online community.
- Enjoyment = 8 – as I have previously mentioned – I love the game! I always enjoy every match I play, whilst I rarely finish them, I always enjoy the gameplay and play around with the un-modded, and modded version from time to time.
- Length = 8 – sadly the game doesn’t have any campaign, but with the addition of sub-factions and the fact every game is different, based on who your fighting, whether it be AI or players, always means the game is enjoyable. Considering the amount of time you need to put into the game, you can still enjoy it even if you never complete a match.
- Overall = 8 – one of my favourite strategy games of all time, I have endless amounts of fun in the game, but it isn’t perfect, if it had a campaign and a progressive story it could be a lot more fun, but regardless it is one of my top strategy games.

Too Long; Didn’t Read

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion is a massive space RTS game, based around fighting for one or more solar systems, which always takes a long time. Rebellion is what I would consider the second Sins of a Solar Empire, as there was an original with two expansions but this game combines all of them, with the addition of other ships, abilities and factions.

In Rebellion they have kept the three original races: the increasingly xenophobic TEC; the vengeful Advent; and the desperate Vasari, only the game adds two addition sub-factions: a Loyalist and Rebel faction, unlocking different titans and unique research options that are relating to how the sub-faction thinks. One other key addition is the creation of Titans, large fleet strength Capital ships which are incredibly expensive, but can easily take on a fleet and win.

Similar to the original game, Rebellion is all about conquest and defeat of your enemy within one or more systems, and normally this task is not a small one. Due to the size of the maps, and the game itself it will take a couple of hours – at least to complete a single match – a match I had recently with friends took around 7/8 hours to complete. This scale is one of the things that makes this game a brilliant one, and thus one of my favourites, even though more often than not I don’t finish games, it is always fun to play against both AI and players.

As one of my favourite games of all time, there are still improvements that could be made, and that I hope get made into some form of sequel, noticeably a campaign. Overall, I give Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion an 8 out of 10.