Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion: New Frontiers Edition Review

Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion : New Frontiers is the latest edition and expansion of the cult 4X RTS hit Sins of a Solar empire from Ironclad Games. The New Frontiers Edition marks what is being touted as the complete and full version of the game, including all previous DLC as well as a number of new ships and graphical updates.

Like its original incarnation this edition has no real story mode to speak of so your single player experience is based upon the sandbox mode. You can chose from an extremely wide variety of maps ranging from one-on-one single-star system battles to sprawling ten-player free-for-alls with over a hundred planets to colonise and conquer. This being the complete version, the game has the largest map selection, as well as a map creator function for those feeling brave. 

Although the game does have a tutorial, I found initially it was ultimately not of much help and the best way to learn was definitely to just jump in a small one-on-one game with a computer opponent. It took me a couple of games but once you work out what you are supposed to be doing, and what works, it becomes a very rewarding experience. I found the normal difficulty after the first few games to be a little easy but it did scale well when you added more factions to a map. The pirates also added a very interesting threat and provide a very useful leveller in large multiple faction games, smaller nations can team up and send increasingly large waves of pirate raiders by putting a bounty on threatening factions. Although I found the pirates tended to get in the way in smaller games as every fifteen minutes they will launch raids against whoever has the largest bounty on their head, causing damage to anything on the way to their target.  

Each of the factions have a unique feel with each being split into a loyalist and rebel version. Each faction behaves differently with some being militaristic and others preferring diplomacy and technological advancement. There are six different ways to achieve victory, they cover all the usual 4X staples of military, research and diplomacy as well as a few RTS style variant victory conditions. If you are playing against non-aggressive factions it can feel quite easy to achieve the non military victory conditions, if you can keep the pirates off your back and without them it would possibly be a bit easy. I have not yet tried a harder difficulty so cannot say how challenging it gets when you crank it up, due to my own cowardice.

Due to not having a proper story mode this is the sort of game where stories are created through emergent events during the game. It is the perfect sort of game to play with a few friends due to the flexible nature of alliances. You and your friends can form on the fly alliances, trade and put pirate bounties on one another and generally go to war. This, coupled with the large variety of maps, means that each game feels different.

The New Frontiers edition also provides the game with a graphical update. While the game is not visually stunning it is by no means ugly, although I have not played the original version of the game, having seen some side by side images it does now look noticeably prettier. The graphics and animations are all very functional and whilst ship-to-ship combat does look very mechanical, it is often not noticeable due to the huge scope of some of the battles within the game. The animations serve their purpose and it can still be quite entertaining to watch fighters dogfight and some of the smaller more maneuverable ships swarm like angry bees around enemy ships.

I have very much enjoyed my time with Sins of a Solar Empire and it is a testament to how entertaining the game is that I spent a lot of time playing it, when I should have been writing this review. However there is a caveat here if you already have the game I don’t think there is enough here for it to be worth your money. If you have already invested a hundred hours in the game I don't think any of the new features are enough to justify coming back. That being said, if you missed the Sins of Solar Empire experience the first time around like me, I would definitely recommend it.