If you're looking for a blast from the past, I'd honestly recommend just playing the original game.
More than 15 years ago, Sins of a Solar Empire was an excellent game, and I spent plenty of time with it. I was pleasantly surprised to see it finally receive a sequel. But after this much time, a sequel should be more than a near-copy of the original with a handful of additions.
Most obviously, many of the ship designs look almost unchanged, and even the unit voices are extremely familiar. More importantly, much of the underlying game design feels just as old.
The tech trees are unintuitive, and many of the problems I remember from the original are still baked into the sequel. Capital ships tear through masses of smaller ships, while Titans backed by capital fleets can seemingly roll around flattening everything in their path. Weapon distinctions such as lasers versus guns rarely feel meaningful during actual play. If there are important faction-specific advantages, counters, or opportunities for min-maxing around these traits, the game does a poor job of explaining them.
I am confused how a simplistic design can still seem so contrived.
For $50, this simply isn't enough. There are plenty of space strategy games that have found ways to modernize the genre through better interfaces, clearer mechanics, stronger faction identities, or genuinely new ideas. After more than 15 years, there is little excuse for retaining so many dated UI and design conventions while doing so little to make the underlying systems clearer or more intuitive.
And there is still barely any story. After all this time, even a proper campaign or stronger narrative focus could have helped give the sequel an identity beyond simply being Sins of a Solar Empire again.
