Solar Nations 2

Solar Nations 2 is a Grand Strategy that scratches a very niche itch that I've had for a while with Grand Strategy games. It is incredibly fun to play as you manage planetary and interplanetary politics, economics, military and internal affairs. This game is not made for the casual gamer as at first it is incredibly daunting at the amount of complexity and nuance their is in this game but once you get the hang of it, it is an absolute blast to play! The game is clearly inspired by paradox games and is basically a modern day version of EU4 but with space. It is fun but I will say that this game is in early access and it really does show that. The skeleton for an insanely fun game is here but It feels more like chewing on a flavourful bone. That is not to say it is bad, and it cannot be faulted at the singular developer who is making this game. But I can definitely see this game overtime being fleshed out more and becoming something incredible and I cannot wait to see what it becomes. I look forward to seeing what this game becomes as every time a major update comes out I act like flies to crap and come running back to this game wanting to play.

No resolution settings in 2026? you have got to be kidding me... setting the resolution to 100% (No idea what 100% really means since everything is blurry) Unplayable due to not being able to read most tooltips or distinguish icons.

In the words of Gordon Ramsay, "IT'S RAW!!!" However, I think it's REALLY good and has lots of potential for a very affordable price. Would recommend if you're willing to deal with its quirks. My only real complaint is that there isn't enough of it!

The scale of the game is very interesting, but most mechanics are just a straight downgrade from the games taken inspiration of: 1. The UI is ugly as hell. I saw that on the store page before I bought the game and was willing to overlook it, if the rest of the game was good, but it is not... 2. The UI is confusing as hell. In addition to being ugly it is often really difficult to find the exact submenu that is hidden behind some nondescript button in the main menu to find the functionality that you want. Many things are not properly explained and the game is not big enough that you can google things either. 3. The music consist out of 1 or 2 classical music tracks. I don't hate classical music, but these are not good "background" tracks, sound like they were recorded in the 1950s and don't really fit the setting. It's not that difficult nowadays to find a contractor for composing some game music. 4. Military seems quite pointless in the game, since you an just annex every country that has enough relations with you (and is not a great power themselves) for a small stability penalty. Aside from the fact that this is pretty unrealistic, from a balance perspective it is quite strange, as you can get a huge country pretty fast and the AI does not seem to make use of this mechanic. In contrast military conquest leads to a *huge* stability penalty. I diplomatically annexed a country that was at war and had a single militarily occupied province I had to release, because the stability penalty was too big for me to maintain. So military is only really useful for defense, but I was also never attacked. 5. Economy is very strange. There are two kinds of resources, some that give a passive bonus and some that are used by buildings. So for every "bonus" resource you get a huge country wide bonus based on the highest amount you produce in a territory. These bonuses can be absolutely insane, so you are heavily incentivised see what province has the highes potential and then stack all boni there. Aside from that it does not seem like provinces really matter much. Just build the same buildings everywhere but in your superstacker provinces, because the resources in other provinces just give you money. As I said before, this whole system just seems like a straight downgrade from any Paradox game. I like the debt based monetary system though. 6. The tech tree is bad. It is split in culture and science (like in civ5), but you can not research them concurrently and all the culture technologies are just passive boni, which makes them necessary, but super boring. The military science is the most interesting, but also the most useless, because as stated before, military is useless. The rest of the science tech tree is somewhat weird, It is actually quite short compared with any other 4x/Grand strategy and it feels less like you progress, but more side-gress. Most Research is focused on one of three paths: Genetics, robotics and AI. They are pretty expensive to setup though, so you probably want to focus only on one. Additionally each "Age" is blocked by a requirement to research, which, in combination with the previous factors, leads to basically 50% of the tech tree being useless and additional 30% being boring, passive stats only, technologies, but you still have to research everything. Idk what thoughts went into the design of this. 7. Space gameplay is bad. This is kind of the selling point of the game, but space just works the same as earth. You research the first space colonization technology and then you can just colonize and administer any space-body in range the exact same way as you do on earth. There is culture fracturing and habitability, which gives a malus on the population you can sustain, but these don't make space very interesting. Look at Terra Invicta for an interesting separation between Earth and space that makes the challenge of space interesting. Of course Solar Nations is more ambitious in the "end state" of full planetary colonization, but it also makes a very disappointing space gameplay. In conclusion I cannot recommend this game. Many other reviewers say it has potential, but I don't see that. It seems to me like many mechanics of this game are copied from better games, without actually understanding what makes them good. So you end up with a game that includes many genre features, because it seems like the developer feels this game needs to have them, but they don't create a compelling experience.

Very fun, think EU4 in space. Some work needs to be done but it is enjoyable as is.

An attempt at a real game. Love the period. If you're a fan of Grand Strategy, Terra Invicta, etc, then this one is for you. Game is early access, but there are already several mods, scenarios, and the game is quite stable. Can do with more explanatory tooltips, and some QoL in the UI. Huge promise. Kudos to the developer.

Having done a full playthrough from start to completion, I'd give this the thumbs up. I was intrigued when I saw the developer's YouTube video where they gave the overview of what this game was intended to be, and bought it on a whim. When searching for information on the game mechanics (as the UI is honestly rough, but it's a one-person dev team, so I'm trying not to be too harsh here), there was a whole bunch of discussions online about the dev's politics, certain game mechanics being unfair to certain real-life ideologies, etc. etc. etc. I'm a big believer in giving things a chance, and I've got to say, these folks online are missing out. The game is overall pretty solid, especially for a pre-release solo developer game. Having done a full run as a single province (Iceland!) diplomatically annexing a good chunk of the world (namely Europe, most of Africa, Japan, Korea, Philippines, Canada, Argentina, etc.), settling most of the solar system (with the asteroid belt outwards past Saturn being exclusively Icelandic), I've gotta say, it was fun! My biggest issues would be two-fold - first, the UI. It has to get better, the tooltips work for some items, but there has to be a wikipedia, an in-game library explaining mechanics, something. Second, military and warfare needs work - it is really hard to understand how much of a threat enemy militaries are at a glance because of the sheer raw numbers (and vast difference in firepower between say an irregular and a mech). I honestly didn't try out the warfare mechanics, it seemed very rough around the edges, so a full pacifist run it was - honestly though, I enjoyed it, it was relaxing. Would I play it again... Yup, yes I would. Once better AI, UI, and information at a glance gets integrated, I may give it another go. In short, yes, it's worth your time, and definitely worth your money. Disregard haters, acquire solar system colonies!