Sins of a Solar Empire 2 review - a space opera with generic 4X joys

Our Verdict

Sins of a Solar Empire 2's frantic, always real-time pace is both a thrill and a significant hurdle. Its banal space-opera vibes and even worse AI art are a huge detriment. But under the hood, Sins 2 still has generic 4X joys to spare.

Stop me if you heard this one before. You are the leader of an intergalactic space empire. But you’ve run into a bit of trouble. Turns out there’s a lot of competition. If you want to prove yourself the one, true, rightful space empire, you gotta mine, battle, and strategize your way to beat out all those other wannabes and prove yourself the best. Sins of a Solar Empire 2 isn’t here to mess with this formula.

That said, there is one big pitch. As with its predecessor, everything happens at once, in real-time, all the time. This gives Sins 2 the frenetic feeling of a Starcraft match, but at a much grander scale: entire solar systems, rather than specks of dirt on a forgotten world, making the game propulsive and overwhelming in equal turn. You can feel it stretching your brain to match its pace. This is one for the spreadsheet sickos, someone whose mind catches fire tracing tech tree builds or cackles with glee at chains of economic efficiency. It takes time and effort to understand. Unfortunately, more often than not, it doesn’t feel like that understanding is worth reaching. Sins of a Solar Empire 2 has virtues, but they can feel as far off and faded as a dying star.

So, you’ll be exploring, expanding, exploiting, and exterminating in every match. The sequel’s big new feature is orbit simulation. Each map models a solar system (or a few) and its planets, asteroids, and other ‘gravity wells’. They swing around their suns, often ending up in new, unanticipated positions. This system lets you do some cool shit – build up a fleet on an asteroid, wait until it swings behind the enemy line, and then attack – but it can also leave you just as vulnerable. The rest of the game continues this kind of simulation logic. Turrets, missiles, and fighter ships are individually rendered, turning each space battle into a mess of explosions and physics calculations.

That emphasis on simulation, as well as the game’s sprawling real-time structure, means Sins 2 is way less concerned with nitty-gritty tactics than with grand strategy. Tech tree routes and economic engines are the order of the day. When I lost, I failed because of my economic engine. My enemy’s massive fleet could overwhelm my meager forces because, perhaps through a more careful choice of upgrades or investing in fleet infrastructure at the right time, their engine beat mine out. There was no room for superior micromanaging in the face of the enemy’s economic power and superior fleet formations. I was admittedly playing on the lower difficulties, so moment-to-moment tactics may play more of a role on higher settings. However, most of my time was spent attempting to fine-tune my economic power.

All this is to say that Sins 2 is a heady game, just as concerned with crystal mining rates as bombarding planets. Despite its fast pace, there aren’t many ways into the game for new players, nor much that feels immediately fun to do. In fact, the cool shit I mentioned earlier can land at least an hour into a game, if not longer. That’s if you’re still aware enough to pull it off and not huddled over a tech tree, contemplating the best route through. None of this is a criticism so much as it is to say: If you are looking for an ‘in’ to 4X and think this looks cool, perhaps look elsewhere first and then return.

That said, it’s hard to imagine anyone thinking Sins *looks cool*, at least purely on virtue of its aesthetic. At its best, it’s serviceable. There are shiny spaceships and each faction looks distinct from each other. It’s neat to zoom in and see missile silos or laser cannons firing off. You certainly feel powerful, or helpless, when Sins 2’s particle effects are in full bloom. But in terms of imaginative power, Sins of a Solar Empire 2 is bereft. The game’s faction trinity of space neoliberal traders (TEC), space nuns (Advent), and fascist robots (Vasari) is generic to the extreme, without the verve to make its cliches sing. This brings us to the looming shadow in the room: Sins of a Solar Empire 2 uses AI art.

To be fair, it’s not all that much art. As far as I could find, none of the ship, planet, or skybox models use it. The only AI-generated images are found in UI, in the tech trees, and in character portraits. They were also apparently generated in part using developer Ironclad Games’ own concept art as a seed. So, why use it at all? In a Steam forum post responding to a user’s question, the art director clarified, “In the original game we had 2 artists creating a tech tree with tiny little simple icons and a handful of portraits for the game. Now we have 2 artists creating many more rich, thematic paintings for the tech tree, and dozens of unique portraits. This never would have been possible without this new tool in our toolbelt.” So does all that extra art count for very much? No. Even setting aside the many ethical concerns about AI, it just looks bad. Scrolling through Sins 2’s tech tree is like taking a bath in microplastics.

The logic of AI art is often to ‘transcend’ individual limitations, whether in a lack of skill or in production power. However, that limitation is often where art is found. You cannot tell me that games like Death Crown or The Banished Vault are not way more interesting to look at than Sins 2, despite the sparser aesthetics and far smaller teams. The art direction may be more expansive for AI’s usage, but it is also cheaper and less effective.

Now, you might ask: what do aesthetics matter if this is really a game for the spreadsheet sickos? It helps get a player through the door, sure, but it also helps me want to spend dozens, if not hundreds, of hours of my life understanding and looking at this world. Getting into a game like Sins of a Solar Empire 2 is a commitment. Playing it on a basic level can take dozens of hours. If I’m going to spend that time, I would like my brain to be able to hook onto its soul as much as its numbers. Like millions of others over the past few years, I’ve fixated a little on Dune. Despite those books’ ubiquity, popularity, and influence, there is still something unique and strange about them. In fact, the primary criticism of the new adaptations is that they are not weird enough. Dune has been the source of many great strategy games over the years, both on the computer and on the tabletop, and I would certainly much rather think about it than Sins 2.

To be clear, it’s fine for a game like this to pull on generic space opera ideas, and I’m certainly not expecting something as imagination-catching and psychedelic as Dune. But you do have to give me something to fixate on. Sins 2’s art direction is already lackluster and its use of AI pulls it even further into hopeless genericism. The fact that every human element in the game, including the majority of the human and alien faces, have been pushed through an algorithm means that Sins 2 is a game with lore but with no evocation.

All that said, that might not be a problem for you. I only had a week with Sins of a Solar Empire 2, but I did catch the magic a little. I lost matches and considered what I could do better next time. I scrolled the tech tree considering the best route. I was thrilled as my economic power grew and the size and power of my fleet with it. I looked forward to playing another match as Advent, taking what I had learned from the other two factions back to it. If you are willing to put in the work and don’t mind Sins 2’s aesthetic pitfalls, this could be a new obsession. Nevertheless, if you were to spread a few dozen hours of your one precious life building space empires, you could certainly do better.