Sins of a Solar Empire 2

A copy was provided by Stardock Entertainment for review. Thank you!

Returning for a long-awaited sequel, Sins of a Solar Empire 2 might leave fans of the franchise somewhat divided in their opinion. That's not to say that Sins of a Solar Empire 2 is a bad game, but more so that it perhaps sticks too close to the original to the point where players might feel a bit cheated.

At first glance, you'd be forgiven for thinking Sins of a Solar Empire 2 is the same game as the original, were it not for the re-designed and slimmed-down UI, the games themselves look incredibly similar. Not to mention the two games share identical ship and station designs, as well as technologies. I even went back to look at the original game and found that some of the voice lines, when you order a ship to move, are identical between the two games as well.

There are some differences, however. The most noticeable improvement in my eyes is the visual effects. Effects such as explosions and certain weapon effects definitely look improved in the sequel compared to the original, and if you zoom in on the ships (which you don't do too often, but it's an option) they are much higher quality than before.

The UI change isn't just aesthetic in appearance too, the UI is functionally different, and dare I say, a bit smarter too. It makes managing your empire a little easier when things start getting spread out and queuing up ships and structure construction well in advance is a breeze compared to a lot of other strategy games that I've played.

As Sins of a Solar Empire 2 follows the original so closely, it at least manages to be a good game to play, with fairly well-balanced factions and plenty of technologies to research, ships and structures to build, and careful strategic planning. The phrase "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" springs to mind, although I'm not sure how much that applies to a game you've waited 15 years for.

Not many games let you go against each other with huge fleets of spaceships, and I view it as a sort of "Stellaris-lite." It's laid out similarly, and you can still have the epic space battles. You just don't have to worry about all the planetary economies and politics as much. Victories will largely be decided by who has the biggest gun here. It's a much simpler approach that anyone can understand.

While your economy is important, it's very much an "upgrade and forget" kind of affair here. You don't need to keep checking in on your planets to see if they're still managed properly and if you're getting the best out of them; it's all flat rates of income determined by the planet's upgrade level.

Ship types, while the same as the previous Sins game, are also diverse and add a lot of variety to how battles play out and look. With fast strike craft launched from your carriers, corvettes outmaneuvering capital ships, frigates holding back to lay siege, and your capital ships taking the brunt of the fire, there are a lot of strategies to employ depending on how you choose to compose your fleet, and the battles are an enjoyable visual spectacle.

Unfortunately, my grievances with Sins of a Solar Empire 2 aren't just limited to how it's so similar to the original from 2008. Sins of a Solar Empire 2 lacks a single-player campaign, so the only modes available in this $50 game are multiplayer deathmatches and deathmatches against the AI on either premade maps or randomly generated ones for 2-10 players. A single-player campaign is in the works, but it's being released as paid DLC or as part of the Content Pass, which costs $60 for the campaign, some scenarios, 6 new ships, and a 4th faction.

It's an outrageous price for something that should be included in the base game. But apparently, we're charging $60 for a new faction and a campaign these days.

That sums up how I feel about Sins of a Solar Empire 2. Is it a good strategy game that's fun and worth looking at? I had a blast playing the game, and I'm glad I got a chance to check it out. But if you already own the original, is it worth the $50 to upgrade? I'm not so sure. You get a few nice visual improvements, a sleeker UI, and probably some improvements to things like the online gameplay, but content-wise, the game is almost identical to Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity/Rebellion.

That's not to mention that the main draw for returning players is likely the single-player campaign and 4th faction, both of which will be sold as paid DLC and not included in the base game, which is a shame.

Sins of a Solar Empire II - Steam Deck Performance

Sins of a Solar Empire 2 generally runs very well on the Steam Deck. It supports the Steam Deck's native 1280x800 resolution, and although it doesn't have any controller support, it uses fairly generic RTS controls, so the default Keyboard (WASD) + Mouse layout works pretty well with it. The game's system requirements state 1920x1080 is the minimum resolution, but this is more so given the recommended UI scale; the Steam Deck has to run at 67% UI scaling due to this, but it's still playable, if a little small.

The game is surprisingly easy to run, although perhaps not so surprising given how similar it is to its 16-year-old predecessor. Therefore, I'm only offering 1 preset today.

Recommended Settings - 60 FPS

I would recommend you apply a 60 FPS limit in SteamOS, along with a 10W TDP Limit.

In-game, I disabled the Variable Frame Rate, kept Bloom and Refraction enabled disabled Antialiasing, kept Shadows enabled and on "High," kept Dynamic Lighting enabled and on "High," set Effect Counts to "High," and then disabled the Use Only Dark Skybox. You can see the images below if you want the settings in that form.

My game ran at 60 FPS most of the time in these settings. Certain situations did cause dips, such as when fleets were warping between systems or when I was in a large battle with 100+ ships. These could cause drops into the 50s, and some rare effects drop the performance down to the 30s, but they don't appear too often. Given the type of game this is, the game is perfectly playable even at 30 FPS.

Also, the game has a habit of freezing for 1-2 seconds at times, likely due to the excessive amount of VRAM it uses (around 8GB). This usually occurs when zooming in/out, but it can also occur when a lot of visual effects are spawning.

The pictures in the gallery below show some of the most intensive moments I experienced during play.

The power draw stays pretty low, with the game drawing around 10W-14W most of the time. You can expect around 3-3.5 hours of battery life from a Steam Deck LCD and about 4.5 hours from a Steam Deck OLED.

Temperatures stay low in the 55C-60C range, with no audible fan noise.

Accessibility:

Sins of a Solar Empire 2 doesn't have any accessibility options. There isn't even support for color-blind users, and ships do not have symbols/shapes attached to them to determine what faction they belong to, which may present some issues. The game does feature UI scaling, but it's disabled on the Steam Deck, as the game technically only supports 1920x1080 or above resolutions for UI scaling.

Conclusion:

Sins of a Solar Empire 2 is a solid RTS, although that's to be expected considering how closely it follows its predecessor, a well-received game in the strategy genre. There are a few niceties added to this "sequel", such as a redesigned UI, but it perhaps would have been more accurate to call this game a remaster as opposed to an entirely new game. The $50 price tag is a little hard to swallow given how close it is to the original, and the single-player campaign being paid DLC instead of being included in the base game just adds salt to the wound.

As for how the game works on the Steam Deck, for the most part, it runs pretty well, the performance is great aside from the occasional freezes, and the controls also work decently. However, you may not want to attempt playing online like this, as mouse + keyboard players will be able to act faster than you. You do feel somewhat limited with how fast you can click buttons, as Sins of a Solar Empire 2 is a fairly fast-paced game as far as strategy games go.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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