I found myself buried with homework last weekend as usual, but somehow I managed to scrape together a couple hours of free time. I went this bookstore which has this game area in the back corner. I usually never find anything worthwhile there, as the shelves are usually filled with games like “Nancy Drew Hidden Object Adventures”. I ended up being lucky that day, as I found something that looked actually good, believe it or not. It was a sci-fi strategy game titled “Sword of the Stars”. I am now going to review it.

Before I go any further, I want to make something clear. This game is hard, and for one specific reason. It offers you little to no instruction on just what you are supposed to be doing. It drops you off in the first mission without any tutorial or anything. I was forced to read someone’s beginner’s guide on the internet. I dislike doing this, as I classify looking information up on the internet as cheating. But here, it seems necessary.

That aside, let’s get into the gameplay. The main goal in each mission differs in each one. The first one is to force all of your opponents forces out of the surrounding star systems. To do this, you will need to construct different ships and send them to attack your opponent’s. You will also need to research new technology to upgrade them to become more powerful. You can try to communicate with the other players to ask them for help, bribe them, or attempt (unsuccessfully of course) to intimidate them.

Now I’m going to cover some of the story, which there’s not a lot of. The year is 2405, and mankind has discovered subspace travel, which allows faster than light movement for spaceships. You’re playing as SolSpace, a major company on Earth that helped develop this technology. A couple people aren’t too happy about one major company controlling a lot, so they form the Frontier Alliance, a rebel organization. So now you have to try to get them back in line. Unfortunately, a couple alien races have taken notice to this, and will try to exploit the divided human race.

So that’s pretty much the just of it. I would recommend this game for anyone who enjoys turn-based strategy games, as long as they don’t mind some difficulty learning the game. My rating for this game is a 7.5/10.