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As may have been mentioned before (read: has been), I’m somewhat an aficionado of the 4X genre. As such, when I noticed Armada 2526 and its expansion pack in the two for £30 deal in Game, I snapped them up. I’d been wanting to get it for a while, but had never got around to it. Now, if you’ve been reading my other reviews, you may have already worked out what the gist of this one’s going to be, but first: the good stuff.
There are some really nice features in Armada 2526. There really are. For example, to get a fledgling colony off the ground, you can shuttle some population from a larger one there. Ships can be told to repeat actions for a set number of journeys, or endlessly.
The wormhole detection technologies allow you to find faster routes between worlds, or opens up otherwise inaccessible areas of the map. You can have fleets of an unlimited size in battles.
Unfortunately, that’s about it. I was incredibly disappointed by this game, and here’s why:
The map is my first complaint. Used, as I am, to the fully three-dimensional environments of SotS, or even of Civilization (also an example of this genre, believe it or not), I kind of expected it of this. No, the map’s entirely two dimensional. Hrrm. OK, well, maybe the way it’s dealt with gives a function of depth. Ah. No. It seems this galaxy is literally constructed on a plane, because all distances that look the same take the same time to traverse. So, no attempt at any form of realism there. Huh.
OK, well maybe the battles will be proper 3D, with decent tactics relating to how actual space warfare would b... oh. Another 2D plane. The planet’s slightly 3D, but that makes no difference to the actual gameplay. There are ground troop units available, but they’re utterly useless - their only purpose is to attack the planet, which can be done with greater success by spaceborne ships. Ground troops can’t attack ships in orbit, so all the ships do is hang overhead and kill them. Note that they can hang overhead at any point of the planet, which doesn’t rotate. So, uh... they’re in a geostationary orbit around a planet that’s not spinning, and they can do so in polar regions as well as equatorial ones. WHAT.
So, gameplay itself is a bit pants. OK, well maybe the research system will be bett... ah. Really? Your ability to research doesn’t improve noticeably with the size of your empire, only with the construction of research labs. There are various levels of these. Research labs can be built anywhere. They can then be specialised. Once that’s happened, they can be upgraded into Research Stations, of which only one can be built on a planet. These can then be upgraded into Research Nexuses, of which only one can be built in your entire empire. This leads to an irritating dance of micro-management - as soon as you’ve developed all the useful tech in a tree, you have to demolish all the research facilities and rebuild them for a different tree, in order to get ANYTHING in less than about 300 turns.
Of course, each planet can only have a limited number of buildings, which is set by your population. The population, by the way, can never rise above 100. Except, of course, for a space station. That maxes out at five. Which means that a resource-rich system with no planet in it can’t be exploited for mining AND ship construction, as that many people can only support a single building. Defences, thankfully, occupy a different section, and can be built immediately. Shame they’re not a lot of use. Any decently-sized fleet can tear through them easier than a rhino could tear through your chest, and take very little damage in the process.Ship design is non-existent, so you’re stuck with the specific classes the developers made. Everything sounds impressive until you actually use it - the only ship that was ANY use was the one made of neutronium, which isn’t available until you can establish a colony in orbit around a neutron star. These, incidentally, are RARE.
The AI is stupid and selfish. As an example, I spent four or five turns in the early game wiping the “evil” AI race off a world. As I brought a colony ship up from my homeworld, the “good” AI suddenly jumped in and stole the planet. And at the time, I still wanted to be on their good side (never fight a war on two fronts - Hitler taught us that), so I couldn’t kill them in retaliation. Their stupidity exhibits itself in a different manner - never more clear than in the trade system. They noticed I’d developed some pretty impressive technology, and was getting more and more very quickly. So they offered me other technology from the SAME TREE in exchange for it. Technology that would take me only a few turns to research from nothing. They didn’t offer anything else along with it, just that. They then refused to accept any counter-offer which garnered me a better deal.
Unfortunately for Ntronium Games, the few good ideas they had don’t make up for the abortion the rest of the game is. For half the price, you can get the Complete Collection of SotS, which is an infinitely better game. It’s not really a contest, is it.
Until next time,
CSquared
http://gamegrill.blogspot.com
Keywords: Armada 2526, PC, 4X, Supernova
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