18th Aug
The Complete Collection for Swords of the Stars packs a heck of a lot of gameplay and it is highly recommended to be sure. Most of the gameplay comes from the battles and designing ships though (the ship isn't the same as Galactic Civilizations, as you can only choose hulls for three sections of a ship). So, don't expect a strong economic model or anything and there's no campaign here, though there are scenarios and randomly generated maps. They can be massive or small.
One great addition though is the randomised tech tree for each game. The core techs are available all of the time, but others like shields are randomised. The tech you lack can be acquired via other means, but there's no guarantee.
Overall, definitely recommended.
6th Aug

Im a late convert to this series. Infact I only started playing this game earlier this year - when the Ultimate Edition came out.
Simply put it is the best Space 4x game there is. Ive played GC, Pax Imperia, MoO & MoO 2. Plus a few Ive probably forgetton about. What makes this game special for me is the depth of strategy decision making it presents.
Couple this with a lean approach to managing many aspects of your space empire, through a very efficient interface. Add to those, a great space ship combat engine, a fantastically detailed tech. tree that changes the option you have at your disposal every time you play. The AI has not shown any weaknesses, but I havent played enough to notice any flaws and Ive played over 100 games.
The game also has a powerful and ever evolving ship design system that allows you to customs dozen of ship hull types with a hundred or more ship components to match any taste in configuration you may care to have. Even the race/faction setup and sandbox options give you more choices than you're likely to ever get round to playing.
And I havent even tried MP yet!
With all these features there really is no excuse why this game (and version) shouldnt be in your collection.
This game is simply fun, fun, fun. The clever design ensures that you wont be spending you time micromanaging for hours and battling for seconds.
Cant recommend this enough.

21st Jun
I tend to compare Sword of the Stars with Master of Orion. Unlike MOO there's barely any micromanaging at the planets but way more to do with ships.
While the empire management is still done in turn based fashion the battles are fought in real time.
And for me SotS is all about those battles. Tactics can go from just focusing fire on one target to destroying certain ship sections or even guns. And it looks very pretty when two fleets of ships exchange fire in every direction!
Some may not like the "candy" look of the graphics and the voice acting is not quite like with bigger studios but those are minor things when rest of game is full of fun stuff.
If you liked Masster of Orion and the like, this is a game you should not miss.
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