Sid Meier's Starships

« Sid Meier’s Starships does away with all of the research tree and diplomatic hard work that often comes with a 4X title, replacing them with some brilliant turn-based strategy combat and just enough world conquering to keep any evil genius happy. This is the sort of game the Romulan Empire would love. »

« Sid Meier's Starships is a good and replayable turn based strategy experience that will certainly appeal to lovers of classic science fiction franchises and to those who appreciate the way the leader of Firaxis managed to make player choices relevant. »

« Humble and solid. Each game is different and requires reading the everchanging environment and learning to take advantage of the aleatory features. The perfect strategy game to play in short sessions. »

« Starships may lack the complexity and nuance of other strategy games, and it feels a bit rough around the edges in places, but its accessibility, terrific turn-based combat, and bite-sized duration combine to create a tempting alternative to a multi-evening marathon campaign. »

« For gamers not wanting to dedicate their entire beings to the Civ games, this might be a worthy substitute. »

« Although the price tag is much more reasonable than your average console title, $14.99 may lead other gamers in a different direction. That said, players who opt for a fiscally healthier expenditure will be missing out on a solid Sid Meier experience, since Starships is a space odyssey that’s definitely worth your time. »

« It’s a game you can complete, and when you do, you’ll want to start playing again immediately, perhaps bumping up the difficulty level or increasing the map size. That’s exactly the same kind of replayability spark that Civilization had all those years ago. »

« Sid Meier's Starships lacks the strategic depth of Civilization, but the added tactical layer, and shorter game times make it a fair substitute, especially if you're looking for bite-sized strategy. »

« It isn't deep and it isn't worth paying lots of money for but it is fun and well designed in my opinion. Yes it does feel more like a mobile game but at least unlike a mobile game app it doesn't want you to spend more money through micro payments. Just treat it as a fun distraction and no more. »

« I see a lot of missed potential here. This could have actually been a really deep and interesting game but they just didn't spend the proper time on it. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they just took some code from Beyond Earth and slapped this together in a month. Remember the space stage in Spore? Picture that but you can only visit about 30 planets. Yes I am not joking here. I was playing on the largest map available and there were about 30 planets. You may be wondering why I'm giving it such a high score when the game is so clearly terrible. Well even though this game is a terrible excuse for an anything Sid Meier at least has the decency not to charge 60 dollars for this. I got it for 15 which makes it at least somewhat worth it. That still doesn't change the fact that I'm using Spore which was a huge disappointment as a comparison to this game. Spore is better in nearly every way. And I think it's only 5 dollars now. Go buy that if you are thinking about purchasing this. »

« Simple, basic, turn-based strategy game. Ships have levels in a variety of traits you can upgrade; by the end, all ships are identical, and the only time a difference exists is in the early game when you can't afford to upgrade everything yet. Ships cannot be destroyed, only temporarily disabled; you -will- fight the entire enemy fleet every time you take one of his worlds, and losing every ship in your fleet is only a one-turn inconvenience. The level of complexity and depth is about what you'd expect out of your typical free flash game; it only looks so pathetic when you measure it against its genuine competition; actual PC strategy games that you pay for. »

« If you don't know anything about Sid Meier, look him up and what games he did. He and Civilization are probably the biggest names in the genre ... and then comes Starships. At first I thought I was missing something but it's really that simple. I'm not saying simplicity is a bad thing but for a Sid Meier title this is more than just bland. The core gameplay feels as interesting as the space age in Spore. Instead of moving spices and terraforming you get missions on each planets. About 5 different. Considering that this is pretty much all you do the entire game it's fair to say that it gets old very quickly. Research, outfitting ships and managing planets is linear and just as uninteresting. The fact that this is also a mobile game really shines through. Graphics are really basic but at least the window can be rescaled freely. It doesn't pretend to be a full Civilisation game but still, for having Sid Meier in the name it just doesn't deliver enough. 4 points for being a game (with almost no content) and working very well on PC (and not being a bad port) »

« Oh boy i was soooo excited about that game when i first heard about **** more i saw, the less excited i **** now that i played that game i think i was right.I will not write a in-depth review cause that game isnt wort the ****?Its out on IOS and when you see and play the game you know why it should only be available to mobile devices.This game is really simple.Fighting is simple, science is **** cant research like you did in Masters of Orion for example.I never got excited because i invented something cause there is nothing to invent in the first place.Every faction plays the same, even the research is the **** effort put into it, lazy as **** missions get boring really quickly.There are some different type of missions but they will pop up too often.After the 8th spacestation that is damaged or the 12th defenseplattform that goes rogue it gets dumb. In the end that game is clearly made für mobile devices.Right now they charge you with around 15€.Many people will tell you 15€ is not much and its **** ITS NOT!There are so many games out there for less money that are better.Hell, pick up Masters of Orion, better battles, much more tactic needed and a real economy behind **** you want just the fighting, buy **** buy other games, but not this ripoff that is just portet so that they can grab your cash because there is the name Sid Meier on it.Without the name Sid Meier no one would ever give a **** about this boring **** below average for me, deinstalled it after some hours. »

« I would actually recommend it ,on the account of me having fun playing it. These days my patience for learning new and complex games are (perhaps unfortunately?) at an all time low. Starships was a surprise, in that it was -really- easy to get into. You don't have to read a manual 10 times the bible just to undock your ship, or learn how the economic's work. Sid Meier's Starships pretty much puts you right in the middle of things, yet giving you some help along the way. There's only a few tech-trees if you compare it to the Civilization games, and as such things do feel quite a bit simplified. The good thing about this is that it makes the game easy to get into, and still as you learn by playing, you soon find that strategy and thinking helps a lot. I would love for Firaxis to add to this game, it's practically begging for a good Hot-seat mode (Like the Old Master of Orion games (MOO 1+2) more diplomacy options ,more ship / customization options, and actually, a little more of everything. It's the first space strategy game I've tried in the last 10 years I haven't needed to will myself into playing, but now that I like it? I want more, lots more. There positives are : Easy to get into Smooth gameplay Interesting setting / technologies The many different kinds of missions , in addition to thrilling space battles A sheer joy to play (when you're winning difficult fights) The negatives (for me) NO FULLSCREEN?!!! ...... That's uber-annoying, what are Firaxis thinking? Alt+F4 to quit!?? Where's the QUIT TO WINDOWS (or DOS) button???? No multiplayer? ..**** why???? It's a turned based game that practically begs for a Hot-seat mode GUI , this -really-really-really- needs work ......I thought they knew how to do this after Civ and X-com Lack of gameplay depth, options like setting up diplomatic treaties, alliances ++ Though the game can quickly pull you in, it soon leaves you wanting more I certainly hope the game gets better With patches / fixes and addons »

« (Argh, metacritic ignores paragraphs. For a more readable version I've posted pretty much the same text to my blog.) Apparently a surprisingly large number of fans were expecting to get a deep game like a Civ or a spacegoing Pirates! for $16 on a short development cycle; they also apparently did not even look at the gameplay footage that's been available for weeks. Going in with my eyes open, though, I have little to complain about in the gameplay itself. It's pretty much what the video promised. The tie-in with Beyond Earth, modulo the bugs I'm about to mention, is no clumsier than I expected. The requirement to set up a 2K account to get the tie-in is not yet onerous - we'll see where that goes, and hope that it's not like EA's player abuse system. Where the game totally fails, though is that despite being developed in parallel, and despite Firaxis' experience with PC games, it comes across as a crappy iPad port. Most of these things are inexcusable, showing either or both of a lack of testing on the PC or a lack of caring about PC quality: * It only plays in "full-screen windowed" mode. No true fullscreen, no choice of resolution. 2K's claimed "fix" for this is an ugly workaround telling you to change your desktop settings to hide the taskbar. Ugh for Firaxis and FY2 to 2K. * It crashes on exit, every time. Most of the time it crashes when you hit "exit" from the main menu, but last night I had it crash when I clicked "return to main menu" from the victory screen. Did they even test the PC version? * It has about a minute of unskppable video at game end. This doesn't feel like a victory celebration, it feels like punishment for winning. Ugh. * Right-click is treated exactly the same as left-click, even though a hover brings up a radial menu. Totally lazy. * Probably related to the crashes, the unlocks for Beyond Earth for playing Starships don't work. The unlocks in the other direction do, at least. Despite all of these issues, it is a fun little game, especially if you have Beyond Earth and either you're not tired of it yet or you use the in-game-editor mod to fast-path you to the unlocks. »

« Mobile game released for PC, just so we're clear. Streamlined, light-strategy experience focused on tactical starship battles, big on unit positioning and angle of attack. It's not meant to take two weeks to finish a game. Where it succeeds is distilling classic Civ features into their basic fundamentals for a Civ-light (very light!) feel. I'll tell you how I feel about this: personally, I'm a Total War game kind of guy, and ideally would spend days on careful worldwide strategy and minute positioning in battle. But now I'm also a parent with a full time job, and I don't have that kind of time. So to me, getting the same general strategy fix in a fraction of the time by shaving away some of the complexity is not a bad thing. I still wrestle with optimizing territory control, determining research tree path, ship loadout and overall playstyle strategy, preventing AI moves that could cost me the game, etc. It just happens a lot faster. For $15 that's kind of a selling point now. As long as this doesn't become the future of Civ games (and it's clearly NOT Civ-6, so I don't think we have to worry), there's a place for this as a light-strategy companion piece. »