Intelligent Game Reviews

Say “Real Time Strategy” to a PC game player and you conjure up images of tactical combat, resource management, and base building games like Command & Conquer or Age of Empires. What you don’t think about is grand strategic galactic conquest games. But Imperium Galactic II hopes it will change your mind.

The Basics

Imperium Galactica II is one of many games that take the basic Civilization model and expand upon it. In this case it’s real time and galactic in scope. But the essentials underlying the design are the same. You start out with one or two planets, low technology, and no idea what the universe contains. You must research new technologies, explore the galaxy, settle new planets and ultimately negotiate with and defeat alien races to rule the galaxy as your own.

The game itself is played in real time at one of three speed settings. You can also pause the action to issue orders. There are set piece scenarios as well as campaigns played from the perspective of three different races. And while that sounds good, the races have identical technology trees and only have a few small differences in what they can and cannot do.

Campaigns are also misnamed. They aren’t campaigns in the sense of linked missions. Rather, they are the game itself with random events. Events might require you to save a ship from an enemy, root out pirates, etc. Completing these missions is mostly optional but doing so nets you various benefits in the form of money, technology, or what have you.

Combat takes place both in space and on planets. Ships include a wide array of types and sizes and you can customize the weaponry and abilities to create your own special types, upgrade existing ships and tanks, etc. It’s very flexible, you can even buy surplus ships and tanks on an open market. But this flexibility adds a lot of complexity too, perhaps more than is a good thing.

Ultimately the game system has good points and bad ones. The basic real time game engine is pretty good though the 3D battles are very difficult to adequately control. The battle system is nothing like as good as even a basic real time strategy game you might have played before. I played one full campaign with battles on and one with battles automatically resolved. Not only is pacing better with them turned off but I didn’t enjoy playing the battles enough to care about missing the nifty graphics anyhow.

So too, the depth of detail and the way you build things often are at odds with one another. There are a host of buildings to research and construct for each planet. To build one you have to zoom onto the planet display, select the building and click. Not only is this tedious after the first few tries but you also have to do the same thing to deal with activating or deactivating different buildings. This is partially alleviated by the fact that you can let the AI build for you. It does an adequate job of dealing with making sure the population of a planet keeps expanding but it doesn’t do well in terms of building up research infrastructure or military facilities in my opinion. You thus end up having to fight the awkward interface to construct these buildings yourself.

In addition, the summary screens while somewhat useful, don’t let you control the activities of a planet or what to build in terms of ships, etc. Really for a game this complex the interface has to really work for you. And in this case it works against you. The interface is just not streamlined enough to make dealing with all the detail of the game particularly easy… or fun.

My other serious complaint is the rather weak AI opponents. Playing on easy it is hard not to win. But even on the hard setting it was not that difficult to outfight the AI that seemed to be pretty silly about how it attacked you, even though it was more efficient at building fleets and tanks than a human player can be with the awkward interface.

In the end, Imperium Galactica II is the most detailed galactic conquest game yet. For the person who likes a lot of detail and complexity there is a lot of meat on these bones. But I think that for most people it might be a bit overwhelming.

Multiplayer

Up to 8 players can battle for supremacy of a randomly generated galaxy over a LAN or the Internet. I only tried two multiplayer games but neither was a smashing success. The trouble really is pacing and the fact that a game just takes far too long to finish in a sitting. Unless you have friends who want to play with you over more than one session you’re bound to find multiplayer less fulfilling than single player action.

Graphics, Sound, etc.

Perhaps the best part of Imperium Galactica II are the wonderful 3D visuals. The main map can be viewed from any angle you wish, from nearly “plane on” to directly overhead and you can also zoom in and out. Each planet has a unique surface that can also be zoomed and the camera moved up down or rotated around. Some of the vistas are really quite spectacular. Space battles work the same way.

Aside from the rather odd looking spinning spaceship icons on the main map and some clunkiness in a few of the planetary 3D models the overall effect is quite good. The game does look nice and uses the required 3D graphics card enough that you appreciate the look even if this sort of game really isn’t enhanced from a game play perspective by requiring one.

Music was generally well done with quiet themes playing while not much is happening and up tempo ditties with greater volume while battles raged in space or on a planet. Sound effects were nothing to really get excited about but the voice acting in the various random campaign elements was very solid. I especially like the voices of some of the crusty alien ship commanders.

A definite weak point, especially for a game this complex, was the dismal manual. It is lengthy but does a poor job of explaining even the basics of play. While the interactive tutorial is adequate to introduce the interface it leaves much to be desired in explaining anything else.

The Verdict

Imperium Galactica II has a lot of good ideas… the trouble is there are a few too many of them and they never really come together to make a cohesive game. The result isn’t a bad game really, but not one that is particularly compelling either. The basic core, a real time space empire builder, is pretty good if you turn off all the extra features that you can. For fans of grand strategy games this might be worth adding to your collection, for others interested in trying this kind of game for the first time it isn’t the genres best representative.

Imperium Galactica II Screenshots

The graphics of the game are perhaps its best feature… everything is 3D, even the main view.	Battles in space and to conquer a planet are in real time on full 3D landscapes.
The variable campaigns for each race provide reasonable variety though main points are the same each time.	The multimedia clips for events in campaigns are excellent.

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