Imperium Galactica 2: Alliances

Rating:
Summary: the trick is in the civilization
Review: The game rocks! the interface is quite friendly, the speed buttons are quite simple and virtualy everything can be self-tought. The only problem are the difficulties. Most say that the difficulties are all messed up, I say the CD order is the one. CD 1 is installation, CD 2 is the Salarians (the most difficult), CD 3 is the Shinari (medium) and CD 4 is the Kra'Hen (quite easy, if you live up to the Divine Emperor's wishes). For the campaign, there are only three civilizatons (the worriors, the peace-keepers and the troublesome): The Kra'Hen, who come from another galaxy, have a supreme Emperor and can dedicate themselves to building ships while their people starve, in less than 30 years you can conquer the galaxy. The Shinari who use mainly diplomacy and espionage, and have medium citizen complaints. And the Solarians, who are a Federation ruled by a Senate; obviously, no starving, no slave-labour and consecuently, being wiped out by a gigantic Kra'Hen force. As I said, the trick is in the civilization.

Rating:
Summary: not too bad
Review: This game is a lot of fun, but quite challenging. The graphics are OK. There's plenty of tension, and so excitement, during the game. There are three difficulty levels. Easy is too easy. Hard is too hard. But Normal is just right (after at least 10 games) IF you play the Kra'Hen (Klingons) until you are pretty good. THEN you can try the Solarians (humans). The Kra'Hen are much easier. The Shinari don't seem to work right. Initially, keep your taxes low for rapid population growth. In fact, when your planet has less than 10,000 people, use NO TAX. From 10,000 to 19,999 use low tax. 20,000 and above use moderate tax. The reason is, your population growth depends strongly on tax, but not at all on population size. Therefore, you wouldn't get much tax from small population planets anyway, so make them grow fast. Use HIGH TAX and no autobuild on all planets when you have half the galaxy or so conquered. Also use high tax if needed to satisfy a short term demand of the God Emperor. KEEP THE GOD EMPEROR HAPPY at all costs. Do these things and you will have a lot of fun on moderate difficulty and even win sometimes!

Rating:
Summary: Fun game, but not easy.
Review: This game is a lot of fun, but quite challenging. The graphics are OK. There's plenty of tension, and so excitement, during the game. There are three difficulty levels. Easy is too easy. Hard is too hard. But Normal is just right (after at least 10 games) IF you play the Kra'Hen (Klingons) until you are pretty good. THEN you can try the Solarians (humans). The Kra'Hen are much easier. The Shinari don't seem to work right. Initially, keep your taxes low for rapid population growth. In fact, when your planet has less than 10,000 people, use NO TAX. From 10,000 to 19,999 use low tax. 20,000 and above use moderate tax. The reason is, your population growth depends strongly on tax, but not at all on population size. Therefore, you wouldn't get much tax from small population planets anyway, so make them grow fast. Use HIGH TAX and no autobuild on all planets when you have half the galaxy or so conquered. Also use high tax if needed to satisfy a short term demand of the God Emperor. KEEP THE GOD EMPEROR HAPPY at all costs. Do these things and you will have a lot of fun on moderate difficulty and even win sometimes!

Rating:
Summary: KICKEN
Review: This game is a very fun and exciting epic of intergalactic fun, that I enjoy to play a few times a day. The thing is that all the diffrent races, there are you only get to use 3 of them that made me angry, those other races look really awsome. If you buy or receive this game you enjoy it as much as I have.

Rating:
Summary: A must have for any armchair emperor!
Review: This game totally rocks! for any gamer that is familiar with empire builders such as masters of orion 1 and 2 or the civilization/settlers/aplha centuari series this is a must have. i recommend this game to any fan of those series and any person who likes there games with a little more brains than the usual stuff thats push out!digital reality combines deep involveing gameplay with beautiful graphics and great cinematics that makes for a stunning gameplay experience! it's a joy to actually see all of your colonies in 3d splendor as you zoom in on your colonies surfaces. finally somebody did this type of game justice. my only gripe is that i wish there were more races. this game is a must have for any and all armchair emperors!

Rating:
Summary: Good Game gone Bad
Review: This is potentially the greatest space opera game to come along in years. It is depressing that this potential is lost. First, expect to find sound conflicts with the game. The game will lock up your PC or dump out of the game during periods that you acess the game's personal communications device. (No, no option to avoid going there, so expet to get dumped about every 20 minutes of game play). But, this glich is based on your system's hardware, so, maybe you won't have that problem. Next, you will find a game that bases interaction on diplomacy and spying without adequate instructions on how they play against one another. Worse yet, expect diplomacy not to work at all. The diplomacy function is extremely frustrating as you seem incapable of generating anything from the other races except a declaration of war, which they do as soon as they have more ships than you. You will also be frustrated in your inablitiy to manufacture ships while the computer players just build them out the whazoo. You will also be frustrated in the need to micromanage all tanks during any invasions. You have 30 tanks? So, what?; unless you give 30 indivdiual orders they blunder around the map and get shot up piece meal. Forget about giving group orders. With all the negative said, this game has a great concept, great music, fantastic cut-scenes, fun space battles, and a flawless intergration of real time/turn based concepts. This is a buyer beware item. If you love MOO you will find this game acceptable, if you don't know what MOO is, STAY AWAY- FRUSTRATION AHEAD!

Rating:
Summary: Master of Micromanagement
Review: While this is a terrific game concept with some nice features, it is far more work than play. The core of the game is a standard 4X space empire builder, with colony management, a complex tech tree, tactical space and ground combat, espionage, and diplomacy. But there is no centralized display of colony status. A building must be supplied with both power and workers in order to operate, and if it doesn't have enough of either, it will simply shut down and the game gives you no warning or announcements. You are forced to pause the game every few months and personally inspect every single colony to discover these problems. But the tech system is even worse, and has not been improved from IG1. There are three types of tech, and so you have to have three types of labs. But you can only research one invention at a time, so while you're developing a new hyperdrive in your ship labs, your ground unit and colony facility labs are sitting idle, sucking up your colony's power and workers. If you can't afford that waste, and most of the time you can't, you have to once again personally remember where you placed each one of up to 30 labs, go to the colony display for each planet on which you have a lab, and turn the idle ones off, one at a time. If you decide to develop a new building next, you have to go around and turn off all the ship labs and turn all the building labs on again. And I don't have room here to go into the game's futile diplomacy system, or the sluggish screen redraw, or the constant nagging interruptions by messages regarding random events and spies demanding orders. No offense to the other reviewers here, but only a hardcore strategy addict with a fetish for micromanagement could enjoy this game. I returned it four days after I bought it.