Sword of the Stars: Complete Collection
Sword of the Stars: Complete Collection is the original Sword of the Stars games and the three expansions Born of Blood, A Murder of Crows and Argos Naval Yard. It is the year 2405, and human scientists have discovered a new technology that allows travel from star to star at speeds faster than light.
Sword of the Stars: Complete Collection is a strategy, 4x and space game
developed by Kerberos Productions Inc.
and published by Paradox Interactive.
Released on June 04th 2010 is available in English only on Windows.
It has received 662 reviews of which 582 were positive and 80 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.3 out of 10. đ
The game is currently priced at 2.49⏠on Steam and has a 75% discount.
The Steam community has classified Sword of the Stars: Complete Collection into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
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Requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- Operating System: MicrosoftÂŽ WindowsÂŽ 2000/XP/Vista
- Processor: 1.5 Ghz IntelÂŽ PentiumÂŽ or equivalent
- Memory: 1 GB RAM (2 GB for Vista)
- Hard Disk Space: 3 GB Available
- Video Card: DirectXÂŽ 9 compliant video card with 128MB RAM
- Sound Card: DirectXÂŽ 8.1 or better compatible
- DirectXÂŽ Version: DirectXÂŽ 9c
- Internet Connection: at least 56k modem
- Multiplayer Requirement: Gamespy key (provided by publisher)
Reviews
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
This game has everything other strategy games should have and don't. In a better timeline, the devs took all of the great ideas and design choices in this game and turned out a sequel that capitalized on all of them with a bigger budget to really get attention across the field and inspire a new wave of strategy games that are actually fun to play. Instead, for a sequel we got a buggy mess of even more new ideas that just didn't pan out as well. And... they never remastered the game, they never made another sequel, they just made other things in the universe. Which is cool, but it's not what the gaming industry NEEDS from this game. Sword of the Stars has six different playable species that actually feel different in meaningful ways. The gameplay is fundamentally different and creates a soft rock-paper-scissors situation between races that shifts over time as technology develops. The very method of travel is unique for each and fundamentally changes the feel of playing each race, making each threat more varied and each playthrough more rewarding. Every species actually has a basic explanation for its biology and culture, and the details come through as you play. Each command you give, you hear your scientists or your captains or your engineers respond, and you get a feel for the attitude of your people, the way they live, the way they think and see the universe. The voice acting is a little goofy sometimes, but it's full of heart and well-directed to give you what you need: the feeling you're actually directing a people, not just some empty ships flying between rocks in the void. I love this game, and I hate that it is so obscure. Any other strategy game I play, I never feel this kind of connection with the people I command. I never get so excited to try another game as another faction. This game might be janky, but the fact that it has not been a greater influence on games as a whole is a crime. We need more games like this. We need a proper sequel to this game, direct or spiritual. To be perfectly honest, I play it in a way most people would probably see as boring. I skip (autoresolve) basically every single actual battle-- all the "flashy" stuff you see with the ships actually moving around on a battlefield. I don't care for that. I just love building an empire up from one or two planets, forming fronts and piercing them, pushing the advantage of my race and shoring up its weaknesses, actually employing real principles of strategy for once in a strategic game, all while the people I command call out to me that they're ready for my next move. Even decades old, when we have to get Hamachi out to play it together, this game still hits a sweet spot for folks. I've gotten many of my friends hooked on it, and I'm proud of it. This game deserves so much more, and we deserve so much more of it. If you're debating, please give it a shot. It can be confusing at first, but there's a great satisfaction and charm in this game that I haven't found anywhere else. And if nothing else, I want more people crying out, like I do, for another game like Sword of the Stars 1. For a hundred more.
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8.5/10 For many players, Sword of the Stars is one of the best sci-if 4X games ever made. It does a lot of things very, very right, and it has served as inspiration for parts of games that ultimately became more popular, such as Stellaris. SotS is, at itâs heart, a combat 4X. The pausable real-time combat, the technology tree, and the ship design are at the focus, and the other mechanics and systems are more abstract and exist primarily to serve combat or fuel your war machine. This is not a complaint; the game focuses on what it does best, and simplifies the rest. The ship design and combat and combat are deeply satisfying. You get a huge range of options to mix and match. Ships are made of of three sections (bridge, mission, and engine), and these allow for hundreds of different combinations, before you get into things like weapon placements and various hull upgrades. Itâs a lot of fun to research new techs, find what options they open up for your designs, and fiddle around until you have what you think is the perfect design for the role. Combat itself finds a good balance between hands-off and full control. You can set your fleet or individual ships to various stances (such as stat at max range, or close in), and confidently let them do their thing. You can autoresolve battles, and the resolution tends to be fairly accurate. Or you can manage the battle more directly, giving ships movement and facing orders, directing them to target specific ships, specific sections, or even specific turrets. The different weapon techs you can research are varied, including everything you would expect from this kind of game, as well as more interesting options. For every laser or missile or auto cannon, there are also a few variants, to say nothing of things like the grappling hook, area denial weapons, lightning emitters, giant plasma âshotgunsâ, or oversized ballistic cannons that sends enemy ships spinning out of control and out of range. the tech tree itself is interesting. You start with limited options and unlock more as you go down the various branches, but the techs you have access to partially determined by your race, and by a little bit of RNG. There are core techs that everyone will have, but there are alternatives, variants, or higher level techs that you might or might not have access based on some rolls made at the start of the game. (Although reverse engineering these from the broken remains of enemy ships is often an option). So there are games where you just wonât have access to shields, but you might have superior cloaking technology or very accurate point defense. But where the game really, really shines is in how unique each of the 6 races feel. Not only does your choice of race influence what techs you can access, but it determines your FTL drive, which can fundamentally change how, and how quickly, they move about the strategic map. Humans, for instance, use pre-existing warp lanes to move about the map incredibly quickly, allowing them to expand fast and making them almost impossible to intercept between systems. But they are limited to traveling where these lanes lead, making them the most susceptible to choke points, and if you figure out where their warp lanes are, you know which directs they will come from. Humans are not a Jack-of-all-trades or vanilla race in SotS. Theyâre a rush race who need to create an early game lead in order to stay competitive long term. The insectoid Hivers are by far the slowest, with ships that essentially lack any sort of FTL drive at all, which greatly limits there expansion. But they can build warp gates that allow instantaneous teleportation between controlled systems, making them a defensive powerhouse, and later on can research a technology that allows these gates to essentially slingshot fleets across the map and behind enemy lines. This is a race that starts slow, benefits from turtling from cooperating with other races to expand their gate network, before getting to the point where true offensive strategies become viable. The Crows, meanwhile, have an FLT drive that gets faster the more ships they have in the fleet, encouraging you to use fewer, but larger, fleets. Each raceâs individual ships also exude flavor. They look and perform very differently, even when using the same sections. A lot of the character and design philosophy of the races is communicated through their ships. The reptilian Tarka are a no-nonsense race that likes to face the enemy and fire devastating barrages, while the psychic dolphin-like Liir build advanced but fragile ships that prefer 360 degree weapon coverage. Their ships often have protruding sections that extend turrets out from the hull, allowing better firing arcs. For example the Tarkaâs hammerhead section has a large profile, is loaded with additional armour and larger weapon mounts, allowing for a ton of forward facing firepower. But the Liirâs hammerhead section focuses more on adding additional smaller weapon mounts with wide firing arcs and overall ship agility, allowing their general technological superiority to shine through the use of high end, specialized lasers and point defense turrets, and having a better ability to control which side of their ship faces the enemy. These differences extend to every ship section, and really help present who each race is. The Liir favor lots of smaller weapons, great for protecting against missiles and drones with point defense, and their agility gives them allows them swarm around and attack enemies from their vulnerable sides, trying to disable ships to make up for their paper-thin armour. Hivers lack ship-based FTL drives traverse the strategic map slowly, but use that extra space for more armour and weapons, making them incredibly tough, further leaning into to their turtle strategy. Add to that their rounded hills (and high odds of specialized armour techs) and they are the best in the game at shrugging off ballistic shots, which are more likely to simply bounce and ricochet off their hulls. Their greater density also means they donât get pushed around as much by hits from kinetic weapons. The Reaver-like parasitic Zuul ships look like the cast-offs and wreckage of other racesâ shipsâbecause they are. They bristle with lots of large weapons, allowing them to punch above their weight class, but they are held together with duct tape and hatred, emphasizing just how little they value life. Peace, for Zuul, means stagnation and death. This is a race that is constantly consuming itâs own worlds and populations, and therefore needs to conquer enemy planets and abduct their citizens to keep their empires going. The Humanâs exceptionally fast FTL speed comes at the cost of very large, and very fragile, engines, that often get hit by shots that miss some other part of the ship. Itâs not uncommon for them to come out of a battle with multiple ships dead in space and in need of repair. Itâs just a lot of fun. The game benefitted from having a fantastic lead writer, who did a wonderful job giving each race their own identity through some incredibly in-depth lore, and helping the rest of the team ensure that everything from the technologies to the art assets for each race for their identity. Buy this, play this.
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This isnât your average turn-based strategy gameâitâs Sword of the Stars, where you meticulously plan your empireâs moves in turn-based fashion, then jump right into the thick of real-time space combat, personally commanding every ship in your fleet like a wannabe Admiral Ackbar. The thrill of maneuvering your custom-built fleet to flank an enemy destroyer is only topped by watching your perfect strategy unravel when that same destroyer rams one of your cruisers into a fiery death spiral. The gameâs got one of the most unpredictable research systems out there. Want to develop AI to help boost your economy? Tough luckâthis time the tech gods say no. And honestly, good for you, because nobody wants an AI buddy anyway. They always end up turning on you at the worst possible moment. But when you donât get access to some key research, itâll feel like youâve been thrown into a boxing match with one arm tied behind your back. And, well⌠thatâs just life, isnât it? Sometimes you just donât get the tech you want because your scientists arenât smart enough to figure it out. But thenâoh joy!âyou start a new game, and suddenly your Hiver empire has unlocked a tech that eluded you last time. Now youâve got missile shields, or a fusion cannon, orâwait, whatâs that? Cloaking technology?! Time to watch your enemies flail in confusion as your invisible fleet shows up where they least expect it. Itâs that variation that keeps every game feeling fresh, even when youâre going up against the same pesky alien empires. Speaking of empires, each race has its own flair and quirks, so expect to constantly tweak your strategies. Youâll go from the lumbering tanks of the Tarka to the sneaky cloaked fleets of the Liir, and every raceâs playstyle feels genuinely unique. The randomness of research only adds to the replayabilityâwhat worked brilliantly in one game could completely fail in another because this time the Zuul have somehow figured out how to fry your ships with tech they should not have. And the combat⌠oh, the combat. Itâs the real star here. The thrill of positioning your destroyers just right, sending out torpedo volleys, and watching lasers carve through your opponentâs hulls is downright addictive. Each skirmish is a real-time ballet of death, explosions lighting up the void as ships spin out of control or tear each other apart. The stakes are always high, and every mistake feels hugeâbut every victory is so satisfying. And best of all, itâs even more fun with a friend. If youâre looking for a 4X game with deep strategy, randomized tech trees to keep you guessing, and real-time combat thatâll have you holding your breath as you try to outmaneuver your enemies, then Sword of the Stars is a classic that still holds up. Just remember: if you see AI research pop up⌠just donât. Trust me. (Now I know your gonna do it).
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I've play 100x that many hours over the years, long before SotS came to steam, and I've modded it for decades. It's a ground-breaking title which continues to shine even today (though the technology is very long in the tooth, and you may have to manually configure your display.ini to get it to show up correctly - and set that file read-only so that the game doesn't constantly bork itself). It doesn't play well with big maps -- that will kill your end-games. I like 15 ish stars per player, which for a full 6 players (one of every race) remains entirely viable. More, and you're asking for problems. The UI is "special" in a way only a mother can love - but once you learn it - it is very functional. I wish it wasn't locked in IP purgatory - a genuine refresh would be amazing - with the right team (NOT Kerberos, who proved their duplicity in the Sots ][ debacles).
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Old crusty graphics, but one of the best original 4x games you will ever play.
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Last Updates
| Steam data | 19 November 2024 06:20 |
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| SteamSpy data | 19 December 2024 01:57 |
| Steam price | 23 December 2024 20:45 |
| Steam reviews | 23 December 2024 02:06 |
Online players
21
Developer
Kerberos Productions Inc.
Publisher
Paradox Interactive
Release
04 Jun 2010
Platforms