Отзывы

• gamedeal user

  Jul 5, 2023

  Still one of the best.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 23, 2016

  TL;DR Pros: Relatively bugfree, easy to grasp mechanics, doesn't fling spreadsheets in your face at every occasion, easy to use UI, plays relatively fast. Cons: May be too simple for 4X vets. Verdict: For newcomers to the 4X genre I can give a strong recommendation. For most veterans though, this game may be too simple and I would strongly recommend you to take a look at Distant Worlds Universe. Having played quite a bit of the old Alpha version of this game which used to be available on IndieDB, I think I can write a somewhat informed review of this game. First of all, this game can be classified as a Realtime Pausable 4X game. It has all those elements into it. Diplomacy, exploration, conquest, empire building, etc. The game clearly takes on a bit of a lighter footing than most 4X games. It will not shove massive spread-sheet like ui's in your face. It will not have a cumbersome UI which hampers your ability to play. As an added bonus, it has some decent automation features which allow you to focus on what's fun. You start off with a basic homeplanet, low level technology and a single scoutship. Nothing weird or unusual here. Travel is done through starlanes (consumes fuel, non-instantaneous) or wormholes (occur randomly, instantaneous, don't cost fuel, unpredictable). The systems you will encounter contain several planets, each planet having a planet type and a size. The planet type will enable or disable various buildings, and modify production rates of items and resources. The size mostly dictates construction space available on the planet. Colonization can be micro'd, but you can also just let the ai find a suitable place to build a colony ship and send it over, just by tapping a single buttom on the ui. This is one of the neat automation features which I like. Resource management and economy is fairly simple, and will not bury you in spreadsheets. There's just a handful of resources, enough to fit in a small area on your screen. Resource management basically comes down to making sure you don't run out, and this comes down to setting up the right mining facilities on the planets containing these resources. Or you can just let the AI handle this by designating a planet as a mining colony. Nothing really fancy or unique there, except for the total absense of money as far as I could see (which seems logical to me in a space game actually, as USD would have little value to the Gavakens or so). Research I find neatly done. Instead of picking a single technology to research, you allocate science points to different areas, and can split these between theoretical and applied sciences. I find this system neat because it offers a more logical and natural path of developing technology, compared to picking a single technology at a time. Ship designing is in my opinion most comparable to stardrive's. You've got space on the hull where you can place modules on. Some will only allow weapons, others might only allow engines, etc. You won't place armor though, or power conduits. It just is the engines, power generators, weapons, shielding, support equipment (fuel tanks, cargo modules, troop drop pods, refueling modules, fuel generators, etc). The system is very straightforward and simple. Combat is either auto resolved or fought manually. Battles are fairly simple realtime battles where you can order your ships around. To be honest I don't find much interesting of note in this, except for that it is simple, straightforward and it works well. In terms of bugs, I did not find any so far. Even in its Alpha state it was relatively bugfree (although content and gameplay systems were mostly lacking back then). So not much else to say there. Compared to the Alpha, this version feels way more enjoyable to play and better fleshed out. While this game is a bit too simple for myself, I do have a good general impression of it.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 23, 2016

  I had the fortune to play the Beta before release and have been pleasantly surprised after initially being unaware of the game. I’m now totally hooked on Polaris Sector to the point that I would rate this game more highly than any Space 4X release in the last 12 months, including Galactic Civilizations 3 and Stardrive 2. Here are the top reasons why: 1. There is a competent AI which is impressive for a new release. The AI builds decent colonies and uses well designed ships. If you are too aggressive too early an invasion will often falter and you have to think about what you are building against the AI and how to best deploy them in combat. 2. The game is well balanced and avoids out of control exploitation. For example, you can't build early game unbeatable doom fleets, you don't find huge amounts of weapons late game that are worthless and so on. 3. The colony governors are really good. I don’t feel the need to excessively micromanage colonies which vastly reduces the tedium mid to late game. In fact the game shines mid to late for various reasons including the ability to significantly speed up the game. 4. There is a surprising amount of content for a new release. The game includes an end game threat that had me starting at the screen with my mouth open in shock (noting that I consider the Shakturi in Distant Worlds to be total wimps), a novel ship based espionage system and a good ship design system where component selection matters in-game. 5. There are some really cool Spiral galaxy maps to play which can make the game really interesting strategically. For example you might start in an outer ring and find yourself blocked by other races from accessing inner rings or the core without using star tunnels and tankers to provide enough range for early to mid-game fleets. 6. During the beta I have had no crashes at all and just a couple of bugs which the developer promptly responded to. Some cautions to consider: 1. It’s primarily a war game and although there is some variety in the domination victories (e.g. technology), there aren’t a wide variety of victory conditions. 2. The innovative research is great but it takes a game or two to really get used to it so some patience is recommended. 3. There is some exploration but it could use more events and anomalies to spice it up. 4. The combat is fun and tactical but isn’t as pretty as some other games. 5. A Battle Arena to test designs would have been great but unfortunately not in the game. 6. The tutorials are very limited so checking some Youtube videos might help.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 24, 2016

  Lets get to it. [h1]Pro:[/h1] [olist] [*][u] A.I. (Articial Intelligence)[/u] - I cannot emphasis or stress enough of how extremely good the A.I. is. It's probably one of the most advanced one I've seen in a 4x game genre. I absolutely love how it handles playing against me and handling my orders for planets, colonization, and etc (without the need to micromanage everything). Again, the A.I. in this game is just so good that it cannot be expressed sufficiently of how good it is. Even the developer of this game admits that hard is very tough for him. [*][u] Automating[/u] - This relates to the A.I. but one significant difference. I love the fact that I can explore the galaxy and leave behind orders to colonize it and what kind of focus I would want on the colony. I checked on their build orders and made sure it fit. I have to say that I don't think I can do it any better than the A.I. except on my core worlds, which I micro-manage personally as it's the engine to my war machines. :) With this ability, I was able to colonize very efficiently and quickly without having to waste hours on fine-tuning it. [*][u] Resource Management/Economy[/u] - I absolutely love the fact that credits were completely eliminated and it only boils down to about 8 resources needed (I think I counted right). What's really nice about this is that you know which kind of planets you need to get specific type of resources. Some resources are very rare but for a good reason as they are access to very powerful technologies. Along with resource management, they are used as upkeep for your fleets as well. I think the developer has done an excellent job in balancing the resource consumption vs resource generation that every decision you make really counts. The other thing to note is population. The way the developer has set it up is to make the population really count. This reminds me of the game Imperium Galactica II, where population was something to watch as you would put them to work. The same concept works here. You can build something (don't have to worry about placing it) then have the population grow to work on it. There is a limit of how many buildings you can place and it shows you in the planetary screen. The A.I. does a beautiful job in helping you to get the population necessary to work in the buildings you want. Again, this relates to grand strategy. [*][u] Science & Technologies[/u] - I'm used to a linear path for technologies. However, this is an extremely refreshing take on gaining technologies. Instead of just building labs and generating more points to research faster to obtain technologies faster, the developer took an different approach, which I truly think mirrors how this world works. You have two path, which is fundamental and applied . Fundmental allows you to open up other branches of science to gain more exotic technologies (I.E. Antimatter). Applied gives you the actual technologies to use. It makes a lot of sense and I love it. You can control the direction of how you want your research to go by setting priorities, which speeds up your ability to obtain the specific technologies you want. I think this approach is far better for an 4x game. [*][u] Customization [/u]- The ability to customize your ship is fairly common but for this specific game, they added something that I immensely enjoyed, multiple layers of the ships. If I wanted to create an spy ship, I'll use a freighter that has three layers to it. Oh, the options I could have is immense, especially when you get all the technologies. I like the fact that you have to be decisive on what kind of ship you want and you have to make sacrifices to decide what that ship will specialize in. You can't have one ship that does everything. You actually need different ship designs for specific role. I think the developer has nailed this perfectly. [*][u] Random Events [/u]- I have to say when I was playing on normal, I really had to slug it out with the pirates at the beginning of the game. The pirates would take advantage of you and if they got you in a position of weakness, they'd open an dialogue and ask you for 10% payment of resources "to protect you" and stop their attacks. It was a really cool thing to see that. However, it didn't just stop there but there were external threats that really shook up the game and it took every ounce of my abilities to beat it back (this was just on normal!!). However, it was rewarding to finally defeat it although I admit that that the ending was a little anti-climatic but the fight to get there was epic. To put it in perspective, I had over 350 planets colonized and only four of them were my major shipyards. The external threat took out three of them and I only had one ship yard building my massive warships but it takes about 18 years per warship. I was forced to retool some of my planets to industralization to try to produce more warship, which caused problems with food resources and among others. It made me sweat but this is the kind of game that has me playing for 10 hours straight, just trying to beat it back. Good job on keep me on my toes, even late game isn't a guaranteed that you'll win. [*][u] Tactical Combat [/u]- In my humble opinion, I think this game has took what Master of Orion 2 had and improved on it. The amount of control that we have in tactical combat is unbelievable and the A.I. kicks butt in helping you to manage it. I love the fact that I can control time (speeding it up or slowing it down). Even if I made the speed too high and didn't pause it in time, the A.I. does it for you and puts it in slow-motion so you can still have time to issue orders. Absolutely one of the best feature I've seen. Even better, I can quickly sort out my ships and put them in groups then control them based on that or select all fights or capital ships. The developer has made it really easy for you to manage your fleets in tactical combat. [/olist] [h1][u]Con: :[/u][/h1] [olist] [*][u] Diplomacy [/u] - To the developer's credit, the diplomacy is actually pretty good for a game like this. I was actually impressed with the options available for dialogue. You can convince the AI to enter in treaties with you, such as economic, scientific, open borders, and etc. However, what frustrated me was that I was unable to ascertain how benetifical these treaties were to me. For example, I get an economic treaty but I have no indication of how much this helps me in my resources or such. I tried hovering over the treaty to get a tooltip information but nothing. I checked in my resources to see if it shows up as additional or not but I couldn't see a difference. I canceled it then recorded the number then re-instated the treaty and the numbers didn't change after 10 years. It was the same for scientific treaties, I couldn't ascertain the benefit either. Even more frustrating was the inability to see what causes their attitudes to change. I had one A.I. that had negative attitude all the way but no reason why. I couldn't tell and I tried tooltips and etc, nothing. [*][u] Graphic [/u]- To be fair, it's pretty good for a one-developer show but I like aesthestic but I don't give it my full weight in negative. [/olist] After playing three games, one on easy then two on normal. I'm too afraid to try hard yet because the AI is incredibly good, even on normal. Easy, it was a little work but easy. I don't think I've seen a game where the AI in every aspect is excellent. To put it bluntly, this is probably one of the best 4x game I've played in an extremely long time. When I was playing this, I was reminded of the game Sins of the Solar Empire because it dealt in resources (also credit but not in this game). I really liked how the game focused on allowing you to employ your grand strategies while enjoying some tactical combat. Overall, I highly, highly, highly recommend this game for your 4x game fix. :)
• gamedeal user

  Mar 25, 2016

  Edit: It appears this game is abandoned now, no updates or anything for almost a year now. Do not buy at the moment unless further development. My review is still barely positive but do not buy yet unless further work is done. Its not good and its not bad as well, what irritates me is the major micro management, like when you have carriers and fighters are destroyed, it just does not refill them by itself, you first have to go to a planet, build them again manually, load them manually into carrier hangar, that is a bit tedious. The other thing is when fighters missiles is finished in a battle, you have to tell them manually to go and refill, first land them, then launch them again, no auto refill. The ship design is ok, i like it but still LOVE Star Drive 1 ship design. At this moment for me the best game still is Distant Worlds Universe. I just love the scale and the private sector system. Only drawback, you cannot terraform and ship design is a bit tedious or crap way. If it had like Star Drive 1 ship design then the game would have been complete. I find the AI in Polaris Sector not so good when it comes to politics. I have tried several games now and its basically, give me this planet or these resources and if you say no its war. The AI declares war very quickly, basically like Star Drive 2. So the politics not so good in Polaris Sector. At this moment i will give it a YES but just barely made me choose YES. I will revise after playing some more.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 26, 2016

  Right now I would not recommend Polaris Sector. It brings some fresh ideas but suffers from boring, drawn out gameplay and very bad UI. There are better 4X games out there; if you have already played those and look for something new, you might still get some enjoyment out of it. What I like: [list] [*] The research system: Totally unique and a welcome step away from the traditional research trees and tiers. [*] The map setup: I was delighted to see realistic galaxy types, very eye-catching, also comprehensive, straight-forward and easy map customization [*] The race setup: Again, well implemented: comprehensive but straight-forward and easy customization options [*] The art style: A bit retro and goofy but (especially the galaxy map) pretty and still easy to interpret [*] The combat: Real-time (with the option to slow down and even pause) with lots of tactical depth [/list] What I do not like: [list] [*] The UI: The game is heavy on micromanagement in some areas, especially fleet management and combat. That is not at all bad in itself, but paired with a UI that is big, clunky and low on actually useful information it becomes a nightmare of constantly scrolling around and opening and closing several different views to get done even one small task like finding out what replenishments your fleet needs and producing them. The same goes for combat: I have not found a way to actually make use of much of the tactical options because of a total lack of useful information once you zoom out far enough to see more than maybe two ships at the same time. Again the micromanagement becomes a real chore: Stop time, zoom in to actually see something, try to figure out what some ship is actually doing, zoom out for some reference, zoom in again... ad nauseam. [*] The gameplay: The pace is glacial, even on the fastest time setting. The most exciting thing to happen during several hours of gameplay were some ridiculously overpowered pirates. I found no way to peacefully interact with other races or otherwise influence diplomatic relations meaningfully, let alone get a useful or interesting overview over galactic politics. There are diplomatic options for trade in goods and science but I never got to the point where I could use them. Mostly the AI seemed to want to have nothing to do with me and get angry when I colonized near them. [*] Automation (or the lack of it in most areas): For some reason, you can automate planet colonization and management to the point where you do not have to look at your planets again for the rest of the game. For everything else you do have zero automation options, not even auto-exploring (ok, there is auto-resolving of battles). [*] The planets: There is a nice variety of planet types but strangely not much to do with them. There are four kinds of planet output (industry, mining, agriculture, science), then there is one planet type that is good at all of the four (but not at the same time), plus one type that is good mostly at agriculture. The rest you use only for mining several resources. This is, again, different from how most other 4X games do resources/planet types. But this time not in a good way I think. [/list]
• gamedeal user

  Mar 27, 2016

  I really liked this 4X. I am a big fan of the genre and I found the economic system refreshing, the research system different enough to be interesting, and the ship design mechanics solid. The interface is good but not great, and the graphics are fine but nothing to write home about. I found the audio elements adequate as well. The game works very well with almost no bugs in several campaigns. A it of a steep learning curve with many game elements that are difficult to understand really only clear from practical experience and not covered clearly in the manual. Playing on normal is perhaps too easy, but hard provides a very difficult and interesting game. I would give it very high marks and think it is a surprise gem.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 3, 2016

  This 4X game may not have that much graphics. But it makes up for it with these things. - Formidable AI that can ruthlessly crush you if you turn the difficulty up. - Research system is different from other 4X games in a good way. - Ship designing is fun. - Good challenging tactical combat. A thinkers game not only strategicly but tacticly as well. - Unusual spy system. You build stealth ships that spy instead of sending agents. The only thing i could wish for is-- -The techtree has about average numbers of tech but there is room for more tech. But that's a common thing we always wish for in 4X games. -No characters such as governors or fleet commanders. -No campaign but that part is kinda expected of a 4X game. It has room to grow but overall it's a good game that's worth the money if you need a braintwister game right now.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 11, 2016

  I have mixed feelings. I think this game probably has the best tech tree of any 4X game ever and that's saying something. The tech tree is original, fun, allows for rapid adaptation of strategy, but really, most importantly, it shows us something new that we haven't really seen before in the increasingly tired and already-done-before 4X genre by splitting fundamental and applied sciences and allowing research focusing w/ priorization. True game design innovations don't really happen that often, but this game genuinely has one in its tech tree. Other people have criticized the game's tendency to go "on the rails" (i.e. the game plays itself), and I don't agree. I played in a galaxy w/ 800 stars and if you don't have macroeconomic automation, that just gets tedious. And most of the automation is around invasion and colonization, which are things I *really* don't want to micromanage. But if you do, the game absolutely lets you. The automated construction of planetary buildings seemed totally fine to me because most planets can only get a very limited subset of buildings anyway and if you wanted to micro it without going nuts, you could use build queue templates to do that. I personally found myself wishing the automation was even more automated than it is. One thing that kept cropping up for me was that some planets would max population and all population would be completely allocated. Only unallocated population can be used to colonize a planet and the automated colony ships would queue up at fully allocated planets, waiting for 1000 population to free up when that was impossible instead of just going to a planet where it was actually possible for population growth to happen. That forced me to micro a bit to unblock my expansion and by late game, that was pretty unwelcome. That said, the population growth mechanics in general just seemed really artificial and strange. Fleet combat is OK. Not great, not bad, just OK. I'd have liked to see more utility modules that give more variation in strategy. Weapon variety starts to fall over near the end of the game where high damage torpedoes become increasingly critical and alpha damage starts being more important than anything else. Basically I think fleet combat in general needs more variety and balance tweaks. Shields should recharge much more quickly, kiting should be a more viable strategy, utility modules should get more emphasis, broadside combat should get more emphasis for capital ships (i.e. put all the big hardpoints on broadsides, small turrets only for 360). There should be utilities that can only be placed on smaller and medium ships to force fleet variety instead of the usual 4X late game battleships-only BS. Espionage system is utterly useless and feels like it was tacked on as an afterthought. Diplomacy system is better than average, though I felt like AI was perhaps a little too aggressive diplomatically speaking on Normal and Hard difficulties. But I think the biggest complaint I have is the end game. I won't spoil it for you, but due to what I believe is a known bug, the win condition can become completely impossible because certain enemies have unbounded growth. That said, as I was getting to late game and essentially steam rolling everything in sight and thinking, "Man, game got too easy all of a sudden", the game flipped things around and made things much more challenging. I have very mixed feelings though on the end game. It's sort of the opposite of deus ex machina. Out of nowhere, with no prior warning, you essentially get a boss fight that you likely were not preparing for. At least in MOO, you know the Orions are a thing and you probably have to fight them at some point. In Polaris, poof, Big Bad, and now things are going horribly wrong. There's no strategy you just have to research stuff fast enough and then build up a big fleet before the Big Bad gets too big. If they get too big, welp, too bad, you lose. Or rather you don't lose but you can't win. And that sucks. Should you buy it? Depends on if you can stomach the current just-shy-of-AAA price tag. I think it's a good 4X game with by far the best tech tree of any 4X, but it's crippled by a bad end game and inconstent AI that's either way too hard or way too easy and uninspiring fleet combat. Overall, I liked it. I got a good 30+ hours out of it over a couple games. I think the endgame badly needs a patch. I think the rest of my criticism needs a sequel. I don't think this will end up being a game that I drop 100+ hours on though, and that's usually the point where I feel $40+ is justified. Depending on what the modding community releases though, I could definitely see myself revisiting the title and getting my full $40's worth.
• gamedeal user

  May 16, 2016

  Ok I wanted to like this and I played quite a few hours and did get entertainment out of it but I figured initially you have to play a bit to figure out there is a great game underneath. I like the combat and the naval feel in principle - staring at tiny animations is a bit much - but its just isn't balancd or that fun to keep playing. Its becoems an excercise in strategic micromanagement and tactical space battle frustration. So even early game everyoen seems ot be abale to pack way more fighters onto their carrier ships than you and also the fuel restrictions you are under don't seem to apply. Its a pain in the ass to micromanage ferrying fighters and troops on transports to the fight. There may be some later game tech to help deal with the fighter rush but the tech tree, well it's an abomination of a tech management system and its obscure with a slider for practical and theoretical research. So even winning some battles ussing the limited tactical options is marred by constant loss and replacement of the fighters. Diplomacay is well, mostly uselss. There are the bones of a good game here, ship design should and could have been fun. But its kinda pointless as it coems down to the AI swarming you with hordes of tiny ships. Its a game of micromanagement - its too much work for too little reward - where atre teh good 4Xs we should have, I've never played a better game in this genre than Imperium Galactica II and that was released in 1999