Reviews - Kythia

Coming from Empire at War I knew what kind of high-quality work to expect, but I was also a bit set back by the ultra-minimalistic UI and the lack of heroes.

Star Wars without heroes is like coffee without beans. Its just water or yet another run-of-the-mill RTS. I can understand the teams reasoning, but that doesen't mean I have to like it. I find it very hard to enjoy Star Wars without heroes to rally behind, especially in a game that takes the EU lore so very seriously.

When I first heard of a SoaSE version of Thrawn's Revenge, I immediatly imagined a limited amount of capital ships (limited to 1 like Titans) and their transformation into beloved hero units. It still seems like the more sensible choice. Instead you quickly gather an army of staple capital ships which constantly gain experience, simply to coerce the AI to build some as well (as the devs explained, the SoaSE AI immediatly builds another capital once the former has reached level 3). During the first hour of the game, you constantly hear the sound of levels gained even without any fighting going on whatsoever.

What's also bothering me about this mod is what they've done to the UI. Removing many frames to increase vision is a good thing, but replacing most icons with HUGE overlays (including text) has turned SoaSE's mass fights into a blurry mess. The icons also twist and turn with the ships, which means you have hundreds of Executor-sized symbols constantly moving arround the battlefield, decreasing visibility to zero.

Even worse are the buttons and skilltrees. I hope many of these icons are just placeholders, because those abstract black-and-white thingies are hard to read and even harder to memorize--and completly unneccesary. The Star Wars fanbase has produced an infinite amount of epic fantasy art.

After trying a few other mods like Interregnum, I can say that Thrawn's Revenge II is still the best and most true-to-the-lore mod out there. I hope the team will find the time to fix their design oversights, but there is only so much they can do.

Many of the SoaSE-homemade problems persist. For example the dumb AI which--according to the modders--is hard to tweak, or the drawn-out gameplay with little to do in between. Almost every game turns into a war of attrition rather than an epic space battle. When playing against the AI you never have the feeling of competing against some kind of intelligence, just a bot which constantly builds ships to send your way wave after wave.

Sins of a Solar Empire has always been a rather awkward game. Beautiful and immersive on one side, horribly outdated on the other. I fear the Thrawn's Revenge mod team may be a bit late to the party. SoaSE has aged badly over the years, especially when it comes to actual gameplay.