Combined with a capricious AI and the utilitarian feel of the diplomacy system at large, the meter mostly just contributes to StarDrive 2's gravitational pull towards war. There's also a limiting 'tolerance' meter that hints at a xenophobic civilian population weighing the deal behind the scenes. That, in turn, plays out via a now-overly familiar interface, wherein resources and policies are given a unifying currency and exchanged between two empires at something resembling a fair rate. Researching one cordons off the other two, so the best way to snag them is through trade. Technological advancements are divided into mutually exclusive sets of three and are often differentiated by whether they provide an immediate benefit or one that scales better over a longer period of time. These enemies can be held off for a time via diplomacy. Opposing empires take their borders to your doorstep if you're not quick.

The best ones go quick-opposing empires in StarDrive 2 gobble up territory, and they're not shy about claim jumping either. Exploratory fleets can be sent across the universe with a click, revealing new planets of varying hospitality to colonize. But whether you listen to the introductions or not, it behooves you to immediately start spreading out across the star map from whatever randomized homeworld you've been deposited on. 'Peerless Starfighters' might sound like a must-have bonus, but can you stomach the 'Repulsive' or 'Corrupt' negative trait you'll have to equip to zero out the ledgers? And then there are the races themselves: an eclectic bunch that includes Cthulhu-likes, an ursine shogunate, and a narcissistic collection of pods that speak through the hijacked brains of alien owls.Īs if to further signal that you're not supposed to take the ensuing intragalactic war too seriously, there's a color commentary robot that periodically interjects to introduce the competing races in a segment called-wait for it-'racial profiling.' And as if to signal that this is a terrible idea for a feature, there's also an option to turn it off. The system, like many others in the game, is cribbed directly from Master of Orion, but it remains rousing and balanced. StarDrive 2 offers the selection of a space-faring race-always a good time, unless you pick Human-and, if you want, a complete overhauling of its prepackaged traits. Planets are key to out-producing the enemy, but they can be arduous to develop and defend.īut 4X games always begin full of promise, at least. And yet, when it's time to take stock, StarDrive 2 finds itself firmly in the middle. And if the same goes for the crowded, largely homogenous genre they belong to, where does that leave an entry like StarDrive 2? For the most part, the game seems to be a proper execution of its developer's vision it's worked its way up its chosen tech trees, so to speak, arriving as a sci-fi empire builder in the grand tradition. They're 'games' in the same way that the game of thrones is a game: you win or you die, and the middle ground is really just another burial tract. The thing is, 4X games don't have much patience for an also-ran. It's only when I come out of my daze a few scaled eras later that I often find myself long surpassed by opposing empires, the graphs telling a story of steady mediocrity since, oh, sometime in the Middle Ages when production took a brief turn towards the slightly sub-optimal. Mistakes amount to small hang-ups in the otherwise effortless forward momentum of upgrades and technological developments, lost in the spaces between ascending data points on one of the genre's ubiquitous end-of-game line graphs. When that contented sort of complacency sets in, I'm more easily coaxed into 'just one more turn.' These empire-building games make it easier still because they tend to defer the consequences of poor moves. A good 4X strategy game is a bit like a slow-burning fire-something to be stoked every now and again with a click of the mouse and watched through half-lidded eyes into the late hours.

Stardrive 2 early game