There’s a bumper crop of great space games coming out all of a sudden: Nexus 5X launched last month, and Homeworld 3 is on the horizon. Sins of a Solar Empire 2 is one of the most ambitious, with a scale that includes galactic-level strategy as well as real-time tactical fleet battles. The best part is that it’ll be coming out this summer.
Sins of a Solar Empire 2 easily qualifies as both a 4X game and an RTS game, giving players command over one of three powerful, asymmetric factions. It adds some slick new modern features to the series: massive capital ships can be maneuvered to protect vulnerable ships from incoming missiles, planets constantly follow orbital paths, and new minor factions can be found and befriended (or eliminated) throughout the galaxy.
Sins of a Solar Empire 2 is also great in multiplayer, with room for up to 10 players to go head to head. There’s also a new in-game mod browser, which automatically syncs up your game with any other players who have mods installed.
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion launched in 2012, and has maintained a lively fanbase thanks to its active and prolific modding community, so it’s great to see Stardock making it even easier to find and enable mods in this latest entry in the series.
Stardock hasn’t yet announced a specific Sins of a Solar Empire 2 release date, but we can probably expect it early in the third quarter – in other words, July or August of this year.
Check out our list of great space games to play in the meantime, or have a look at our list of the best Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion mods to transform it into a Star Trek game or a single-player version of EVE Online.
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