A Brief Commentary On… the best-worst game ever: Space Empires V

A Brief Commentary on… the worst-best game ever: Space Empires V.

Long before Stellaris was released, I had another sci-fi 4X game that I spent hours on - and it was Strategy First’s Space Empires V. The game was remarkable for it’s complexity, with massively in-depth empire customization, a huge tech tree, ship designing, and awesome real-time battles. Players could play as space bugs with more mineral production, as humans with increased research speed, or even as a timelord-type civilization that starts with exclusive access to time-manipulation technology. When creating an empire, there was nearly unlimited options! The tech tree gave players further options, with players having the ability to focus their efforts on techs that produce shields, armor, new hull types, weapons, or just better imperial infrastructure. Once these techs are produced, the player is then allowed to design their own ships that exploit these techs, and once that is done, they can throw them into combat and watch how their ships perform.

The problem with Space Empires V, however, is that it was really, really broken. The game was stupidly buggy, and crashed frequently. The tech was cool, but usually poorly balanced. (I remember one tech that gave access to a weapon that ignored 100% of armor AND shields on it’s target) The political system was awesome, but the AI was too dumb to use it well. For instance, a small empire once let my buy its last planet for a lump sum of minerals. The best experience the game can offer is probably to be had with friends instead of AI, and with a few balancing mods. Oh, and with lots of backup saves.

Aside from that though, the game is great. I’d pay a few cents to pick it up again.