Imperium Galatica II - Games - http://maxpages.com/strategyforum/Imperium_Galatica

OVERALL: 82%

Have you ever stood on a hillside on a clear, cold winter's night: gazed up at the majesty of the stars above and thought to yourself, "I bet I could have them in a fight." Well, now's your chance to prove it - Imperium Galactica II is here to let you bloody the nose of your galactic neighbours. And all in glorious technicolour.

You choose from three races in the single-player game - the Solarians, who are the Human race, the Shinari, who are adept traders and negotiators, and the Kra'hen, who are the warlike race because they've got an apostrophe in the middle of their name. You can choose from several scenarios or dive straight into the campaign mode.

The graphics of the game are superb. The main screen is the star-map and it's as nice to look at as it is easy to navigate. To move units use a right-mouse click and you can set waypoints for patrols with ease. All the sub-menus are equally easy to understand. When you drop to planet views to look in on your colonies you're treated to the full 360 degree 3D-orama vision, a facility also utilised on the space combat screen where you can view from an immense distance away or zoom in to watch individual ships duel.

Progress is made by expansion - bigger population equals more taxes, which buys money for research and colony buildings. The key to success is maintaining a high tax rate while keeping up morale - low morale, low population growth.

Once you've colonised a few systems you're going to need a fleet to protect them. There's a wide range of ships - destroyers, corvettes, fighters and unique designs you can get your hands on as well as ground installations to fend off would-be attackers.

Research is broken down into four categories - buildings, spaceships, tanks and the special category, which is a catch-all for the odds and ends you come across during the game. As is the norm, you have to research lower-end items to get to the better stuff and you need an increased number of research facilities specific to the type of improvement you want to make. You research objects instead of concepts - bombs instead of theories.

There's an underlying plot thread running through the game. This develops slowly in the early stages to give you the chance to get up and running before kicking into high gear. The human race, for instance, has a group called the Brotherhood of Tears - a political pressure group that's a constant pain in the neck. A nice touch is the addition of little sub-missions that crop up. You might get a planet becoming tectonically unstable and you'll have to kidnap an opposing scientist to get him to fix the problem for you.

Combat is the weakest part of the game. Fighting space battles is reduced to the time-honoured method of setting all your ships on their vessels one at a time, despite formation options. Ground assaults are limited to tanks. You can modify them and add all manner of special weapons but at the end of the day it's all tanks - no air battles, no sea battles, and no assault vehicles to take advantage of the terrain.

Even so, it looks good and for the most part it plays just as well. If you're a hardened strategy lover and you like your games to be deep enough to drown in, then this isn't for you. It's a shallower affair than, say, Masters Of Orion 2 or Alpha Centauri. That said, if you want a game you can pick up quickly, then this would be a very good option.

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