One of the best games of last year and the best 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate) game since the original Master of Orion, finally has its first expansion. It is not a full expansion like most games see but a micro-expansion of sorts with a great price (.30 at the time of this review based on exchange rates of .95 USD) and some important additions to the original game. If you are curious about the first game and how we reviewed it you can see the review here.

This micro-expansion fixed a few issues players had with the game and made it friendlier for the type of 4X and RTS gamer that I am. I am a defensive gamer at heart and love to build up my base and make it fully secure before I head out and conquer. This is a slower gameplay choice of course and in the original Sins of a Solar Empire it made it difficult to be a defensive gamer because much of the base defensive units were nearly useless. But Entrenchment is all about defense and that is all right for me because it fixed some major issues I had.


Weapon platforms now can be set up to launch missiles, have longer range and are generally much more effective than they were pre-Entrenchment. Hangers are much better defended now with the addition of flak cannons so they will not be cannon fodder as it were. You can add minefields, star base upgrades and more secondary defensive options which is part of the new defense research tree.

The AI (Artificial Intelligence) in the original Sins of a Solar Empire was laughable at times and once you learned how to beat it you would almost always would walk all over the enemy AI at every turn. It is obvious that the developers have tweaked the games AI engine because it is not as stupid and certainly nothing that you can walk over exactly the same way each and every time.


Stations are extremely important in Entrenchment and they are so important and costly you can only have one per sector. You can customize them to do almost anything you want from trade and repair platforms to full on Battlestations or a mixture of whatever you need them to do. In multiplayer if you are going to be successful you will need to know how to use these stations and how to combat them and it is not an easy thing to do.

Luckily there are special cruisers which are designed to defeat the new defensive structures so players can not just sit back and be happy behind a wall of stations, mines and guns. I have tried and a good player with these anti-defensive structure cruisers can make your life hell so you must be defensive and offensive in Entrenchment.


Mods are a huge important aspect to Sins of a Solar Empire and there are some new modding capabilities with the game. These changes include using multiple mods together in the game, using cosmetic mods without needing to send them to the other player (THANK YOU!) and it really shows that the developers sat down and read their forums and listened to their fans because the changes to the mod features is fantastic.

Amazingly the great graphics in the original have gotten better, faster, and cleaner and they keep on impressing even after several weeks of playing the game. While the updated graphics is actually not a selling feature for me I can imagine that some gamers will want to see the games graphics keep improving as the game is updated.

So for around 10.00 (USD) you will get an impressive expansion to one of the best games of last year and if the future expansions are just as impressive as this one fans of Sins of a Solar Empire are in for some great gaming goodness.


Bottom Line – Buy it… worth every penny

Overall Score of 9 / 10

Pros

+ makes the original game much better
+ new graphics, AI, units, etc are great
+ new mod capabilities are fantastic
+ developers who actually listen to their fans… 5th sign of the apocalypse?

Cons

- nothing