G4 X-Play Video Review

Why cant people understand you're supposed to make your own campaign..and play it the way you want to0oo?

I agree, gamespot actually got it right tho, in their negatives column they didn't put no campaign and he only made it as a very small complaint. Of course it is expected xplay not to understand

Yeah, the lack of a campaign doesnt phase me at all. In games like civ or galciv2 that have campaigns, I never even touch them. I prefer to role play my games including RTS's and I find it more fun to make up my own story. The other thing is, with the upcoming editor, people should be able to make their own campaigns. I'd rather have an excellent base game and be able to add my own custom specific stuff later then have an excellent campaign, but lacking overall.

The game CnC3 was ok while the campaign lasted, but the gameplay itself became extremely boring when there was no campaign left. SoaSE is a nice refreshing change from the "EA" mentality of a quick, fun for 3 hours then forget about it type of game.

actually i would really enjoy a well done story filled campaign. i love the atmosphere and the story more than anything in games, but i'd rather have it as is than not at all.

add in the fact that i'v heard a campaign will come in the future i am completely satisfied. even if there was no campaign coming i would still be very happy with this game

I love how they took the review from a more piraty side.

'Craftier than a box of macaroni'... I lol'd

Cool! X-play should really help boost sales.

not having a campaign is better. I can carry out the story of the game in my own way. If they included a story, it would be, probably, almost identical to starcraft. The TEC would probably ally itself with the advent and go fight the vasari and their problems. where else could they go that wouldnt be complete and utter cliche? The way i see it, the lack of a single player campaign was a very, very good choice. This way i can go about playing in my way. It's like having a sandbox universe to play with. And where would the pirates fit in to a formal, story driven campaign? lol. And the thought of individual levels in Sin of a Solar Empire gives me shivers...having to re-optimize all of those trade routs...yuck. The way the game is makes me happy. It really is the HUGE, EPIC, MONTH PER GAME strategy pc game i have been waiting for. (now just do something similar with the 'total war' series and my girlfriend will have some serious competition for my time, lol)

What are you talking about? You could carry on your own way if there was a campaign mode included. If they included a campaign, that doesnt mean all of a sudden the non-story singleplayer game dissappears. It's just an extra mode.

What's even better, beyond the excellent reviews this game is having, is the incredible potential to rise to new heights!

As it happens, I actually agree with you on that. Not that I have a problem with Ironclad's decision to leave out the campaign for now (I personally don't feel it's necessary), but I do understand why people would want one.

That said, I don't think it's worth dinging the game a whole star for it. Most 4x games don't even have a campaign (the GalCiv series being one of the few exeptions that do), just the sandbox mode. So why Sins should be expected to have a campaign -- when few of its brethren do -- is beyond me. It feels like a double standard.  :NOTSURE: 

The whole comment about being up at 5:30 am...that was me when I first played.
I say I was rather "oh?" when I saw no campaign, and not that it hugely subtracts from the game, I would of loved to see one though Due to the sheer size of it at times, especially large maps, its practically a campaign to itself.

Not having a campaign shouldn't give give this game any lower of a score, it's frustrating when gamne's reviewers seem to believe that all RTS's REQUIRE a singleplayer campaign, i can guarantee that most people wont' even play the campaign these days as multi-player is far superior these days than it was 10 years ago when we had the likes of C&C etc

As much as I agree that not having a campaign isn't a game breaker I would love to see something like this added to the game.
Personally I would also love to see some more cinematics to give me more of a feeling of the races beyond having to read a long background story text in the manual. Think how much of an effect the Homeworld cinematics and story had on your feeling of scale and importance of what you are doing, imagine homeworld as just the skirmishes without the cinematics and story driven campaign. I 100% agree the best fun can be found designing your own skirmishes but there's still a lot could be added to make the experience even more fun. We always have the modding tools to do that ofcourse.

It's interesting to me that most reviews complain about the lack of a campaign, when I've always found RTS campaigns to be universally terrible in terms of gameplay, and I don't miss one here in the slightest.

However, ironically, I can agree that I'd like to see one - but only because I'd like to know more about the backstory of the universe you've created. Yay, horrible galaxy munching Vasari foe.

But that's in the expansion pack

There is a primary basis for the addition of a "campaign" --- that being a full scale training process that introduces all aspects of a game. Note the word "introduces". I personally am an avid single player as most of the people in this string appear to be. But, to get a real feel and all around understanding of a game, a single player campaign module is heads above wondering "what does this button do?" and getting your a.. kicked in 5 rounds or less for the x number of times.

CinC's fault was the extent of the campaigns. Sure there was a user friendly mapping process, but when your the one that created the map and was also the same person playing it, the game became boring going against the same predictable AI.... after a while it leaves you with the only goal of how fast you can get through the game.

I have about 8 hours of game time on Solar Empire so far, and found it to be VERY interesting.

Hilarity, or sadness perhaps, relates to the fact I have about 10 RTS games gathering dust that had a very long Campaign mode. All those games bombed, or they had very small player base :/ All the resources those games poured into the campaigns hehehe. Tons of voice acting, scripts, special maps....

Like what? I wouldn't mind knowing of a few more RTS games.

SoaSE is one of the best games I've played, so I mean no disrespect to the developers, but I'm a bit relieved they didn't try to develop their story through a campaign. If the lore on their website is representative of the level of writing we'd see in a storyline, it would be pretty amateurish and is just as well left out.

Now, if they'd get a professional writer to put something together as the basis of a campaign, that would be a great addition to the game.

Maybe the best thing they could do would be to add more diplomatic and non-combat events to the game, so each match tells its own story, like in the Total War games, ie "the French king was leading an army across the channel to assault an English village where relations had turned sour after a high-ranking diplomat was assassinated while trying to broker trade agreements by leveraging the political clout gained from the wedding of England's heir to a French princess... etc"

better no campaing than galciv2-like one :NOTSURE:

I really love C&C because there is a story behind it and Homeworld 2 was great also.
If it just said GDI defends the Earth from terrorist NOD and Kane with only background story, and plane old skimish gameplay, I would never fell in so deep into C&C and Red Alert series.
Same goes for HW2.

That seems a bit unfair. I think a game should lose a point if a feature is included but done poorly and not for not including an unessential (in terms of game design) feature. It's worth noting in the review, certainly, but knocking off a point because of no campaign seems petty.

Seriously it should be like the SAT..you don't do the question..it's not counted in your score! Makes sense? Yes, but making sense would blow away most of the world.

How Do u play on ur own in the game, like with no enemies only u and planets???

I do have to agree with X-Play with regards to the campaign. I love the game, it's incredibly addicting, but single player skirmishes get a bit repetitive, especially as the AI tends to use the same strategy every time (Get a big fleet, camp out a wormhole, and send a large siege-only fleet to attack me). I loved looking up the backgrounds on the three races before and after the game was released, but I was disappointed to find that those stories were relatively insignificant to the game, other than to say "This is why this race is here." It's kind of a tease to say that the Advent are searching for their lost homeworld and that the Vasari are fleeing from a mysterious force of their own creation which is destroying their entire empire, yet not include these plots in the game! Will the Advent find their homeplanet? Will the Vasari ever discover exactly what creation of theirs is hunting them to extinction? Will the TEC reconcile with it's past sins?

The title of the game is a reference to the sins that each of these races have committed in their past, the TEC's banishment of a foreign culture, the Advent's strange practices and unchecked thirst for vengeance, and the Vasari's oppressive rule over their lost galactic empire, and I was hoping that there'd be a story where each race came to face the sins of their solar empires.

I love the game regardless, just it could've had so much more!