Stars! (1996)
Genres:Strategy
Themes:4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate)
Story:Stars! is a turn-based strategy, science fiction 4X game.
Vote to bring this game to GOG and help preserve it.101
Easy to learn, hard to master, big and open enough that 100s of different strategies, tactics, and play styles have been created over the years. Xplore, Xpand, Xploit, Xterminate!
Trailblazing Tutorial mode, extensive tech tree, ample freedom for race and ship design, smart enough AI players to make solo play a challenge.
But multiplayer sets apart the toughest strategists from mere dictators in scenarios where less than 500 worlds to master is considered "small". Diplomacy, management, trade, stealth, dirty tricks, tons of shiny ships turned to smithereens. You could lose 100+ big battles, turnaround and win 200+ more before defeating the last enemy.
Shout "Packet!" in a room full of gamers, and Stars! veterans cannot help but shiver. P-}
Played back in the 90's, never found anything else that comes close to the depth and breadth of detail available in this game. As far as I'm concerned this is THE 4X game, all others just don't make the cut. It was possible to automate many aspects of play or micromanage aspects beyond the wildest dreams of the most insane control freak. And yes "Packet!" does still make me shiver.
For me, this game defined "grand strategy." I never actually finished a playthrough! I kept one universe going for about 18 months and then other games took my attention. I recall there being an option to print-out the game map for strategizing purposes--on dot matrix, of course! The map of one game must have totaled something like 80 or so pages and--when taped together--covered the dining room table. I remember using a compass to draw "spheres" of control around my hub planets and then drawing ruler-straight lines to trace the resource packet lines. It was so much fun creating warships to battle specific races and how your tactics had to (HAD TO) adapt to what the AI was constantly throwing at you. I have never found its like for satisfying the college-age gaming obsession I had for this game! This is truly the gold-standard against which I have compared EVERY SINGLE 4X game I have played in the last three-and-a-half decades. They just don't make games designed to played for months and months like this anymore.
Oh my gosh I spent soooo many hours of my childhood playing this game. A true masterpiece in the 4X genre. This game had it all. Virtually infinite replayability. There was a sequel in the works that never got released :-(. Having the original on GOG would be so clutch.
I loved the flexibility and customization options for the startup settings - you could make anything possible, gas giant floaters immune to gravity and radiation conditions and a very lopsided range for temperature, and then swallow up a lot of uncontested planets keeping your head down. Or go the super breeder way, spending most of the rest of the game balancing out the immense growth from your home and early found superbreeder planets. If any game could capture the feel of Iain Banks space opera, this is it. Also, loved the alien merchant speeding through.
When you suddenly realize that the enemy AI has mass-driver technology and you don't. When the consequences of that fact are that you cannot capture mass-driver packets. And when the AI starts sending those packets as ballistic weapons instead of their fleets (which you can easily decimate). And when you start having a dedicated hyper-fast, hyper-large transport fleet just to capture rogue mass packets sent from enemy plantes spotted by the advance scouts...
That is when you know you're playing a true 4X game.
I had an old copy of this game and I absolute loved to play this. A game could take weeks to finish playing several hours a day. What differ this game to other 4x games these days it that there is no story, no music and I can't remember any tutorial. Just a sandbox, of the size you choose. You set up your species or spend some points to make your own, then you are just thrown in. Micromanagement to the core AND IT'S HEAVEN. I still remember one of my first game where four of my largest planets was bombed to smithereens by an enormous enemy fleet and I was thrown away to one of my backwater planets where I rebuilt me forces and took out me revenge on the aggressor and the rest of the universe. A brilliant game that was.
I remember games that lasted several months in which my greatest strength was diplomacy (conducted outside of the game), because unfortunately, despite my love of strategy games, I've never been good at them - I've always struggled to micromanage perfectly. :) Stars! I'll remember for the rest of my life, I hope it drops on GOG also in macOS version.... :)
Played this with my dad and brother...it's a delightfully complex game, while being quite easy to get started in. Great strategy game, fun to design your own ships. A bit like Master of Orion, but better.
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