Sins of a Solar Empire 2 review

What is it? A 4X-RTS hybrid full of massive space battles. 

Release date August 15, 2024

Developer Ironclad Games

Publisher Stardock Entertainment

Reviewed on RTX 4090, Intel i9-13900k, 32GB RAM

Steam Deck Unsupported

Link Official site

Sins of a Solar Empire 2's journey to launch has been an extremely confusing one. It technically left early access on the Epic Games Store (very quietly) a while ago, but that 1.0 version was actually missing some big things, like the final faction, and in sore need of polish. Now it's finally arrived on Steam, though, and I have some good news: it's brilliant. 

The original Sins and its beefy expansions pretty much nailed the cosmic combination of RTS and 4X, impressively marrying the two disparate genres in a way that maintained the excitement of real-time space battles and the measured pace of the kind of empire-building typically relegated to turn-based games. With so little left on the table you could be forgiven for thinking that this is not especially fertile ground for a sequel, but Ironclad has found plenty of ways to justify Sins 2. 

The dynamism inherent in each map is the headline attraction this time. Sins 2's solar systems are not static maps. Planets and asteroids—collectively referred to as gravity wells, the territory in which all the game's action takes place—now move along predetermined paths. The impact of these celestial mechanics depends on the configuration and size of the map—but if you don't pay attention to the movement of the heavens, you're just inviting marauding aliens into your backyard. 

In my first game, the solar system started off as an orderly chain. Each faction began surrounded by its own lattice of gravity wells waiting to be colonised and exploited, and each lattice was connected to another by a single phase lane. This allowed us all to focus on our own local area, knowing that our rivals only had one route into our part of the solar system. And for a long time there was an uneasy and