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| From: Navarre
List Price: $19.99
Buy New: $11.29
You Save: $8.70 (44%)
New (9) Used (1) from $10.50
Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 4105
Format: Cd-rom
Platforms: Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows Xp, Windows 98
Genre: Role Playing Games
ESRB: Everyone
Media: CD-ROM
Batteries Included: No
Age: 5 - 20 years
Operating System: Windows 2000
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 0 x 0.1 x 0.1
Legal Disclaimer: Warranty does not cover misuse of product.
MPN: 627006902109
Model: 6-27006-90210-9
UPC: 627006902109
EAN: 0627006902109
ASIN: B000G1G9ZS
Release Date: October 17, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 15
 Not ready for the bright lights just yet November 4, 2006
Coldtony
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
I'm a long time SE4 player and have been waiting for this to come out for a year now. I should have kept waiting. Like previous releases in the series the game has some show-stopping bugs, some of which were addressed in the first post-release patch (though the patch seemed to introduce AI bugs), but these shouldn't be a problem in a few months time (by which time the price will have dropped anyway!)
Unfortunately the game has gone in directions that I no longer enjoy so despite my confidence that the game will eventually be playable, it won't be playable in a way I'm going to get a kick out of.
The realtime 3D combat is nasty. I understand that shuffling 2D tiles around a board is very 20th century and everyone is moving to 3D but 2D tiles can look pretty darn good whereas one guy (Aaron Hall, the man behind the Space Empires games) coding a game on his own is doing a great job to turn out a 3D system at all but it's not something you're going to show off to anyone. The 3D extends to the map screens so now you can't even see your ships or planets anymore because everything is obscured with floating flags. The UI is pretty customizable and you can even go for a 2D only view but none of it is as clear as the plain old 2D view from SE4. There's word this may be put back into the game so reserve judgement on that.
Six months or a year from now there will probably be half a dozen mods out and most of the problems will have been sorted out. Hopefully.
 One of the best 4x games ever November 1, 2006
R. Williams (PNW)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
The wait has been long but finally it is here. Space Empires V has been in development for over two years and finally Aaron Hall, the sole developer for this game, and SFI have released it.
While version 1.0 does have many bugs, the game overall has continued, via support and updates, to improve dramatically since it release. One thing is for certain; Aaron Hall loves to support his games.
SE V is an empire building game of epic proportions. As a player you set up your empire and choose racial traits, flag and ship designs, racial portrait, and general game settings. You can choose from a low-tech start to a high tech start depending upon your desires. I have found that the low tech start is perfect for me as I enjoy the time it takes to research new technologies, and man does this game ever deliver on those, over a 1,000 technologies to research. I especially enjoy designing my own ships, fighters, bases, weapons platforms, drones, and satellites. You even get to design carriers, and troops. The 3D combat is a true blessing as it gives the game a depth that hasn't been present before. The ground tactical combat is a bit dated looking but still loads of fun. Remember people play these kinds of games not for the eye candy but for the depth of game play and boy does SE V ever deliver in that regard.
While there is too much to go into as far as this game is concerned, know one thing for certain, this is on highly addictive master peace and it will suck up your free time like a black hole does light and matter.
The game is also extremely moddable. One of the best features of the game in my opinion is that any one with note pad can edit, modify, and alter the settings of this game. It is no surprise that the modding community for SE IV kept that game alive for over six years and it is to be expected that the same will be true for SE V.
Remember this game is not for people who are out to play games like Empires At War or GalCiv. This game is for a much more serious gamer who enjoys game play well over eye candy. A player who wants depth in their games and a real sense of role-play. This game will above all else delivers in the sense that it makes you truly feel as if you are actually an emperor controlling your own expansive galactic empire. A true gem in the rough that just keeps getting better and better.
For the price this game is a steal given the amount of time one will spend playing it over the years. SE IV has been played for over six years and is still a top-notch game. The same will be true for Space Empires V. Enjoy.
 Boring February 26, 2007
N. Perz (St. Louis)
5 out of 12 found this review helpful
While the overall design is nice, the game moves much too slowly to be enjoyable. The micro-management is considerable and the fleet/ground combats are disappointing. Combat is, ultimatly, the driving force of the game but the player mostly just watches. You get more input in designing the ships than you do using them.
The technology and diplomacy aspects seem to work fairly well.
It's a decent design but just not very much fun.
Not recommended.
Does everything you might want, most of it poorly December 29, 2007
Jodawi (Seattle, WA USA)
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
First off, I played it for several days, so it's good enough to buy and play. So the following complaints are more along the lines of "what to do better next time".
The interface leaves much to be desired. I had to play a few games before I even knew what effects initial set-up would result in.
There's annoying things like tiny gas giants with no atmosphere - uhhh... tiny giants with a gas non-atmosphere. Okeedokie.
The AI is mostly not there. I put it on the hardest setting with the most bonuses to the AI players, and still wipe them out by just doing tons of research first. Declare war on the entire galaxy, and its mostly the same as if I hadn't.
Micromanaging is fun for a few instances per turn. Unfortunately, after you have 100 colonies, it gets very un-fun. To save your sanity you'll probably need to turn on the global AI manager, but it will still interrupt you with stupid things that it should be doing, and worse it will ruin your empire by doing things like building ships like mad, until you have a massive resource deficit and it has to start abandoning tons of ships and stopping production on all planets.
The graphics could be a lot cooler. Mostly what you see is not your ships, or your beautiful planets, but instead a bunch of flag icons over an ugly hex grid. And if you turn planet names on, it turns into a giant mess. Yes you can turn names off, and icons, and the hex grid, but you lose progressively more functionality. Things could have been made to coexist better.
Space battles can be very annoying - you can speed them up, but only so much. Frequently, both parties are non-fighters who just try to escape the other, so it's a complete non-battle, but you have to sit there and watch as they slowly flee each other and the counter slowly counts. There's no option to skip the battle.
It's easier to adapt to a completely different planet type, such as gas giant vs rocky, than it is to adapt to a different atmosphere, such as hydrogen vs oxygen.
The AI ship control seems to be completely random. I was in a war when I turned it on, and had several ships near enemy planets. When I checked back later, they were all gone. I cycled through "fleets", and found most of them empty of all ships, making me wonder what exactly a fleet was. Troop transports were made, never invaded any planets (I still don't know how, and the annoyance factor of creating troops, loading them, and experimenting to determine how to not decimate the planet before invading, led to me abandoning that aspect of the game).
The other AI players rarely initiate any hostilities, although according to the game anyone without a peace treaty automatically tries to murder any ships encountered, but that doesn't seem to keep the two races from feeling happy with each other.
Turn ending eats up major amounts of time. First all of the other civilizations do their thing, and then you have to watch all of your ship flag icons fly around. You can increase the speed via one of the several confusing speed settings, but it still takes a long time.
If you research more than one level of a technology per turn, instead of it telling you the final result, it gives a status report for each increase. Go up 10 levels, and you might have 40+ things to scroll through as each weapon or whatever improves a level.
Most researched weapons are useless, as things seem to be more about absolute power and not about balanced strengths and weaknesses. There's no easy way to pick things to research more to bring them up to equivalent strength.
Etc.
Basically, it needs huge amounts of playtesting, vastly improved AI, more balance all over the place, dramatic interface improvements, scalability, and a more interesting visual experience.
What a breath of fresh air Space Empires V is March 8, 2007
Martin Waterhouse (San Ramon, Ca)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
SE V is one of those rare games where once you have grasped the basics then you start to peel back the layers before you know it's 3 am!! Think of it as Civilization in space. Except that it uses a tech-tree that's an order of magnitude larger, much more devious AI (that doesn't cheat) and a phenominal socio-political model that really challenges the player.
The graphics and menus are not as polished as current uber-titles like Company of Heroes, Supreme Commander or Battlefield 2042 so an uber graphics card is not required, however this game can really use a fast CPU to manage all the AI player resolution activity.
Thus if you are only looking for eye-candy and a short quick action-packed visual game - give SE V a miss. But if you really want the ultimate thinking grand space-opera strategy game - this is the only one you'll ever need!!!
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