Forum Overview :: Reviews :: Haegemonia Gold

[quote name="Mischief Maker"]I decided to give this gog title a spin this weekend. Holy fucking shit! This game came out in 2002??? On one hand it's obviously running on yesterday's graphics technology (apparently current GPUs can't render the specular lighting effects) but from a pure art design standpoint this is the most gorgeous space strategy game I've ever played. Unlike Homeworld or SOTS, the graphics are 80s sci fi movie internally-lit models instead of comic books or anime, and the music has its roots quite firmly in Holst's "The Planets." Even the most dinky little freighter is a beauty to behold at full zoom. How is it I never heard of this game before it hit gog? Well, actually this gold edition makes it perfectly clear: the game was released in an unfinished state, then the developers had the balls to release the missing features as an expansion pack. Haegemonia is a multiple solar system-spanning 4X. The gold edition gives you 2 packages: Legion of Iron, the original game, and the Solon Heritage, the expansion. Legion of Iron is just the single player story campaign/tutorial. The Solon Heritage adds skirmish, multiplayer, and a whole mess of bugfixes and balance adjustments, but running in a separate executable. Since this is a massive 4X running in real time, things move slowly to make the multitasking more manageable. BUT the campaign, being a glorified tutorial, only lets you control a small handful of units and planets at once. The appeal of the visuals wears off pretty quick when you're spending 5 minutes watching a wing of fighters slowly cross the solar system with nothing else to do. I can only imagine what a terrible impression this made at initial release with no skirmish or multiplayer. I wonder if SOTS 2 will suffer a similar fate as Haegemonia? In the meantime, I can't say whether the Solon Heritage's balance will pass the Fabio test, but if you've got an aging machine and want to see it render something beautiful, I give it a highly recommended on Fussbett's Fable scale.[/quote]