Lost Empire: Immortal

List Price: $19.99 Discount Price: $19.99

Features:

• Explore the vastness of a fully populated macrocosm, teeming with up to 5,000 stars of varying configurations
• Encounter the interstellar communities of 6 playable empires and 28 uniquely evolved minor civilizations
• Conduct research across 11 scientific categories, branching out into 150 individual advances
• Spaceship models consist of 8 classes that conform to a mission type
• 3D-rendered dual-warfare system; multiplayer action for up to 10 players in any 1 game

Customer Reviews:

Unpolished, nothing new [Posted on 2008-03-19]
I recently bought this game because I had a gift card burning a hole in my wallet. Hadn't heard much about it, but had played other Paradox produced games before, was surprised it was only $30 for a new release.

Quickly discovered why, this game was released too soon, it's extremely buggy out of the box. I spent 4 hours trying to resolve crashes before even getting to play my first game. Other bugs I've encountered during the game range from annoyances to major problems (ship building bugs where ships you've spent resources on won't actually be created construction is done). I've only played for a few days, so this is a preliminary review.

The interface is reasonably good, but much of the implementation is non-intuitive. This just don't happen the way you would expect them (for example you need to have all the resources for ship before construction will even start, and they're consumed immediately), the help menus are lacking and the tutorial is rather short.

The graphics themselves, although not a key need for a 4X game, are still outdated compared to other recent 4X games that have been released. There doesn't seem to be very much of a cohesive storyline, I've put quite a few hours in and had relatively little if any plot involvement in the story game.

The galaxy does have a very large scope, with up to 5000 systems, but colonization is also done at a system level, and not by an individual planet level as many other 4X space games, although the up to 28 minor races (which have larger and better roles than others I've played) and 10 major races at once is on the high end.

Planetary construction is extremely simplistic, no choosing what buildings to create, you just choose one of 8 "types" for that system to be, which vary the maximum number of 5 different building types, construction is done automatically given enough resources.

Ship Building is on par with Space Empires IV, there are a number of classes of ship of roughly fixed size which have a number of slots, pretty standard stuff here.

One good new feature is "Leaders" which can develop their skills in 5 areas and then take on one of 10 roles (or spend a turn increasing their skills), based on their role and skill levels they provide empire wide bonuses. This is something that I wish would have been expanded on more.

I haven't made it into much combat, but there is a 3d-rendering engine to show replays of battles that shows potential, but even if this were a great feature I wouldn't think it enough to overcome many of the other shortcomings.

Overall I've played a lot of 4X space building games, Lost Empire: Immortals doesn't bring anything groundbreaking to the table, most features are on par or below par compared to other games released in the last few years. If you're a big fan of 4X, could be an enjoyable game, I would wait awhile for some of the more major bugs to be worked out, but based on my experiences so far, I would consider games like Space Empires IV (4) Gold, Galactic Civilizations II Gold and even back to Imperium Galactica 2: Alliances as better games.

Excellent space strategy! [Posted on 2008-05-05]
If you like games such as Galactic Civilizations 2, Space Empires V, and Sword of the Stars then you must add Lost Empire to your collection! You will love this game! There are alot of things in this game that make it stand on its own. Leaders for example is an awesome idea, how they are implemented. They age and die after time then a new one will be randomly created at some time. The story mode in this game is all non-scripted and the galaxy is randomly generated no matter if you do story mode or custom game. So you can replay the story mode over and over. If you choose so, you can have a 5000 star random galaxy, kid you not! The AI is solid and plays the game well, the interface is easy to get around even when you have a large empire. One of the most addicting strategy games I have ever player. At last, looks like another space strategy classic is born.

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