Why I buy this one ?
- Play as the Humans, insect-like Hivers, reptilian Tarkas & enigmatic Liir
- Travel to 40 stars in a spherical galaxy, with unlimited turn gameplay
- Unique, random technology tree helps pave the road to galactic domination

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What our customer's say!

"Great Game.", Sword of the Stars is a great game, it can take a while to get into it but well worth it. If you buy sots I highly recommend you get born of blood also or the CE edition if you can find it.

Unlike most games such as sins of a solar empire where every game almost always ends with same tactics, No sots game is ever really the same, random tech tree's, random events etc.

Also unlike alot of games you can logon to xfire and chat with the devs post on forums and they will respond.

Don't trust this review though go to the site and download the CE demo, give it a try you won't regret it.



"Macro Management fun!", After playing for quite a while I have found that this game is very entertaining and is hugely replayable. While the 3D star map does take some getting used to, the simple tech tree and simplified system development controls free the player to think about strategy, instead of micromanaging every single colony.

It reminds of Master of Orion, rather than Master of Orion II or III. Real time combat is exciting and more involved than just the rock / paper / scissors approach so many RTS games use. Each tech has multiple counters and there are no ultimate technologies that lead to instant galactic domination. Your early ships are never really obsolete and can compete even in the late game stages (albeit, not very effectively. Still, they can slow an enemy advance or thin out the enemy fleet to allow your main force an easier combat) which says volumes for thought the developers put into the technology tree.

The game itself is set in the earliest stages of galactic exploration and conquest. Each race begins without any real contact with the others, and default to a hostile reaction. Your ships are very small, ~30m for destroyers, ~90m for cruisers and around 270m for dreadnoughts. For size comparisons think about a WWII German U-Boat for Destroyers, Firefly's Serenity for a Cruiser and a modern aircraft carrier for Dreadnoughts.

This games most standout feature, however is the use of momentum physics in its real time combat. Ships have to fight inertia when maneuvering, which can lead to some interesting, even disastrous combat situations with collisions and radical evasive maneuvers. The graphics in combat are superb considering the low end system requirements and the developers active participation on their game forum is truly remarkable. Their constant attention to fan input and their efforts to improve their product are constantly making this game better and more fun to play.

I would recommend this game to fan of the 4x genre.

"No Middle Ground, You'll Love It or Hate it", I have listened and read quite a few reviews on this game. Here is what it comes down to in simple terms: If you like a game that gets in to specifics, quantities even going out two or three decimals, fine details in building a civilization - you will not like this game. If you don't enjoy working with 3D interfaces - you will not like this game. And, I don't care what the box says in specs, if you don't have 2 GB RAM, L2 Cache, and 256 video card - your computer will not like this game.

The folks who do like it enjoy the colorful and intense battle scenes. Oh yeah, lasers, phasers, EM pulses, graviton, positron, and-kind of right on weapons being exchanged by the combatants. They like simplicity in their battle interface. They like simplicity in their scientific progress interface. They aren't into heavy diplomacy sessions, or overly intense economic readings. It's simply a fun game, with some strategy and some arcade play, that demands a lot of memory (good luck if you have an older system to get beyond 30 star systems, the stronger ones get taxed at 75 star systems in terms of processing).

There you go...that's it. If you know what you like, and you know what this delivers, go for it. If it doesn't fit your bill, don't buy it, or cry over it. You get what you pay for in the long run.


"Sword of the Restart", Bad programming execution. Game requires a patches to play, but I could never get it to work on my desktop. (Could never see graphics of ships.) It's not a good sign when there are three patches released within a year of release.

After installing on my laptop and patching to the latest version. I got the game to work until about turn 100+. Then the graphics lockup in the ship build screen and require a complete restart to get graphics back. Basically, in the end-game, you can only play 1 - 3 turns between restarts.

In general, this game is Reach for the Stars with bad graphics. Imperium Galactica II was much more enjoyable.

"Unplayable without patch, then 3-stars", "Sword of the Stars" computer game is completely unplayable out-of-the-box. With a good internet connection and plenty of computer savy, a patch can be installed that makes the game playable -- okay / 3-stars but not great. This game is a "take over the galexy" strategy game similar to Masters of Orion. With the patch, the remaining faults are: (1) 3-D map is confusing and cumbersome, resulting in space ships and planets that simply cannot be found and (alas) making larger games pretty much unplayable; (2) inadequate documentation; (3) ambiguous tech (e.g., "increases missle damage" but doesn't say by how much); (4) no feedback during battle on damage to ships; (5) ships during battle typically do their own thing, with only limited user controls, which makes your tactics pretty much irrelevant. The user interface is easy to use and learn (if you have the patch), as advertised; and the plot ideas / goals are kind of fun. The problems are annoying enough, though, that this game simply doesn't have staying power. Few FAQs and Walkthroughs exist, and so cannot provide support to make up for the game's inadequecies.

Read this reviews before You buy...

"Version 1.1.1 patch review", 4x space strategy games are my favorite type of computer game. It has been many years since I have found one that was any good. (The last one that was any good was Masters of Orion II). The folks at Kerberos have really done a good job with Sword of the Stars.

After playing the game only once I looked to see if there were any updates or patches available. [...]

The one game I played without the update, I found the interface to be a little bit clunky and awkward. It was especially difficult to manage my fleet in combat. For example, while focusing on one of your ships during a battle it could be difficult to find your other ships. After the patch you can simply tab through your ships with the TAB and SHIFT+TAB keys. This is just one of dozens of things that were fixed/added in the patch. Virtually everything in the patch addressed and fixed issues with the user interface. After I added the patch the usability, as well as my lever of fun, was greatly increased.

What I liked:
After getting a colony started it requires very little maintenance. Other than building the latest defense satellites the colonies actually require zero upkeep. This frees up time to build your fleets to explore and exterminate.

The combat is done well. I'm running the game on a blazingly fast computer so I have not experienced the lag in loading the combat others complain about. At first I didn't think I would like real time combat, and it does take some getting used to. The nice thing is you can micromanage your fleet and try to control each individual ship, or put some on auto and just control a few.

Each race is truly unique and different form the others. A strategy that works well for one race will not work for the others. The biggest difference between the races is there mode of star travel.

The technology tree is unique and different every game. Even if you play the same race every time your technology tree will be distinctive each game. The random tech tree was a nice touch.

What I don't like:
The diplomacy is nearly nonexistent. Your relation with other empires simply has three states: hostile, non-aggression, and alliance. The hostile and non-aggression states are pretty straight forward. The alliance state plainly doesn't have enough benefit for being in the alliance.

There is only one planet per system. I would have liked to see multiple planets per system, even the potential to have 1 to 3 would have been better. Also the planet maintenance is just a little too simplistic. For example, it would have been nice if there were some way to designate a world as a science colony or industry world.

Overall it's a great game I highly recommend for many hours of fun.

"Sword of the Stars", This game is very fun after you get used to the unique interface. The 3-D approach adds a lot to the game, even though it takes a little practice to be good using it.

"sword of the Stars", 4x strategy games are my favorite genre and after reading the reviews of the game I was really looking forward to playing a game that sounded like a cross between Master of Orion and Homeworld. Sadly the 3-D map was so cumbersome to use I couldn't figure out where my ships were. The tech tree was almost as mystifying and it was totally unclear what the advantage of one advance was to another. The space battles were similarly disappointing. After playing for a couple of hours I got so bored I went back to GALCIV II. This is a genre that has really been neglected by the game industry. Hopefully Space Empires V will succeed were this game failed.

"Amazing new take on empire-building", Sword of the Stars is an incredibly well done twist on the 4X genre. It features a very clean and intuitive user interface that lets you manage your empire quickly and easily, and keeps the game moving. While the turn-based portion of the game isn't as deep or involved as other empire building games, it more than makes up for it with the RTS battle portion. The space battles that occur when your fleets encounter the enemy are somewhat reminiscent of Empire at War, but with more tactical variation that keeps it interesting. The dynamic tech tree keeps each game feeling unique, and with four races to learn, there is a great deal of replay value.

The only downsides are poor LAN support (I was unable to play it over a university network, but the internet play worked just fine), and a slighltly long load time for RTS battles. Make sure you have a decent graphics card to keep the loading time down.

Overall, a great game and a must-have for 4X fans.

"Disappointed", I love Space 4X games: Pax Imperium, Spaceward Ho, Gal Civ and the first two MOOs. This one ranks with MOOIII- a promising idea very poorly executed with a number of unforgivables.

The Good- I like the cell shaded art, the 3-D universe is adequate, the tech tree is uniquely represented.

The Bad: Combat is atrocious. Either you have to let the computer fight it out (Inefficiently=Major losses) or wait for VERY long load times for player controlled combat to begin (Yes I have the recommended system requirements)

Once in Player controlled combat, you can't see what you need to see to make decent decisions. As a whole the experience is miserable. Nothing redeeming about it. Fleet management is mediocre- specialty ships without guidance on how they work together. Does a shield ship make a shield for the entire fleet or only for itself?

The manual: The makers of the game should be ashamed for putting this thing out. Poorly written (The Auto-Refuel button should not be confused with the auto-refuel button on the refuel menu- huh?), information poor and just plain bad. Weapons characteristics? Development trees? ANYTHING except icon ID?

Then I thought well they did give an SOTS appendix in a PDF on the disk, its likely all there! Wrong! It's back-story, but no useful operational information.

Hmmmm- The Website! The website will HAVE to have some sort of information about how to play the game. Wrong. Tutorial mode? Lame.

Guys this is just ridiculous.

Lastly, the voice acting! Sit yourselves down- Simple rule of thumb-

STAFF SHOULD NOT DOUBLE AS VOICE ACTORS!

The fake accents are exceptionally irritating and I could not find an off switch for the VOs except to turn down the volume on my computer. I don't know if they were saving money or having fun but wow is it bad.

No scalable graphics.

Ok I'm done. I'm heading back to the Dread Lords

There is a lot of potential in this game, but the overall execution is pretty poor. I WANT to like this game but I think these past 20 hours will be my only 20 hours with this game.

This game can be and should be fixed.