When comparing Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion vs Age of Empires II HD, the Slant community recommends Age of Empires II HD for most people. In the question“What are the best singleplayer games on Steam?” Age of Empires II HD is ranked 22nd while Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion is ranked 58th. The most important reason people chose Age of Empires II HD is:
While the graphics are slightly outdated, they were very well done for their time. And when combined with the history behind the game and its wonderful soundtrack, the game comes across as extremely polished.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Leisurely real time combat
With the large scale of the game, you can control many fleets in several solar systems, which, on easier difficulties, allows for a leisurely pace to play. This makes the game a worthwhile, relaxing and semi-stress-free strategy title played on a grand scale.
Pro Hard battles
You need a lot of power to win.
Pro Diplomacy used in a smart way
Factions you play against can send you quests that may affect your relationship with others in the match. By taking on these quests, or even downright refusing them, your standing with the respective faction will change, causing a rippling effect that will increase or degrade your relations with others. Thus you must choose whom to aid and who to shun in an effort to create a strong alliance. This diplomatic depth of strategy can greatly change the outcome of a game depending on the strength of your alliance and military, as it is only as strong as your opponent is weak. And there is nothing stopping them from forming an alliance of their own.
Pro Huge, gorgeous battles
Cranked all the way up, the graphics are simply divine.
Pro Awesome ambiance with a great finish
While the graphics are slightly outdated, they were very well done for their time. And when combined with the history behind the game and its wonderful soundtrack, the game comes across as extremely polished.
Pro Runs on very old computers
As this game is quite old, requiring only a 1.2GHZ processor and 1 Gigabyte of RAM, this title will run on older PC's and laptops alike without issue.
Pro Facilitates the user's preferred pace
This game neither gives the impression of being thrown to the wolves nor that of being left stranded on an island. Whether you want to move slowly and steadily through the game or take things at a more heightened pace, Age of Empires 2 will allow for both (given a little planning).
Cons
Con Slow-paced logistics and combat necessitates situational awareness
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion is a strategy title on a massive scale, with players able to colonize multiple solar systems in any given match. Due in part to this scale, there is a perceived slowdown in gameplay; lengthy building construction, minutes-long research and slow unit movement. While the game, at its heart, does appear to be slow (and sometimes is), awareness of your surroundings is paramount. With fleets sometimes taking minutes to arrive at a destination, and defensive structures quickly falling to a massive fleet, it is easy for players to move out of position allowing key worlds to become targeted and lost in enemy incursions if they expand too quickly. However, not expanding quickly enough can halt the player from building up a fleet capable of taking on an enemy, or pirates head-on. In essence, you must learn to balance fleet needs, knowing the right time to expand, while keeping large groups of your ships scattered in key positions to await reinforcements should the need arise.
Con Steep learning curve can deter casual players
While the game is one of the slower Real-Time Strategy titles, there is a huge learning curve that can wreak havoc on fledgling players. With some research required in order to colonize certain planets, researching use of larger fleet and capital ship sizes, to maintaining a thriving economic civilization, it will take many, many matches before players feel knowledgeable and skilled enough to play on larger maps or even against more difficult AI. With no true Single Player to speak of and little way of help in terms of tutorials, you must play in order to learn, sometimes using trial and error as a way of making progress.
Con Very long games
Depending on the size of the map and how many players involved in it, matches can last for several hours, even days, as the host can save progress for the game locally. The amount of time that needs to be dedicated to any given match can be a deterrent for those that are only interested in playing quick multiplayer games with friends, online opponents, or AI.
Con A lack of proper User Interface scaling makes a clunky UI worse
While this is a remastered edition of a classic Real-Time Strategy title, the UI was left largely unchanged. Selecting workers still prompts you to click buttons to bring up both economic and military buildings, then choosing whichever building you wish to construct. This is uninteresting design and makes the UI difficult to navigate.
On top of this, the game does not feature UI scaling. Since the game is bound to your current desktop display settings, the UI will adjust itself to match that resolution. This means if you play at 4K resolution the User Interface will be absurdly small, making it near impossible to see what buildings you wish to construct or what units you want to train. This is counter-intuitive design, for this era of modern gaming, and makes properly playing the game more of a hassle than it should ever be.
Con Age of Empires II HD is an unsuccessful remaster due to its outdated graphics
With the only notable upgrade being high resolution options, Age of Empires II HD fails at being a proper remaster. While higher resolutions give the game a slight face lift, the rest of the engine is left largely unchanged. This means the graphics we see in this remaster are nearly the same in its original 1999 release. Due to this, the game is grating to the eye and does not deliver on its high definition promise.