Recommended for the hardcore 4X fan only.

This game had THE worst launch I've ever seen (and I was there for Anarchy Online's launch). When this came out, nothing worked. Even the game option menus were disabled! It was a total and absolute rip-off where completing a game was downright impossible. But the developers worked HARD on the game after launch and have gotten this game on its feet.

This is the most detailed 4X game I've ever played. The star map is actually 3D and when battles happen you don't just roll some dice, you actually play the battles out in an RTS-style interface. Ship customization is done by picking from different section types then selecting weapons and special equipment for those sections. There's a pretty vast selection of equipment to pick from, too.

The big controversial part of this game for me is the mission system. When you tell a fleet to go do something (scout, patrol, whatever) in most games the fleet will go, do whatever it's supposed to do, and stay there. In SotS2, the fleet will go out, do whatever it's supposed to do for a few turns, then return home. You can change where 'home' is for a fleet but you can't select unpopulated planets for that. On the one hand, this makes sense to me. There are only so many peanut butter sandwiches you can store on a ship so it makes sense that they need to come back and restock. On the other hand, it slows the pace of the game down and adds complexity. I still can't decide if the extra realism is worth it.

The most enjoyable feature of the old SotS game is, IMHO, the variety in races and that translates over to SotS 2 just fine. You can't make custom races but each race is VERY different than the others. The method of propulsion is different, technology strenghts and weaknesses are different, some races can mount more weapons than others, and so on. When you get right down to it, switching between the Liir and the Humans in this game will give you much more different gameplay than building a custom race in most games.

So I recommend the game but only to the serious 4X enthusiasts looking for a lot of depth. If you're new the genre then you should probably stick with Civilization or Endless Space. If you come out of those games wanting a lot more detail then this might be your game.

P.S. Star Fleet Battles fans - you'll find your swordfish drones and plasma shotguns waiting for you. Enjoy.

Kerberos shows amazing dedication to their game. SOTS2 is quite fun now, and continuing to improve. This game is FAR better than it was upon release. Given that Kerberos is continuing to patch SOTS2, the game's only going to continue getting better. Overall, the game's certainly worth giving a shot now. The interface and design language do have a bit of a learning curve, but it's worth the effort.

You'd think I'd have something extensive to say about the game. Problem is... I don't. Its the same game it always was and will be. Translation: its slowly getting better and better.

But is it there right now?
*shakes head side to side*.

Amazingly the game still likes to crash after all this time. There are serious bugs which break MP and a few glaring balance issues as well for certain factions.

So... why am I recommending it? Simple. It will get better and, well... there simply isn't another 4x space game which comes anywhere near it. Even Sots Prime pales in comparison. If you have the patience for it, its a great game. But if you're a player which must have their game complete in 30 mins or so, this isn't for you. Matches can take hours, days or even weeks.

Do remember to check the forums for the game for information... and my screenshots. yes, shameless plug.

There are a lot of strategy space games out there, and this one isn't the most famous, but Sword of the stars 2 is one of the best in this genre, you have a map mode, where you administrate your fleets, colonizations,etc.
Is a turn based game but the battles are in real time.

It has a complex economic system, complex planets administration, complex tecnologic tree and more.

You can customize your ships armament, and new technologies unlocks more ways of customizing them. Each weapon and armor has its advantages and disadvantages.

The game has this low price because it had a bad beggining with lots of bugs, but most of them have been fixed, the game is playable and the devs are still giving it support.

If you didn't play Sword of the stars 1, this is a must play, at least for a new experience compared to other games.
And if you played Sword of the stars 1, this one has much better combat.

Sword of the Stars II in it's current state is a significant disappointment.
It has redeeming factors don't get me wrong but there is just portions of the game either done poorly or downright missing.
I played it for about 60 hours by myself with high hopes from playing Sword of the Stars on non-steam for atleast 600 hours.
My main disappointment was the complete lack of scenarios, most people which played the orignal would remeber scenarios like The End of Flesh which was fun to play co-op with friends. I find it ironic how they add a new expansion for free which is called that scenarios name. Now also there is positioning issues with turrets on some ships and of course the atrocious level A.I which can be easily beaten even on the hardest difficulty, while in the orginal it was actually a real challenge.

Sword of the Stars II has missing content which causes crashes, these content could be easily added into the game in a couple of seconds flat. My friend which played as the Loa crashed because a medium turret got shot off one of his cruisers, the game crashed because it could not find the text for the destruction of a medium turret. Basically the game crashed because it could not find a phrase to say in text to him. He also crashed because of a missing GUI element for constructing multiple Loa ships pretty much just a picture.

The lack of updates so far even though they went really well to improve their game is a real game breaker, the most recent update was too small for 3-4 months of development time.

I played as the humans most of the time so I do not know much about the issues of other races, however I do know that the learning curve is dangerously bad even as a veteran player of the game. There is much missing from SOTS 2 than the original which should of been placed into it, but just never did and thus cripples the games experience.

I am not recommending this game as of the current time 8/12/2013 as the lack of support from the developers and the amount of stupid bugs which could be fixed easily is very much a deal breaker. I bought this game when it came out and so I know first hand how bad it's release was, even though it is very much better than it was back then it's still got many bugs caused by extreme laziness on the behalf of the developers.

It has potential, yes, however it needs the developers to work on it, to bring it to what it can be if they just fixed the A.I and the bugs in the game.