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Gameplay:
As with most RTS games, the gameplay focuses around building and advancing your empire while achieving goals and battling opposition. In the single player campaigns, your empire consists of all planets and moons controlled by the human species. When the campaign begins, you choose between the forces of Earth or the Martian Armies. In the game’s reality, Mars has been colonized by Earthlings and has since developed an independent government and a desire to be free of Earth’s rule. While en route to a meeting to negotiate a peaceful agreement on Earth’s Moon, a Martian convoy was destroyed by unidentified forces and eventually a war breaks out between the colonists and the global government of Earth. While Earth is not as technologically advanced as the Martians, they possess the power of numbers, balancing Mars' technological advances.
It’s not really significant which side you chose. After a few missions, which only seem to be there to allow you to get a feel for the game, the Human forces combine again to explore the deepest quadrants of space through newly discovered wormholes. A new, more powerful alien threat is soon discovered and the scenarios begin to become more difficult as you fight for the survival of the human race.
The playing field of Hegemonia is huge. In most of the missions, you are responsible for managing several colonies in multiple systems. As in all RTS games, you’ll have to manage resources, expansion, and a military. However in Hegemonia, the only true resources to monitor are colony populations and money income. You can acquire money by taxing your citizens, mining asteroids, and sending out collection vessels to recycle space debris. Each has its drawbacks and should be used at the correct times. Using taxes on a new planet can stunt its population growth. Recyclers are best used after battle to collect the leftovers from destroyed ships. These will be converted into money, which is used to buy your ships and add special buildings and defenses to individual colonies. The buildings each have specific functions and provide bonuses such as increasing production speed and housing capacity. A colony’s population is influenced by factors ranging from planet size and terrain type to living and working conditions. The larger your population, the more buildings your planet can support and the quicker it will produce units and buildings. Colonies with favorable conditions will provide you with the bulk of your income through taxes. It also seems like the larger your population, the more battle units you are allowed to build and control, but it’s not clear if this is related to your overall population, or the size of the individual colonies.
The most important strategic component of the game is technological research and advancement. Research is not associated with your money, but is instead purchased with research points. A set amount of research points are assigned at the beginning of each mission and must be used on that mission. Although research points don’t carry over, the technologies you research do, which adds a feeling of continuity between the missions. Also interesting is that if you are researching a particular technology and change your mind, the research it halted and held at the point it was rather than resetting as in most RTS. A partially researched technology will reset if not finished before the end of the mission though. Advances include new ship classes and weaponry, armor, and engines upgrades, as well as planet advancements such as terra forming and new building types.
Although the interface and system of balances are done very well, there are a few weak points in the overall game play. Most notably is the lack of personality in the game. All of the characters have detailed back stories and unique personalities, but unfortunately they are all fairly uninteresting and somewhat shoddily rendered when compared to the beauty of the rest of the game. There is no true mouth sync with the speech or body movement, aside from slight swaying or head movement. Also notable is that you’ll never actually see anything you construct on your colonies. Instead you’ll view the planet or moon from an orbital view and are able to see what buildings have been built by checking a list. This combined with the lack of charisma from the main characters leaves the game feeling a bit sterile and disconnected.
At times it can also be fairly difficult to manage resources, research trees, and battles raging in several separate systems since you can only view one system at a time. For some players this can be frustrating and difficult, but those with multitasking skills will appreciate the challenge. It can take a long time to complete some of the missions and since most of the action is fairly automated, it helps keep things a little more interesting. However you are also inexplicably limited in the number of military units you can have at once, so you usually won’t be able to battle in too many systems at once. Although you will definitely need to spend some time with the manual to learn all the functions of the interface, once you begin using the controls, the interface is by far the best seen in any 3d space RTS.
Graphics:
The Graphics are definitely the game’s strongest point, and fans of the genre will find themselves ogling for hours over the detail and beauty of the planets. Each type of terrain has a different look ranging from a glowing volcanic planet covered in magma to the lush blue and green landscapes of the oceanic planets. Even at the closest level of zoom, the texture depths and clarity and are amazing. The lighting is amazing as well. Brilliant suns light the systems and cast shadows on the ships as well. The dark sides of heavily populated planets are littered with the lights from the buildings of an urban metropolis
There are thick clouds of space dust usually housing mining asteroids and often crossing the patch of your ships. As they pass through, a close up look will reveal flickers and sparks as rocks of different sizes pelt your crafts. Battles also put the particle effects to good use. You are given easy access to several preset cinematic views of your selected targets and at times the weapon and explosion effects are reminiscent of expensive sci-fi battle scenes from television and movies. However, there are again a few drawbacks here.
Although the graphics are initially very attractive and interesting, the missions are mostly very slow paced and most are played in the same systems used in the previous missions. There are, of course, a limited number of planet types and after you’ve seen them all, they begin to become more mundane and after a while even a little dull. As with previous 3D space games, the 3D view of the action isn’t very useful for ship maneuvering. You’ll end up spending a lot of your time in the “strategic” or heads down view, occasionally switching through some preset cinematic views to watch the battles.
Tech advances are represented in the same list form used for colonial buildings and structures and until you upgrade to a new ship class, there are no visible changes to the ships after an upgrade. Aside from killing things faster and taking less damage, the upgrades are hardly noticeable. This means that although the graphics are amazing and very appropriate for this type of game, they can grow a bit bland after a while. However this is of course true for any game and as far as 3D space RTS games go, the team from DreamCatcher has done an outstanding job. The overall feel is very solid and attractive, and I doubt any fan of the genre will be disappointed.
Sound & Music:
Although the sound and music don’t stand out as much as the graphics in the game, they are generally solid and well done. The voice acting is a bit unnatural and dreary, but the sounds of battle are very nice. With a decent subwoofer or a good set of headphones it can be quite encompassing to position a camera in the middle of the action and listen to the fight surrounding you as you move about. The music is the standard military fanfares and ambient new age sci-fi stuff and while it’s nice, it’s not much more than standard for this type of game.
Multiplayer:
The multiplayer modes really add a lot of replay value to the game. The single player missions are decent but not strong enough to sell the game as a single player adventure, but combing the scenarios with an online community helps to round out this title. There is also an option to play random battles against computer opponents but it’s actually just a multiplayer game with computer opponents selected, rather than its own category. Again, without reading the manual carefully, a lot of gamers will skip right past this feature. The available multiplayer options include the standard skirmish mode and a few cooperative scenarios for those who’d rather team than face off. As with any game, a human opponent makes for a much more interesting fight than a computer and it’s in multiplayer mode where strategy counts and you’ll learn to do more than just amass a larger army than your foe.
Conclusion:
There’s not yet a lot to choose from in the realm of 3D space RTS games and for fans of the genre, that’s a big disappointment. However, Hegemonia is sure to please those wishing they had some new space to explore and claim. While the gamer looking for a quick space shoot out or an easily mastered game will probably not be in for the learning curve of this title, those with a bit of patience will find themselves drawn into the battle for interstellar survival and will quickly become familiar with the game’s interface. As noted, a manual is a must for this title, and it’s quite a detailed manual. The basics are easy though, and in no time you’ll be conquering galaxies and advancing you empires with no problems. While the game’s single player campaign may play a little long for some players, the multiplayer mode will keep fans playing into the wee hours of the morning for weeks on end. There’s definitely some things to iron out in the game and we’re still waiting for a game to perfect the 3D space movement and battle interface, but it will be very interesting to see what could evolve if the game gets a sequel. All in all, it’s easily one of the best space RTS games available and a recommended title for the fans of this type of game.
