Customer Reviews

Ascendancy

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This title lived in the shadow of Master of Orion unknown to most. This is a solid title that offers hours of stategy goodness. Build planetary and orbital structures. Ships that you customize with parts move thru x,y,z representations of each star system. Several races each with their own special gift allow a multitude of replay options. It's got it all Building, exploration, stellar warfare, diplomacy and R&D. One gripe I do have is the larger your empire grows the longer each turn takes. People that can't stand micro management will cringe having to govern 30+ planets and a large armada. Highly addictive. Definately worth discovering or revisiting.

Ascendancy was one of those Space/Conquest/Exploration games that came out in the mid-90's during the genre's heyday. It has been the better part of 10 years since I last saw my copy (borrowed to a friend who didn't return it, like too many of my games). You can play one of among 20+ different races, each with specific bonuses or special abilities. The space "map" is reminscent of Star Control 1 in that you have "space lanes" which you travel from one system to the next along linear paths. In other words to get from Point A to Point B you may have to go through numerous other systems, some hostile, to get to your destination.

Research yielded you the usual planetary or ship improvements including research bonus facilities as well as system defense complexes. The most enjoyable part was undoubtedly the research. The research tree, to memory, looked almost like a DNA aqua-helix which you kind of progressed down by spending X number of turns researching various planetary and ship improvements. The races you could play covered the gamut of possible types of extraterrestrials and gave them fairly standard bonuses like you'd find in any other game. I would always pick the 6 armed lizard race as they could use a racial bonus to research anything in 1 turn (with a long wait in between), especially handy for techs that would require 300 turns or more to finish researching. Notably absent is the ability to play humans, an ommission that raised more than a few eyebrows.

The game itself is highly addictive although probably very dated by today's standards. This is a title that hid in the shadow of Master of Orion and so many fans of the genre probably weren't aware of what they were missing out on. Fantastic game!

I just pulled out this game for the first time in 5 years to give it another week's worth of play-time. This is one of those games I borrowed from someone and never gave it back.

This deviates from the typical space colonization game in that you actually place planetary buildings on the planet. Different tiles give different bonuses. Visually it gives a very sim-like feeling when building colonies.

The tech structure is fairly characteristic of this genre and done well.

Combat is fairly simplistic but complex enough for you to greatly vary the outcome based on your skill. Very well done for its day.

My only real complaint about the game is that once you get more than about 10-15 planetary colonies, you spend so much time micro-managing that doing anything else (like moving ships from one system to another) can take forever to do. Granted I really like the micro-managing, but it can become the sole thing you do.

Overall, I'd say its a great game, programmed very well. It makes me wonder why there was no Ascendancy 2.

Probably one of the lesser known turn based space strategy genre in its time, Ascendency is a solid, if not ground-breaking, game with very good visuals and music for its time. Gameplay is fairly standard; starting from a single planet, you build structures to improve your production and research output and build ships to explore the galaxy and expand your empire by settling uninhabited worlds or conquering those held by the other competing races.

There are a wide variety of races to choose from, each with a unique special ability, though definitely some are far better than others (my personal favorite were the Chamachies which could complete research in a technology in one turn!). I really liked the ship customization as you could tailor each ship depending on your needs and what technology you researched and there are a wide variety of configurations you could design to your style. The diplomacy aspect with other races was pretty simplistic, allowing trading of technology and creating alliances (if I recall though didn't really mean much and they were frequent broken or ignored). My biggest complaint though is about the weak AI making the game pretty easy. This was patched later to make it more challenging but think it only gave them advantages over the human player rather than truly improving the AI. Also there is no multiplayer which is another big downside.

However, definitely a nice example of the space strategy game genre that was overshadowed by some of the others at the time like Master of Orion.

Had played this game way back when it first came out, and enjoyed it very much. I knew it would be simple compared to some of today's more complicated and advanced games, but that was fine with me. Turns out the problem is that the game is so old that it won't load up all the way, or does load, and then will never execute the start up. Tried it on both my computers, the oldest being from 2007, and on two others owned by friends (both only a year or two old), and the game just wouldn't ever work. Very sad, as I really looked forward to playing it.

This is the most fun I ever had playing a strategy game. I too got it when it first came out and sorta dust it off every now and again. What I like about this sci fi game is that it is the whole package. You have stuff that happens in space, stuff that happens in ship, stuff that happens on planet and stuff that happens between planets. As the previous reviewers have commented, there is a lot of micromanaging within the game play but some of it can be adjusted to automatic. But the micromanaging is so much fun you may not want to go on auto pilot.

This game however is not an unknown gem. There is some history behind it. When it first came out it got a glowing review by a guy who was also authoring the strategy guide. Many called foul and it wrongly got the guy in trouble for years. The other thing about the game is that the AI is way way dumb. And your typical strategy player found the game too easy. The developer eventually came out with a patch that fixed the problem. But with me, since I am not a real good strategy player I never noticed those AI issues. I was just having too much fun.

And last but certainly not least, this game probably has one of the best accompanying musical scores in the history of computer/video games. The game score is a masterpiece of music perfectly matching game mood. While I can't really remember any vocals from the game, the game's intro music still pleasantly rings in my mind. You can see and hear it at YouTube "Ascendancy intro." Actually, the games music is so good I could recommend the game on that alone. Fortunatly, the actual game is excellent, and if you're a sci fi or strategy gamer, you really shouldn't miss this game.

I LOVE this game. It was so well made, I still go back to it every once in a while. To answer some questions raised by others, there were some codes you could use to auto build a planet (allowing the computer to guide the building order of the chosen planet freeing you from having to make decisions on its build queue), so you were not stuck managing planets you didn't want to. However, I am not sure how effective they were, as I liked the ability to micro manage.

What strikes me the most about this game is just how accessible it was while still having a lot of depth. I liked the game so much, I played it well past the time the AI was a challenge.

I really wish they would make a newer version of the game with better AI. So many games seemed to have borrowed from this game's playbook, that it only seems fair. My utmost thanks to the Logic Factory for such a wonderful game.

This game makes my all-time top 10 games list. I purchased it not long after its release, and still find myself going back to it from time to time even after all these years have passed. I firmly believe that if some developer were to pick up this game and give it even a very slight updating that it would sell quite well. As it is, if you have the technical know-how to get it to run on XP or Vista and you don't have this game, I strongly recommend that you purchase it and give it a try. It's a masterpeace.

I won't bother to describe the game as others have already done an exellent job of that. Suffice it to say that this game is addictive and will not disappoint.

Bought this game for my 14 yr old son who just loves it. He plays it for hours at a time and then comes to tell me what worlds he has settled, what enemies he has conquered and what he wants to do next. It is great fun for him!