Customer Reviews

Lost Empire: Immortal

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

 

 

I recently bought this game because I had a gift card burning a hole in my wallet. Hadn't heard much about it, but had played other Paradox produced games before, was surprised it was only $30 for a new release.

Quickly discovered why, this game was released too soon, it's extremely buggy out of the box. I spent 4 hours trying to resolve crashes before even getting to play my first game. Other bugs I've encountered during the game range from annoyances to major problems (ship building bugs where ships you've spent resources on won't actually be created construction is done). I've only played for a few days, so this is a preliminary review.

The interface is reasonably good, but much of the implementation is non-intuitive. This just don't happen the way you would expect them (for example you need to have all the resources for ship before construction will even start, and they're consumed immediately), the help menus are lacking and the tutorial is rather short.

The graphics themselves, although not a key need for a 4X game, are still outdated compared to other recent 4X games that have been released. There doesn't seem to be very much of a cohesive storyline, I've put quite a few hours in and had relatively little if any plot involvement in the story game.

The galaxy does have a very large scope, with up to 5000 systems, but colonization is also done at a system level, and not by an individual planet level as many other 4X space games, although the up to 28 minor races (which have larger and better roles than others I've played) and 10 major races at once is on the high end.

Planetary construction is extremely simplistic, no choosing what buildings to create, you just choose one of 8 "types" for that system to be, which vary the maximum number of 5 different building types, construction is done automatically given enough resources.

Ship Building is on par with Space Empires IV, there are a number of classes of ship of roughly fixed size which have a number of slots, pretty standard stuff here.

One good new feature is "Leaders" which can develop their skills in 5 areas and then take on one of 10 roles (or spend a turn increasing their skills), based on their role and skill levels they provide empire wide bonuses. This is something that I wish would have been expanded on more.

I haven't made it into much combat, but there is a 3d-rendering engine to show replays of battles that shows potential, but even if this were a great feature I wouldn't think it enough to overcome many of the other shortcomings.

Overall I've played a lot of 4X space building games, Lost Empire: Immortals doesn't bring anything groundbreaking to the table, most features are on par or below par compared to other games released in the last few years. If you're a big fan of 4X, could be an enjoyable game, I would wait awhile for some of the more major bugs to be worked out, but based on my experiences so far, I would consider games like Space Empires IV (4) Gold, Galactic Civilizations II Gold and even back to Imperium Galactica 2: Alliances as better games.

I agree with another reviewer that the game has bugs out of the box that take hours to overcome. I will not recommend this game to anyone.

I assumed (we all know, yes,,,)that since it was for vista that it would work on 7, it does not, no matter what it does not. I tried running on a virtual xp box but the video memory requirement is 512MB (huge!) and the max you can allocate for a vm is 128.

I could never even got the game to start, I have a $10.00 coaster. If you are running windows 7, DO NOT BUY!


**UPDATE** 22May11 After several days of putzing about with it, I did get it to work. Not for the novice.

Base System - Windows 7 Ent x64. Phemon Quad 4 motherboard w/AMD64 Quad Processor. 8 GB Ram. NVidia GeForce GTX 9800 w/512 RAM. This is not a weak machine.

1. Install .Net Framework 4.0
2. Install Direct X 11.0
3. Install Latest MS XNA Framework
4. Ensure all C++ distributables are up to date (Windows Update)
5. Install the game
6. Download and install patches for the game 1.02 through 1.08
7. Set the Compatibility Mode for the start icon to the following (right click, properties):
_A. Run this program in compatibility mode for Windows XP SP3.
_B. Disable visual themes.
_C. Disable desktop composition.
_D. Disable display scaling on high DPI settings
_E. Run this program as administrator.
8. Start the game.

I still leave one star as it took me so long (literally hours) to get it to work.

I didn't buy this game at Amazon but I had to leave a review because my experience with this game is super-negative.

The game didn't set up at all and did not run.

One of the requirements for this game is that you must have NET Framework SP1 installed on your computer. If you don't, the game will try to install it onto your computer from the CD. I had NET Framework 2.0 SP1 installed but when my computer updated to NET Framework 3.0 and 3.5 from Microsoft, the updates eliminated the NET Framework 2.0 SP1 and replaced it with NET Framework 2.0 SP2 as well as with NET Frameworks 3.0 and 3.5. The game could not install NET Framework 2.0 SP1 from the CD. Then I I found out that the various versions of NET Framework must be installed in the order in which they were developed. So I tried to install the game without updating my NET Framework to the updated 3.0 and 3.5 versions. The game then encountered an error and still did not run.

Stuck, I emailed Pollux/Paradox Plaza for help 5 months ago but no response. I have already spent a great deal of time researching how to fix the problem. I also tried using the method used by one of the reviewers from above but that didn't work either. My computer is running Windows XP SP3 so my OS should not have been a problem since the game is made for XP and Vista. I also don't think that it's a good idea to not update your NET Framework to the latest version. Even if I wanted to spend many more hours trying to figure out how to fix the problem, I'm not a techie and don't know how to begin - beyond what I have already tried to learn. At this point, I don't want to continue questing for the mythical fix anymore.

The sole contribution of this game is to make my garbage can heavier tomorrow. Money down the drain. :-(

If you like games such as Galactic Civilizations 2, Space Empires V, and Sword of the Stars then you must add Lost Empire to your collection! You will love this game! There are alot of things in this game that make it stand on its own. Leaders for example is an awesome idea, how they are implemented. They age and die after time then a new one will be randomly created at some time. The story mode in this game is all non-scripted and the galaxy is randomly generated no matter if you do story mode or custom game. So you can replay the story mode over and over. If you choose so, you can have a 5000 star random galaxy, kid you not! The AI is solid and plays the game well, the interface is easy to get around even when you have a large empire. One of the most addicting strategy games I have ever player. At last, looks like another space strategy classic is born.

Game kicks butt, action packed, plenty of different things to do. Talk about the ultimate in multi-tasking wow.
I just enjoyed it big time.

And that's why they get the one star middle finger review (it's probably a fine game). At sometime in the future I'll make an addition to this and tell you about it.

Anyway, here they are:

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS;

Windows XP or Vista1200mhz CPU 512 mb Ram GeForce 4 or similar (SM 1.1) 1gb hard disk space Directx 9.0c sound card. (This was from the back of the box)

bye.