Space Empires V

by Navarre

Product Features

• Detailed Empire management - Research, Intelligence, Politics, Construction Queues, Vehicle Design, and more
• Explore a large galaxy with 100 solar systems - 15 planets each
• Randomly generated map for every game (or load an existing map)
• Discover black holes, nebulae, binary stars, trinary stars, asteroid belts, gas giants, cosmic storms, and more
• Huge Technology Tree - Over 6000 tech levels, 500+ components and facilities

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000G1G9ZS
• Item Weight: 5 ounces
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: October 17, 2006
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #13,820 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

Boldly take the next step in space strategy!Product InformationSpace Empires V takes the player into a real-time rendered 3D universe. Watchspace battles played out in glorious detail and realistic effects. ExpandExplore Exploit and Exterminate in a huge living breathing galaxy. Newfeatures abound with political alliances between multiple empires a top-downship design system a hexagonal movement grid and many more. Due to playerdemand the game is completely “moddable” and even adds a scriptable AIsystem to the mix. Product Features 24 bit 3D real-time rendered graphics. Detailed Tactical Combat (and a combat simulator to test your designs!). New vehicle types and sizes: Ships Bases Freighters Fighters Mines Satellites Troops Drones and Weapons Platforms. Ability to completely design and customize all of your vehicles. Large Galaxy: 100 solar systems with 15 planets each. Huge Technology Tree: Thousands of tech levels with hundreds of components and facilities. Completely customizable game graphics: Create your own planets stars vehicles etc. Completely customizable AI players: Create your own AI players with unique traits styles and speech. 14 unique races to play or customize (or just create your own!) Randomly generated map for every game (or load an existing map). Complete game customization allowed by players ("mods")Windows Requirements Windows 95 98 Me 2000 XP Pentium 500 MHz processor 64 MB of RAM 500 MB Hard Drive space Screen resolution 1024x768 with 16-bit color DirectX 7.0 (or better) 32 MB Video Card with 3D acceleration Windows compatible Sound Card (must be DirectX 7.0 (or better) compatible) 6X CD-ROM drive

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great game - after the patch, December 24, 2006

By 

Jeremy A. Bible "Sheep777" (Lebanon, Oregon) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Space Empires V (CD-ROM)

Short History

I've been playing 4x games almost from the beginning. The first fun 4x game that I played was master of orion. Being able to play different races with different abilities and customizing up to 6 ships at the same time! Man, it was great ... for it's time.

Then came Master of Orion II which is a good game in its own right. I've spent many days playing the second game of the series and have to say that for quite a while it was my favorite game of the genre. That was until I happened upon space empire IV. I'd heard about the space empires series, but the reviews were generally low, so I stayed away from them. But, since Master of Orion III was a total loss and the Galactic Civilization series seemed to lack the depth that I like in a game, I thought I'd give it a try.

Space Empires IV

So, about a month ago, I purchased for less than $20 Space Empires IV. It's a solid game with a lot of committed modders out there that really made a good game. I wouldn't say great, but good. The tech tree is huge, the AI is O.K., and ship design system is good as well. It was the most fun that I had had with a 4x game since the original Master of Orion first came out.

Space Empires V

Then, space empires V came out. Quite a few low reviews made me wait for a while to purchase the game. There were a lot of bugs in the initial release and I can see why the reviews that were done were low because of that. But, I got the game this week and all I can say is WOW! What a great game!

The 3D graphics are the really good! The real time space battles instead of being turn based really are well done. The ships are different for each race and look pretty good. Not perfect, but good. Each weapon has it's own effect in battle and you can set each ship to do a different function. One ship can act as a picket defender, another could Kamikazi, another stay at optimal firing range. There are quite a few strategy options that can be set for each fleet. The layout is nice too.

The technology is incredible! You can get cloaking, the obligatory laser beams, anti-matter torpedoes, missiles, anti-missile guns, fighters, bombers, and even organic weapons with armor that heals itself, etc. Just about anything you can think about to put into a strategic space sim is here.

The sounds are good. Ships have neat sounds when the blow up, weapons sound good. Warp points have a good sound, but it somehow overloads my speakers and sounds a little bit like feedback at one point of the sound, but the actual sound is very appropriate for ships going through a warp.

The ship battles are great fun! And there are a lot more of them than I've experienced in other space sims. It really has a feel like you're fighting for galactic dominance. You can't really sit back and relax, it's a fight in this game. Albeit a fun one.

So far the AI seems to be good. Again, not great, but very good. I planted 2 colonies in a system that was a little ways away. The AI came in and took them out without declaring war on me. They even warned me in advance to leave the system as they were claiming it. Then ... they did! It was pretty cool.

Be warned, as with most good strategy games, there is a learning curve that at first may feel like a cliff. But hang in there, the actual gameplay is worth it once you understand what's going on. My personal opinion is that to maximize this great game that someone would be well served to buy space empires IV first. Play it a month, then go to space empires V. But, if you're like me, you won't. Just means that the learning curve will be a bit steeper. OH, and btw, I've heard that steam has an offer out there where you can buy Space Empires V and you get Space Empires IV for free included.

My Review

Graphics - Good 7
Sounds - Average 5
Gameplay - 9
Overall Fun - 10

Pros -
Absolutely HUGE and fun tech tree
(I'd estimate the numbers of technologies at least 500 distinct techs)
Good AI ... the best I've seen for this style of game
Good battle scenes
(Numbers of ships battling each other definitely reaching an epic scale)
Sounds are average for a game of this type
Ability to create/design your ship using researched technologies
- This part is great fun and probably the best part of the game
Good real time battle scenes

Cons -
Sound could have been a little bit better
Lots of bugs before patching up to 1.20
(that's the latest patch version at the time of this review)
LONG learning curve. Almost assumes that you've played Space Empires IV.

Final Conclusion

Overall a great game. I think this is the best PC game that I've purchased since the Total War Series. Two thumbs up ... WAY UP!

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This game has potential., November 8, 2006

By 

Sean Murphy (Gig Harbor, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Space Empires V (CD-ROM)

I would agree that SEV has bugs, I've ran into a few myself. Even game crashing bugs... However, the potential for this game is so great that I can overlook the bugs (that will get fixed in patches, I am confident).

Others have given this game a bad review, because they are use to how normal games are released and played, this game should fall into a subcatigory of games called MODable games. Someone a while ago was dissapointed that the tech tree took too long to research, well just change it. It's not that hard, infact the makers of SEV made it easy to do. The data files are all text files and you can edit them easily.

Even better, with previous releases of Space Empires MODers released free ware programs that sped up the process. The potential of this game is something that can keep you entertained for years, not hours. What are most games rated at, you can finish it in 30 hours... With the MOD universe out there, SEV will keep you entertaind for a long time.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great game. Best value in space strategy gaming., November 2, 2006

By 

Iron Giant "Iron Giant" (Boston) - See all my reviews

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Space Empires V (CD-ROM)

I've been playing the predecessor to this game for over 5 years. How many games can claim to have a loyal fan base 5 years after release?

SE5 not only improves on everything over SE4, but adds a lot more options too.

You can research and build a fleet of missle destroyers, or Battleships with Meson Blasters, or marine ships that captures enemy ships, or bombard planets, or build super carriers with bombers. Everything is custom designed by you.

You can make custom treaties with your neighbors. Make Peace, make war. Build an alliance against someone else, or just stand alone and conquer the galaxy. Every game is different.

If you research high enough, you can build a Ring World and populate it. You could destroy a star in your enemys system and wipe out all planets, or create a star and build a Sphere World around it.

There is also Intelligence and spying. Get his ships to come to your side, put his planets into rioting, steal his technology, or just spy on his empire.

There is a very active MOD community that created many, many mods for SE4 and has already started releasing Mods for SE5. In fact, just about everything in the game is Moddable, even by a novice. Most settings are in .txt files and can be set by anyone.

As of the current release, version 1.08, there are some bugs remaining. But this game is SO huge and expansive, you could never do everything in one game anyway. Plus, Malfador releases many patches every year, for many years after release so its only going to get better.

The graphics look much better than SE4, but are not pretty by todays standards. If you want eye candy, buy "Nexus, the Jupiter Incident". That is the best looking Space Sim ever, but once you've played Nexus through, there is nothing else to do. If you want to run a huge empire again and again, trying different techs and strategies, there is NO game that even comes close to the Space Empires series.