SpawnPoint

In a world of first person shooters, Paradox Interactive decided to make a strategy game. Lost Empire: Immortals  hits the nail on the head too. I'm not terribly good at strategy games, but for once I actually looked forward to playing one after going through the tutorial.

The story is a simple one, take over the galaxy to ensure the survival of your mortal race. There is a story mode that will give you a little more interaction with different races and missions for them. You can of course turn this off if you like. I would suggest leaving it turned on. The story isn't heavy and the help in direction is good. Overall you are the story; it is about your domination of the galaxy.

Often strategy games get lost in the detail of your star fields making it just too busy. Here we have a balance of detail and simplicity. For example selecting a world will show some more graphical detail and all information you need will be shown in a small window at the bottom of your screen. The same window will show information about a ship you select. This multi-use window saves much needed space on your screen.

The interface is simple in its design, using windows and a hotbar of sorts across the bottom of the screen. The clutter on the screen is minimized also by windows that slide into the side of your screen leaving only a tab visible. This makes them fast to access, but without taking up valuable display area of your star field.

As with most strategy games, LE:I is turned based. It's a tried and tested mode of play and it works for strategy games. Of course after you've done all you want you can end your turn and let the computer do its part.

When you begin your game you are given several options. You are able to choose your race, galaxy and victory conditions. There are 6 races, with the default being human. Each race has its own bonuses and history displayed when you select it at the new game screen.

There is a lot of things to do in your turns though. A wide range of fields of research are to be had, ships to build, worlds to explore and battles to fight. The amount of research items can be a little overwhelming at first, but they are broken down categories that make it a much easier to figure what you need and makes it easier to find specific skills.
The areas of research are wide and varied. From diplomacy skills to weapons, it's all there. Of course you can't research everything at once so you need to choose what you need in that turn or near future turns. One of my favourite things in LE:I is the ships. Not the ones you see on the screen, but the ones you build. Of course you don't have to make your own ships, there are default builds. As your research and games advances more ship items will become available to you. This part of the game really allows you to customize how you handle exploration and fights by allowing you to customize your crafts. Besides, who wouldn't want to build starships?

You don't always have to play alone though. There are option for multiplayer within the game. Since the game was not released when I was writing this, I was unable to test this feature. It is good to see that this option is available as online and LAN play is very popular.

Lost Empire: Immortals is a fun game. Normally I steer clear of strategy games as I'm not too good at them and they have a tendency to be over complex for my liking. Paradox Interactive has managed to strike a good balance between simplicity and complexity. It is easy to get your head around the basics of the game and from there the more complex elements fall into place easily. The game isn't easy by any means, but a good game system goes a long way. I would definitely suggest people give this one a try.