Ascendancy

The Good
This game does take a little effort (but not too much) to get into but, boy, does it pay off! The graphics are still very crisp and attractive and even rival that of certain brand new strategy games - for a 13 year old game, that's not bad at all!

But there's also the incredibly orchestric music which remains so recognisable and easily trumps the pseudo-modern beat music you find in far too many new games.

The game itself is highly addictive, with the search for new suitable planets while expanding your army being a constant drive to expand. The strategy side isn't too complex yet it's surprisingly deep.

The combat is lots of fun too with the explosions still feeling really sweet. Blowing up alien ships has to be one of the most fun elements of Ascendancy.

The Bad
Well, I have to agree with the biggest criticisms that the game has received in the past.

First of all, the AI isn't that great. There has been a patch that improves it but the original unpatched game saw the AI really badly manage planets. Every planet you captured, you had to completely rebuild from scratch. The AI never posed a real challenge.

The second problem with the game is that some might find the macromanagement tedious after you've captured 50 planets. Maintaining such a large amount of planets means a lot of work and nearly every day you have to create several buildings, start constructing a new ship, etc. My advice is: stick to smaller universes with fewer aliens to compete with. The moment you tackle a large universe, you're doomed to give up out of boredom.

The Bottom Line
This really is a different take on Master of Orion. The difference is that you have much better control over combat and have to maintain planets on a much smaller level. You constantly have to research more, upgrade buildings, build better ships, explore new solar systems, colonize new planets.

This game can really suck you in. 13 years old yet when I played it recently in Dosbox, I couldn't tear myself away from the screen until I had vanquished my opponents! My entire day went up in smoke, something which for me, few modern games are capable of achieving.

The Good
There is much to like about Ascendency. Although it is a relatively deep space 4x strategy game, it does not take itself too seriously. The aliens are clever, with interesting drawings for their portraits and creative ship designs. The planet graphics are as well pleasing to the eye, although they don't hold up well to today's textures in games. The music is a joy to listen to, wonderfully put together. Above all else, Ascendency is just plain fun to play. It is easy to get the hang of, and yet difficult to master (with a patch that updates the AI above the intelligence of a rock). The sheer numbers of technologies to play with throughout the game will keep you busy for hours. How can you hate game that lets you enlarge the sun in a solar system and thus slingshotting your enemies ship way out into deep space? Its one of the those games that makes you say "just one more turn". The interface is so intuitive that you'll find yourself flying back and forth between menus with easy, making the time just fly by. Creating fleets and moving them around the universe is simple, as is colonizing and attacking. Battles are fought in the same game system and interface as the rest of the game, so there is no second learning curce. Sound effects are pretty standard, some of the weapons sounds are pretty cool though.

The Bad
I gues there are a few things wrong with Ascendency, but its hard to hold them against it. For one, there is really no difference between aliens besides one special power unique to each race. All technology and buildings look the same. Now you may think this is a terrible flaw, but it really isn't. Each special power comes in handy often, and every game plays out differently. There is little in the way of ship modification. You select a size, then fill it with stuff, then its off, not much to it. As I mentioned earlier, you need to download the "Antagonizer Patch" for the game to update the AI. It shipped with dumb as nails AI, but this patch fixes that up quite nicely.

The Bottom Line
Ascendency is a game that should not be missed by an strategy lover. Some are put off by the lack of diversity between races, but those people are missing out on quite a gem. The game was never made to offer completely different play styles with every race, it was made to offer a completely different gameplay experience, while keeping the basics the same. So find the game, buy it, and lose yourself in the universe that is Ascendency

The Good
The three dimensions were great. The nature of both the galactic map and the system display were great, and a definite plus over the flat universe of MOO. In addition, Ascendancy systems had the realism of containing multiple planets, although I found that the nature of these planets did not depend on the star type.

The races were, for the most part, quite novel, and my only complaint is that we humans didn't show up.

Weapon balance was, for the most part, very good. Although late-technology weapons were far better than earlier ones (and so they should be!), new advances did not necessarily make older ones obsolete. Nothing, for instance, ever exceeded the range of the plasmatron, a weapon you can get your hands on while still pretty early in the game.

The variety of technologies was, although not spectacular, decent. In contrast to MOO, which mostly offered improvements on a small set of technologies, Ascendancy research provides whole new tools and abilities. I don't think that I have seen any game with as many planetwide projects possible; there were I believe three or four completely different types.

One of the nicest bits was that most aspects of the game were not statistic-based. Battles and advances were decided not on the basis of rolling dies, but depended almost entirely on your actions (of course, there are exceptions; the technology you get from ruins is completely random, and planets are mostly evaluated based on their Three Statistics).

The Bad
The same thing nobody else liked about the game: the computer opponents.

It's a pity that the same effort which went into the rest of the game could not go into the computer code; the algorithms were far too simple, almost as if they had been quickly added to the rest of the game. Diplomatic reactions were far too simple as compared, say, to MOO, and a noticeable bug is that your allies never seem to expect you to honor your alliances.

Combat code, the other foundation of the game, was equally shaky. The enemy ships were clearly following a certain specific set of checks, which I could probably copy out here to high accuracy if it were not against the rules to give out cheats (and knowing how the computer will react to anything is, essentially, the ultimate cheat). Let's just say that I found any number of tricks which pretty much ensured military superiority, even when the enemy had the superior force. One remark I will make is that the game code is very offense-oriented; unlike in MOO where sometimes the other player will seem to "see" what you are trying to do and take evasive action. I have yet to see an Ascendancy ship retreat.

What else? Well, there are a few obvious bugs elsewhere (e.g., in the building code); it seems that they spent almost no time debugging. A tight deadline, perhaps? Another complaint is the complete randomization of the xenoarchaeological code; a race can get a valuable technology (say, large-scale construction or lush growth bombs) early in the game and have a decided advantage over the others.

The Bottom Line
Excellent game at first, and very replayable, but expect to master it quickly.

The Good
The best thing Ascendancy has going for it is the "feel" of the game. This may sound silly, but after having played the two games put out by The Logic Factory ( Ascendancy and The Tone Rebellion), it's clear that the folks at The Logic Factory are trying to make games with a very "new age" feel to them. (Yes, "new age" is a trite and overused phrase. But that's really the best way to describe it.)

The music is new age. The descriptions of the alien races are kinda new agey. The manual is kinda new agey (it doesn't tell you how to win the game, for example).

The graphics were fantastic for the time the game was released, and the ship models were simply incredible. Made me want to play the game to the end for each individual race just so I could see all the ship models. And the galactic map was three-dimensional, which (for me) added an element of immersiveness that has never been present with the two-dimensional starmaps of MOO and MOO2.

The Bad
The AI, which is legendary in its awfulness.

The tedium of endgame micromanagement, especially if you have a large empire.

The utterly bizarre combat sequence, in which only one ship per side moves each turn. If it's a battle of one ship vs. eight ships, the single ship moves, then one of the eight ships moves, then the single ship moves again, then one of the eight ships moves, etc. This combat sequence makes it impossible for a swarm of smaller ships to gang up on a single larger ship, and dramatically tilts combat in favor of large ships and powerful tech.

The Bottom Line
If you can get past the tedium of the end-game micromanagement and the bizarre combat sequence, this is actually a great little space strategy game for the casual strategy gamer (i.e. the kind of person who, like me, has trouble playing MOO or MOO2 on medium difficulty).

The Good
To start out this review, I would like to mention that this game is one of the few strategy games in existence that doesn’t make me want to turn off all of the sound effects and music and throw in one of my favorite CD's. All of the sound effects that are present in the game are perfectly chosen for whatever event they've been assigned to, and they seldom annoy me even if they have been repeated a thousand times. Of particular note, though, is the music. The music has a late 70's-early 80's synth-orchesta space opera theme to it, sort of in the style of the first Star Trek film. The quality of the music, despite being played back at a rather low playback rate, is very good indeed. The music has an epic feel to it and is enjoyable to listen to, and each of the (several) alien races have their own short musical theme that plays during diplomatic engagements, like in Master of Orion 2 (although the soundtrack for that game is inferior compared to the one that this game sports).

Another item of note is the in-game graphics system. While the 256-color palette isn't as sharp as it was back in 1996, it's still quite nice and is capable of producing some very atmospheric in-game graphics (atmosphere being the thing that this game oozes). The style of the user interface is very slick and looks very different in comparison to many other 4X style games. The 3D starmap and system map is easy to operate and it looks very nice to boot.

And on a final note, I also like the system that's used to set up a game session. It has a relatively high amount of options available, and it has a very nice galaxy preview window.

The Bad
There's not much in the way of anything negative I can think of in regards to Ascendancy, except for two non-critical issues, which I will explore presently. First off, it's almost impossible to forge alliances other alien species. You usually have to wait a few thousand turns for them to warm up to the idea, and by then they are usually killed off by one of the more hostile aliens not long after they do decide to sign up with you.

The other problem with Ascendancy is the mediocre combat AI that the computer uses. Instead of employing Incredibly Clever Tactics (tm) to smash your fleet to a pulp, the AI rushes your ships and planets like brain-dead lemmings and open fire as soon as they are in range of a target, regardless if you have (or don't have) superior firepower at your disposal. And the AI will always choose to fight to the death, and it will never make "strategic withdrawals" under any circumstance. Also, the AI has a completely nonsensical method of building structures on the surface of a planet (for example, it will build a factory on a square that enhances research).

The Bottom Line
If you happen to find a copy of Ascendancy available for purchase somewhere, I would recommend that you pick it up. It's quite fun.... just as long as you don't mind the less than strong AI that's present in the game. Besides, the soundtrack that this game sports is worth the price of admission alone.

The Good
This game kept me awake for days and nights, until finally I beat it on a very dense quadrant, peaceful galaxy, and playing as the Govorom (efficient planets, it's better to have a few quick shipbuilding planets than a lot of slow ones)

The aliens are creatively made, each one having a different ability: block starlanes, compress time, turn planets into eden, instant research, invulnerability for a day, infinite population, etc. This should give a different playing experience, but it doesn't, most of these qualities are worthless/unnecessary against the very clever AI.

The Tech tree is 3-D, zoomable and rotatable. Each node may have multiple roots and multiple children - technologies are creatively diversified and scientifically believable.

The research through the discoveries made at buried alien sites is rather unbalanced. You may end up having a very powerful weapon/shield/artifact, but a weak power source - rendering it unusable in a given ship (all your ship power may never be enough for that hyperwave nullifier). Some weapons do not require power, and there is no relation between weapon strength, power used and the tech level.

There's a graphical representation of power used/produced when building ships, instead of plain numbers. Each ship is unique in its design, making easier to correct errors. There's no way of telling how a device will precisely work (i.e. range, strength, power used) in the field.

Combat is well-made and AI is competent. Lots of times I saw it making a retreat or blocking the starlane to its systems (even though you can't tell what the effective range of your weapons is.)

The Galaxy looks huge because of the very restrictive starlane system. Often, you'll spend hundreds of days marching through them and finally arrive in a system very near to your home planet (but the AI forgot to place a starlane between the stars).

It's fun to use your special power when it finally arrives (after 150,68 or 83 days)

The Bad
It's very, very, very boring after you set 7-10 colonies to get reports EVERY day about finished constructions. Some have free pop, others don't, to go there and instruct them to build another facility on another coloured area

So, you automate most of the planets and concentrate on 1-2 to grow and become ship-builders, only to see that all the other planets filled up with lots of missile launchers, surface shields and orbital shields, so you have to scrap all obsolete facilities and let the AI to build modern ones. Later you see that the very clever AI again filled them all with obsolete/unnecessary tech on the wrong colour tiles and forgot to expand population.

So, you got a ship,right? Filled with lots of starlane engines to make the painful assault on the enemy located at the END of a very long array of starlanes. But the AI slips some ships through the lines and occupies some of your less-defended, new worlds. So your new ships get scraped because of the loss of star systems.

In order to win, you need only to hold 2/3 of the quadrant OR all alien home systems. In a very dense galaxy this will take thousands of days.

If you have the antagonizer AI and play in a hostile galaxy, aliens will get allied with you. Park some of their ships in your systems, make a force build-up there, roam the galaxy in search for undefended planets and then declare war.

When building ships, the AI NEVER uses shields and has a good preference for obsolete weapons and devices.

The Bottom Line
Good classic space game, has a good feeling compared to Master of Orion (1, 2 or 3) and realistically-made physics, technologies and time scale (if you consider each day equal to one year, actually).

There is lots of micromanagement, the AI behaves strangely and it takes a lot of patience to win.

The Good
Sincerely, the music. Personal taste, I guess, but sometimes I found myself playing Ascendancy because of hearing the music meanwhile. Not only it’s pleasing to hear, but fits excellently in the futuristic background.

To the best of my knowledge, Ascendancy introduced innovative features to the 4X family, leaving the path set by Moo. Star systems had a tactical map for their own and included several planets, I really liked the 3D environment, and so the planet management system (planets divided in regions, each with its own characteristics, a facility for each region), instead of the Civ model. Also the races were very original and imaginative, each with its specific background, and even its own victory conditions; the tech tree featured also very creative technologies, and lots of toys were at your disposal to enrich ship designing.

The Bad
I felt somewhat disappointed by the lack of race customization: after playing Moo2, I missed it; the races, in fact, were and played the same except for a unique special ability: no other bonuses / penalties; the story and background was rich and interesting, and each race had a particular victory condition, but I found it lacking for the replay value. The Star Lanes / Red Links were another curious idea (points that connect star systems and are needed to travel between them), but restricted too much travel and exploration; a good idea could have been make the travel easier between them, but not forcing to use them.

Wars were not the strong point of Ascendancy (not only for the AI): although the 3D movement in ship combat was, again, another good idea, the rest botched it: small ships are virtually useless, since they cost the same to maintain as large ones. And for tactical combat, quickly becomes a matter of taking the weapon with the bigger range. Why? Because there are no attack/defense values: all weapons shot automatically. The bigger the ship, the better the range and power, and the battle is won; for sure. Worse even is ground combat: compare the number of Invasion Modules with the number of Ground Defense facilities: the side which has more wins; automatically.

Although graphics were decent, the game was full of black backgrounds and dark empty screens that gave the game a dry feeling. Visuals really contrast with the music (very, very good, indeed).

Another botch (and I don’t know why designing it that way) was the trade / exchange system. You, of course, can exchange techs and maps with other races… but you must give ALL your techs and maps for ALL the tech and maps of the other race: no negotiation, no deals. Even worse: you can’t know which techs or maps has the other.

And mix all the bad with the AI… one of the worst ever seen in a game. Enemies seemed not to know how Star Lanes work, since the often got stuck in a system, instead of attacking. In tactical combat, was not rare to see an enemy ship still, waiting, while you crushed it with your (more range) weaponry. A patch was released to correct AI problems, but since I didn’t played it, I don’t know if it really worked.

The Bottom Line
Designers tried to innovate, and that’s not only good but essential. Ascendancy shines in good ideas (and some bad ones, though), but are not well reflected in the game. This doesn’t mean the game is not enjoyable: it can provide a pleasant gaming experience, but not for too long mainly because for the AI. I liked the game very much when I played it… until I got bored of vanquishing fleet after fleet and planet after planet. Ascendancy left a good impression to me because of some of its originality… but an idea is not enough. This could have been a high-top game, but the chance was missed.

The Good
The scope and the execution were excellent in general -- this was one of the first space games that really depicted depth in space battles. The graphics were good, as was the sound and music. Gameplay was also good, if not totally revolutionary.

The Bad
Totally incompetent AI kills the game. It has no multiplayer, so you're stuck with the AI. The first 500 days or so of the game are exciting, but after that, it becomes far too easy to kill the computer, who just sits there.

The Bottom Line
It was so close, you might just pick it up if you can find it to see the pretty sights. Don't expect to get the longevity you can out of MOO 2, though.

The Good
I loved this game. I'm not a major fan of strategy, but I found this game so amazing and addictive, I found myself playing it for hours and hours at a time. The amount of control you have over each individual colony (i.e. placing buildings; orbital structures, etc.) is incredible, and it's automation features allow you to shift some control to the computer. The music is, with the possible exception of games like Myst and Riven, probably the best I've ever heard in any computer game.

The Bad
It can get a little repetitive after you've played it for a while... Each game pretty much starts out in the exact same way. It's only after you've played for a while that things really start getting interesting. Also, the game's AI is really bizarre... It always insists on moving enemy ships in huge groups, and, when attacking, they will behave in a rather odd fashion. Finally, as spectacular as the music is, there's only one or two tracks, and it just plays over and over again, so it can get a little annoying at times.

The Bottom Line
The most addictive game of all time. If you like strategy, get this game now! :)

The Good
Graphically beautiful, with a nice tech tree and plenty of interesting structures to build on and around your planets. The galaxy is modeled in three dimensions, which (as far as this reviewer knows) was a first in this genre. There are a lot of races to choose from, and the game itself can be customized extensively, so in theory you could play it forever.

The Bad
Politics and diplomacy are minimal, and ship design and combat are extremely lacking -- basically, the bigger the ship the better, so there aren't really any interesting tradeoffs to make. The three dimensional galaxy helps cover up the weak AI opponent, since the jumpgate system forces you to move through bottlenecks and generally limits you to frontal assaults. The races are many, but they just don't have a whole lot of personality when compared to those in Master of Orion.

The Bottom Line
There are good things about Ascendancy, but too many bad things along with them. I recommend that you resist the temptation to pick up this game, and stick to MOO and MOO2 instead.

The Good
There are lots of space conquest sims on the market, but "Ascendancy" is the most different of the bunch.

It's not much different from most space conquest sims except that this game offers REALLY different races; as opposed to just "this race gets a slight defense bonus, this race gets a slight ground combat bonus," Ascendancy races play very differently and, (the coolest thing about the game), have victory conditions for each race that don't involve conquest. For one race, you win if you can convince everyone to be at peace with everyone else!

The Bad
Planet management is very, very repetitive and boring. It's good stuff but there's just too much repetition.

The game's major drawback, though, is the astoundingly bad AI. Enemies are mind-bogglingly dumb and overly easy to defeat.

The Bottom Line
I know it's bad English, but this is the most unique take on the genre I've ever seen. Worth playing.

The Good
This game has more "soul" than almost any other PC game. By that I mean something like the integration of graphics, music, and content to generate a deep sense of the game's personality or atmosphere. The graphics are amazing for 1995. I never get tired of the music, which is very spacey but also a little like an old Morricone soundtrack. It's got a great-looking and easy to use 3D star map, and 21 species with cool pictures and their own musical themes (which you only get to hear for a minute).

As a reviewer wrote elsewhere, this is the most low-stress of all strategy games. You never feel hurried, and apparently you can keep playing indefinitely. Some players won't appreciate this.

The Bad
There's no way to know what a new item DOES before getting it, so no basis for a decision on which technology to research.

The help-click feature is a joke, compared to games where it's done well, like the Heroes of Might & Magic series where you can right-click on practically anything and get useful information.

As everyone has pointed out, all interactions with computer opponents are clunky.

I suppose this is asking too much of the programmers, but after the mind-blowing diversity of the species descriptions, gameplay-wise they're just about identical. Tree people, giant amoebas, and microscopic parasites all build the same industrial-style planet improvements and research the same technologies.

The Bottom Line
Beautiful, compelling, somewhat flawed space-conquest strategy game.

The Good
Simple to get a game started, many choices in races, each with many different abilities, some with research, some builders, some travelers, some invaders. Chamachies and Nimbuloids are my favorites, but telepaths are good too. The starmap and tech tree have excellent graphics. Each technology has a function, it can be fun trying it. The ruins on some planets can give you an edge in research, just helps keep one jump ahead of the others. I like to set most planets to auto, and concentrate on 1 or 2 for heavy industry.

Patchnote: I recommend it. The game gets a real boost with it, enemies do things they never did before, they play MUCH more aggressive (I got my butt kicked first time). Moby has a link to find it. You can still play the original, or use the patch. Cheat codes available, too, but I haven't tried them.

The Bad
After several games, you develop a method, and the lustre wears thin. OK, the AI is weak, see Patchnote above.

The Bottom Line
A fun game that can entertain you for hours.

The Good
Well, for one, the game itself is magnificent - as addictive as Master of Orion with some original twists. It's not quite as elaborate as MOO but is good never the less; the music is short but very good and so are the graphics. The interface is very well-made (mouse controlled) and the research tree rocks.

The Bad
Hmm... could get boring at times, but that's it.

The Bottom Line
Sort of a Master of Orion made by another company.