Successfully designing a compelling hands-off strategy game has a number of challenges to overcome. There’s a clash between the inherent need for interactivity and control in gaming as a medium and the difficulties of modeling the limitations of chains of command. Silver Lemur Games’ Stellar Monarch 2 is looking to take another stab in finding a fresh voice in the crowded grand strategy game market.
Stellar Monarch 2 is inspired by Paradox Interactive’s Crusader Kings series and Stellaris, as players take the role of an emperor tasked with managing, developing, and expanding a fledgling interstellar empire. Emperors can expect to set research priorities, engage in diplomacy with alien powers, scheme with noble houses, plan military operations, participate in lawmaking, and engage in subject audiences to define the political direction of the empire. Despite the game’s premise inviting the player to be a more passive ruler, there’ll certainly be plenty of facets to consider.
The original Stellar Monarch had the advantage of being one of the first games to take the Crusader Kings formula into space, though unfortunately it ended up feeling like an undercooked and bland version of Stellaris with too little to do and not enough character interaction and relationships. The game was too repetitive and simple for a game that encapsulates the scale of any good space opera epic. The amateurish Flash game aesthetic design didn’t help with its appeal, as it made the entire experience feel immediately outdated.
Stellar Monarch 2, luckily, looks poised to respond to many of the original’s issues by expanding the buffet of gameplay options, while still maintaining the ruling-from-afar dynamic of a complicated imperial court and system. The first major improvement is the graphical style. It still has a kind of retro and simple design, but this time around it comes across as both informative and charming.
From a gameplay perspective, the most important addition is the inclusion of major noble houses into the gameplay loop – a meaningful counter balance and foil to the absolute power the player’s avatar maintains across the stars. These noble houses have their own relationship to the emperor, command of part of the imperial navy, and generally act as a faction that may end up challenging the player’s decisions leading to interesting political decision-making. While in the current build familial politicking options haven’t been fully implemented yet, it’s immediately apparent that players will need to balance external and internal factors when managing their empire.
Another interesting development in Stellar Monarch 2’s features arsenal is the addition of major planetary structures, such as starbases and fortifications, and strategic weapon construction, like nuclear and chemical arsenals. The latter of these mechanics opens an additional layer of military options for conquest and diplomacy, while the former makes galactic geography and space lanes far more important in both defensive and offensive operations. Space opera grand strategy games can often ignore or simplify planetary and astrological geography and terrain too much, even though regardless of the setting’s scale, the landscape (or spacescape in this case) will always play an integral role, so it’s great to see Stellar Monarch 2 recognizes this element of strategy game design.
There are also a number of exciting features that, while not yet implemented, look to include new external factors for strategic consideration, most importantly with an expanded suite of diplomacy options. This helps ensure players vary their attention and decision-making in a given playthrough so that they not only consider the whims of their nobles, but also opportunities outside their borders.
The developer has also indicated that Stellar Monarch 2 will include a number of scenarios to invite players to switch up their strategic approach to the game. This is another great way of freshening up the potential monotony of repetitive gameplay from painting the map in your empire’s color.
On the whole, Stellar Monarch 2 definitely looks to be a marked improvement over its predecessor, though there are a number of concerning issues that give pause even its current Early Access state. Balancing, the ever present issue of any and all strategy games, rears its ugly head here and threatens to make the game’s decision-making component irrelevant and meaningless as economic and political resources seem way too easy to obtain and there aren’t enough systems to apply said resources towards. Granted, as Stellar Monarch 2 develops and promised mechanics are implemented, a good portion of these balancing concerns will inevitably be addressed.
Another issue is that the economy and squadron composition features seem to be quite surface-level and poorly explained. There’s a lack of empire-wide infrastructure projects, aside from unimpressive food and mineral extractors, and in-fleet ship interaction is obtuse and unclear in how different configurations affect naval strength.
Altogether, Stellar Monarch 2 is a relatively straightforward strategy game that does an admirable job of boiling down the empire management process and experience into an enticing and digestible package. The game has a solid skeleton laid out that already indicates a massive update to the original game’s premise and now the developer needs to put meat on those bones and make sure everything fits together well. Stellar Monarch 2 has certainly piqued our interest and it will be interesting to track how far it will go.
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