Sid Meier's Starships Reviews

Sid Meier's Starships is ranked in the 28th percentile of games scored on OpenCritic.
7 / 10.0
Mar 13, 2015

Fun, quick and light strategy game, Starships is a great introduction to strategic gameplay or for those who don't have time for a longer experience. On its own, it feels shallow and lacks extensive replay value. Not suited to PC, I think Starships will do best on mobile.

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8 / 10.0
Mar 12, 2015

That said, players who opt for a fiscally healthier expenditure will be missing out on a solid Sid Meier experience, since Starships is a space odyssey that's definitely worth your time.

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Mar 19, 2015

Cranking up the difficulty in Starships and thereby eliminating the margin for error can address shortcomings of the tactical mode, but the strategic mode will always remain simple. Hence the feeling that Starships is more like a mini-game than a fully-fledged title, an observation held up by the game's low asking price of $15.

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7 / 10
Mar 11, 2015

Starships may not be a grand epic like Civilization, but its stripped back design fulfils a purpose. If you normally struggle with the multiple complexities of a 4x strategy game, Starships is a great introduction to the genre. It even offers step-by-step advice at every point if you need it. But for anyone more advanced than total rookie, after a handful of campaigns you'll have seen everything Starships has to offer. Without the usual 4x depth or any multiplayer, Starships lacks the level of replayability. Even though it's priced accordingly, that's still its open exhaust hatch. A couple of afternoons after buying, Starships is likely to be lost among the debris of your unplayed Steam collection.

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Mar 11, 2015

For those looking for something different from the standard "Civ" experience, or something that's an even larger departure than "Beyond Earth" was, this may just be the scratch for said itch.

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7 / 10.0
Apr 2, 2015

Considered on its own, Starships is a little tactical treat. Give it a few hours of your day and you'll be lifted by its modular pieces and its battlefield puzzles. But do not linger: It simply does not have the strength to punch through gravity and carry you to the stars.

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8 / 10.0
Mar 12, 2015

Sid Meier's Starships is a simplistic, strategic and cerebral space version of Civilization, albeit a short one. It's meant to keep your attention for a short amount of time and succeeds in consistently doing so. It does have sprinkles of economic depth like it's Civ brother, but it doesn't demand gamers sit and engulf themselves in the learning process to achieve success. For gamers not wanting to dedicate their entire beings to the Civ games, this might be a worthy substitute.

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3.4 / 5.0
Mar 12, 2015

Slimming down a typically convoluted Sid Meier's strategy game into a more time manageable endeavor for the player is a solid blueprint. Sid Meier's Starships provides a great baseline, but the working draft art, underwhelming sound effects and animation, and unbalanced gameplay keep this title from ever thrusting off the launch pad. It's a fun game that can be a challenge, but requires you to do most of the leg work to make it fun and challenging.

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6 / 10.0
Mar 15, 2015

If you like those days-long Civilization sessions going through thousands of years of human development, the brief sessions of Starships leave you feeling like there's something missing – like you're eating a salad when you really want a hamburger.

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5 / 10
May 14, 2015

Narrower in scope than its grand theme suggests

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Impulsegamer
Josh Wright
Top Critic
2 / 5.0
Mar 18, 2015

Ultimately Sid Meier's Starships feels like a game that might have been great in VGA back in the 90s.

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Mar 11, 2015

Starships condenses Sid Meier's knack for turn-based strategy into a short, two-to-five hour burst of board game-esque tactics that's as satisfying as it is approachable.

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5.5 / 10.0
Apr 10, 2015

Starships would have worked much better as a smaller form release. As it is, it's an underwhelming tack-on to the already forgettable Beyond Earth that feels rushed and unoptimised. Had it been on a tablet things may have been much different.

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40 / 100
Mar 31, 2015

Had the realization of that universe been more fully fleshed out—expansive and deep rather than restrictive and boardgame-like—Spaceships could have found success as a kind of post-human strategy game. Instead it feels lifeless. But not in the existential, gazing-into-the-void-of-space way. More in the way that an aging child realizes that her blanket is just a blanket, and promptly stops caring about it.

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8 / 10.0
Mar 10, 2015

Sid Meier's Starships is a good and replayable turn-based strategy experience that will certainly appeal to lovers of classic science fiction franchises and to those who appreciate the way the leader of Firaxis managed to make player choices relevant.

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Cubed3
Top Critic
5 / 10
Mar 28, 2015

Starships should have rated higher. It would be if Firaxis had bothered to address the simple problems that should have been obvious from day one. Simple things like making full-screen or making the computer's win conditions optional. However, as it is, it's little more than a glorified tablet game a few steps above the company's prior attempt to bring the series to the Nintendo DS way back when. With the fixes, the score would rise easily, especially if it later offers mod support, but as-is… it's just a disappointing miss for something that should have been so easy to get right.

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Mar 21, 2015

'Sid Meier's Starships' is not a quick cash-in completely devoid of creative merit, but nor is it a fitting companion for one of the best strategy titles of last year. At best it is good for a few hours of moderate strategy, although it's probably better played on a mobile device. Still, there are far better strategy games available for mobile, and cheaper than $15 as well.

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