It's been a long time since Homeworld, or even Homeworld 2, and many RTS games have tried to recapture the essence of those games in their own way. Stardock does it with Sins of a Solar Empire. First, Sins is 3D when ships move and fight, but 2D when you actually click on them for movement. You can't order them to move along the z-axis like in Homeworld. They move in that direction only if there's something there to attack.

The basic plot of the game is to conquer the galaxy, which you can create. The larger the galaxy, the longer the game and the more chaotic the battles. You can have multiple battles on multiple planets in multiple solar systems. If that sounds confusing, just wait until you actually play it! The AI does handle the combat very well so you don't have to micromanage your fleets. So the only real limitation is how many ships and objects can your PC handle. That limits the size of the game. The interface is easy to use and it's possible to play the game only from the interface screens.

There's three races and they differ enough so that playing as another race changes the strategy. Each race can have several mothership class vessels during one game, and there are several mothership classes available. The game does concentrate on frigate class vessels and there is a lack of destroyers. Decimating the enemie's home planet will defeat the enemy. You'll need a huge amount of siege frigates and have to fight through enemy fleets and planetary defenses.

Yes, you have to gather resources, but it's more of an annoyance than anything else. You'll also have to handle a market economy and the occasional space pirates. You can hire them to attack your enemies, and if you don't, the AI definitely will put a bounty on your head. The AI is very good and concentrates a great deal on building a strong defense. There are fighters in this game, but they move so quickly and are so small, that they are mainly ignored.

The game has good graphics considering that you can have hundreds of ships onscreen at once. The ships do suffer from low polygon count, but make up for it in quality textures. Unlike Homeworld, there's no moving turrets on the vessels. This helps increase the number of ships. There's plenty of particle effects like you would expect in these space RTS games. The game does suffer from the annoying space opera music.

There's online mutiplayer one-on-one or as part of teams. You can even save the multiplayer games and return to them later. If a player drops out, the AI takes over. There's also mods available and a very active community at the Stardock forums. The one major complaint about this game is the very steep learning curve and awful tutorial. Once you overcome that, the game is excellent and we highly recommend it.