Lost Empire: Immortals

Daily PC Game Review Score: 6.5 / 10
Game Category: Strategy - 4X, Turn Based
Date: 5 Jan 2011

Lost Empire: Immortals is a truly ambitious science fiction turn-based strategy game  that focuses on the 4X-es - Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate. You start with a single star system with one scout ship and one colony ship. From there, you gradually expand your empire until you meet other alien civilizations. Eventually, you will have to eliminate your enemies through research and military might.

Start your galactic conquest from here

The game was developed by Pollux Gamelabs - a company that is now defunct, but it is still being distributed by Paradox Interactive. My copy was purchased from Gamersgate and has been patched to version 1.0.8 (the patch is available at Paradox Interactive) - volunteer developers were taking the lead to improve the game even beyond the original vision of the game.

Do you want to be Lord of the Ring Galaxy?

There is no denying that Lost Empire: Immortals is truly massive in scope. Which other game allows you to create a galaxy that has up to 5000 systems (with a handful of nebulas thrown in too)? It's truly staggering to be able to control a huge empire comprising of thousands of star systems. Moreover, there are 7 major races and 45 minor races to meet, as well as 11 scientific categories that branch into 150 advances that can be researched.

Tutor me please

The game has a pretty good tutorial which does explain the important concepts in the game as well as to introduce you to the different screens such as: the System Overview screen, the Empire Overview screen, the Fleet Overview screen, the Build screen, the Science screen, the Diplomacy screen, and the Battle View screen.

As you get used to the User Interface (which tends to be lambasted by most reviewers), you will be surprised that you can learn quite a lot just by a few clicks of the mouse. And with that knowledge, you can then make an informed decision to help you in conquering the galaxy.

The birth of my galactic empire

Once you start growing your empire, you may just find that you will not stop. In the center right of the display is a mini window depicting your score vs the other alien races. It gets very competitive and you need some careful planning to catch up and to defeat your opponents. Thrown into the mix are two immortals - Enais and Bythos who will constantly give you missions. These so-called missions are either research targets to be attained, donation of ships, or destruction of a particular target. It pays to be on the good side these immortals.

Building my fleet

I like this game quite a bit (despite some minor problems I encountered), and I find myself returning to it now and then just so I can play a quick round of the "Resource Struggle" galaxy, a randomly generated star map having about 150 star systems with 3 major alien races to fight against. It's quite a cool way to past the time.