The Battle of Sol

Default keybinds are ultra confusing and don't follow any kind of easy to remember logic. Flight controls are wonky as heck. Hard pass.

Cool little indie project reminds me of the old Xwing series. Minor glitches but so did Xwing. Note: This is pretty much just a remake of the first half of Sol: Exodus. And it also ends on a cliffhanger. Hopefully the devs don't abandon the series.

I had an absolute BLAST with this game. Really fun simple space combat game. The voice acting is entertaining. At first I wondered but later I became sure that some is done way over the top as a satirical homage to the old greats like Wing Commander. For example, you can easily tell who the bad guys are because of the voice acting. Also, the banter between your squad mates is very often hilariously cringe but on-purpose. It's one fun game, no doubt about it.

Huh, go figure. They took a fun little game (Sol: Exodus) and made it less fun. Then they make you play part of the game as the bad guys. Hard pass for me. Play Sol:Exodus instead. It's a short game but a lot of fun.

Sadly can't recommend it since the controls are a complete mess both on KB/M and Controller.

Bad UI, Bad controls, glitchy (currently that star from the title screen is frozen on my screen in the center of view so I basically can't see what's under my crosshair anymore), crashed twice, forgettable story, very repetitive gameplay...

Stay clear of this crap.

"The Battle of Sol" is a spaceship game with no open world or RPG features - it´s a sequence of missions where you must do what you´re told with the gear you´ve been given.
Right off the bat I liked how the devs tried to input personality into the characters, especially with humor in the dialogues - I have heard pretty dull dialogues in other games lately.
I loved the fighter takeoff, it really gives you a sense of speed.
I also liked the sound effects of the engine and of the lasers. The cockpit instruments and indicators are great, also. I like the overall graphics, I don´t know why other reviews disliked or "meh" them.
But the ship controls are so different from what I am currently playing that I will have to finish my current, ongoing space sims before hopping into this one, so that I don´t get confused. Good thing is that you can remap the key bindings, which I will do eventually. I like to match ship controls throughout all the games as much as I can.
There is a feature called "slide", where you essencially turn off the engine and drift in space. I think this is the substitute for the strafe, which is non-existent - actually, you don´t use WASD to pilot, which is very very weird.
So "slide" is mouse right-button, while "missile" is F. Looks like this slide thing is important. And "enemy target" is 2. Why? Because R, T and G are used as a means of allocating energy to after-burners, weapons or hull integrity. This is a big deal, too. The energy gets depleted quite fast, so you have to manage the allocation in-battle.
I don´t think I´ll remap the keys after all...
And I got to play for the other side, too! At least once, as far as I know. The enemy - a kind of Oriental/Middle-East/religious people in red-lighted ships - can hack systems; you have to memorize a series of letters that appear and then input them to hack. I imagine that doing this mid-battle will be hard.
Anyway, it is different, it is promising. Five missions in, I like it so far.
UPDATE: ten missions in, + or -. You keep switching between two different ships, with two different characteristics, so you never have time to get really good in neither of them.
And now I´m at a mission where I have to:
1) scan and destroy like a dozen of APD (stationary radar transmitters or something like it);
2) fight an old foe, who´s in a huge gunship;
3) fight off several waves of fighters pestering you.
Detail: the gunship has, like, fifteen turrets, and you can only do damage to the gunship if you destroy each turret, and you can only destroy a turret if it´s locked on your targeting system, even if you´re face to face to it, super-close; (and when you try yo lock on one turret, all turrets stay highlighted at the same time, so it´s super hard to know which one you locked on, and even if it´s on the side facing you or the other side) and the gunship keeps moving frantically, so you´r always facing the rear engines of it and, since THERE´S NO STRAFE in the game, it´s almost impossible to circumvent the ship and position yourself better.
Detail 2: the fighters pestering you appear out of nowhere, always behind you, and:
a) they have missiles;
b) you don´t have any missile, ever.
So it´s super hard to the level of unfairness.
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I´m still marking it as "recommend" because I´ll give it another try later, maybe tomorrow, but I´m almost rage quitting it.
So I´m about to change the position of my thumb.
And don´t "git gud" me. Games are supposed to be fun, not annoying, not irritating. I´ve been performing well in this game. I´ve already completed 19 games this year. I simply don´t want to play the same level over and over again just because the game was designed for children who can spend a whole afternoon playing one level. This game is not even that engaging.
chances are the only memory I´ll have of this game is this moment where I´m mad when I was supposed to be happy.

UPDATE 2 AND FINAL:
Just as I found the strategy to beat the big gunship, the game started cheating by means of bugs.
Bug 1 - the ship disappeared when its hull was at 50% and never returned. I spent more than half an hour going to and fro, to no avail.I had to start all over.
Bug 2- this happened four times: every time I was about to destroy the ship, a message of "warning: you are leaving the mission area" appeared and in some of the times, I was very near the NPC ship, so the ship can leave the mission area while I cannot? Anyway, no matter which direction I went to avoid this, I ended up being destroyed, losing the mission.
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Sorry, I cannot recommend a game that prevents you to progress by being impossible to play.

I would definitely reccomend this game to anybody who is a fan of accessible space shooters. There are no complicated controls and functions that serve very little purpose(At least from my experience - this might differ for someone else) and has an adequate story for the price. There are very clearly defined character roles throughout, which I personally thought were well written and served a purpose.

My only complaint is the lack of control over the 'drift' of your ship and maneuverability, which often results in you crashing into a frigate, something which can result in your instant death depending on the ship you are piloting and the speed you are going at.

Overall, though i've not played much of it so far, I would highly recommend this, especially at the sale price(69p at my time of writing - 02/08/17). Despite my current playtime, I could easily see myself finishing this. For reference I use a mouse and keyboard, not a joystick, and I have had no problems.

I have a particular love for all space games, and I buy them all.

This game I got on a sale, and was not expecting much.

It has been said in previous reviews, it reminds me of the beginnings of Battle Star Galactica, remnants of humans trying to survive and grow. So there is story there.

Now to combat:

The combat, after learning through the beginning missions (and honestly the game has a steady and appropriate learning curve) is fun and engaging. Eventually the player is able to control units, they aren't useless, and it’s a fun game. More than an arcade sense of space game fun and not so in depth like Elite Dangerous or X Rebirth

You want a fun game, that you don't mind spending a few hours getting to learn and play, a game that has a believable story with a sort of purpose coupled with Freelancer-like combat in FPS view, give this game a chance. Good potential, developers have great ideas. I wonder what else they can accomplish with more support.

I give it a thumbs up, at the very least get it on a discount if you like space combat games, you will not be disappointed given you play a few hours to learn.

This game fully captures the feeling of the old space shooters I loved like Wing Commander, X-Wing/Tie Fighter and Freespace - recommended for fans of those games.

The production's polish and narrative are not perfect but the core game mechanic is nicely in place. I see potential to tell a better single player story, with better delivered wingman communications on the solid base of this game.

I have not played with the editor yet but suspect I may talk about what can be done with this game in the community once I have finished the 2 campaigns I purchased for a reasonable price. I have spent a bit of time getting it running perfectly in stereoscopic 3D and it looks great, with some shader’s having to be turned down or off.

I don't normally do this so I apologize in advanced. I will try to be as nice as possible....
1) Game looks pretty nice, cap ships look cool and at first I thought "wow this is gonna be cool!"

2) Hotas support is a real pain. I don't want to go into too much detail here but it took me hours to setup. I gave up trying honestly cuz I bought this game a few days after release. Now finally today I dedicated another 3 hours to trying to to setup my Hotas. I have CH fighterstick and CH pro throttle. It is SOOOO complicated with about 40 different axis choices and it doesn't sense any axis so you must do this manually. Would be easy without the maybe 15 or so subcategories for axis. I have never seen anything this complicated and I have played many space sims. Feels like they just threw HOTAS support in for us and said "you figure it out!". In the end of a 3 hour setup run I finally stopped trying to designate my throttle and rolls to any axis. I just shut them off and found out how to designate those controls to the keyboard. In other words, old school 90s wing commander style play from here out, Stick and keyboard. Still, I was determined to give this an honest try.

3) Sounds Really rough here. When overheating you hear a loud "ping!". Thought I could turn that effect down by turning sound fx down and leaving music and master volume up but nope. Just turns down other sounds but that damn ping sound stays loud as hell! The weapon sounds are also really bad here. No real gun sounds and no real missile sounds. One good thing I will say is the voice acting is pretty cool. Well done in that department.

4) Gameplay. Really simple, boring fighting. Made it 10 missions in. Only way you can tell you are being attacked is a red color in the corner of your ship. No feel of impact or sound effects to help you know. Also on the flipside it's hard as hell to tell you are hitting the enemy ship other than they visually take damage. Even after all the HOTAS nightmares the joystick randomly rolls while making fast movements. The CH Fighterstick CANNOT ROLL so this is a software problem with the game. This never happened in any space sims I ever played before. Very annoying. Also everytime to fire your guns the whole screen blurs up and shakes like crazy. Not cool man....

5) Summary Guys, I thank you for trying to make a fun single player space combat game. I miss these types of games dearly as a big fan of the glory days of Wing Commander, Freespace, X Wing and Tie Fighter. However, this time...mission not accomplished. I am very sorry to write a review like this. But the fact that I paid money for this game is a damn shame. I have played fan made mods of Wing Commander and Freespace games that are honestly 10 times as good as this. Those were made by non pros. Examples would be Wing Commander Saga, Wing Commander Standoff, and about a dozen Freespace mods. I do however hope you guys try again sometime soon. But you need to take your time and make a good game. Make the game interesting. Instead of just checkpoints all the time give us real destinations. The guns need to feel like guns. Missles need to be improved greatly. The art style you guys used was awesome. IT LOOKS SWEET!! Also, next time you build a space combat game, make it with the HOTAS in mind from the beginning. Don't just tack in on after the fact. Space combat games died with Freelancer and I think a big part of that was the fact that this is the beginning of mouse space combat games. Alright, that's all I have to say. Once again, I'm really sorry to the creators if this sounds harsh......but it's all the truth. I respect you a lot for trying but this has been a terrible gaming experience for me.

Good try, but the joystick mapping is just horrible. If you feel like wasting 2hours trying to figure out which one of the numerous axis is the one you want, then this game is for you.


After a long time, Rudders are still not supported. Mapping your thrusters to the sliders on a HOTAS is still a nightmare (you have to figure out which axis is used, and for hotas, bind the reverse speed to the 2nd axis in reverse..????).

Once all is finally mapped, you'll see the controls are not natural at all. It's like using a Gamepad stick emulator for the flight, it feels very poor when flying :(

Not exactly a great game, but still a big improvement over the initial release named Sol: Exodus. Still pretty short game (6-8 hours top). It suffers with some problems - limited replay value, cheesy characters and lines (I dont mind writing that much though), bad voice acting, cliffhanger ending, sometimes a bit stiffy controls and nonexistent ship customisation. Yet combat is kinda entertaining, mission variety (while not great) was good enough to keep me entertained through all of the short game. While some of the Freespace 2 mods are actually made better than this, we really lack games in this genre and I still had reasonable fun with it and developers are active on steam forums and game updates. So I will give it thumb up. Though I would wait for a sale.

Bit Planet has done some very cool things with this game.

Normally, I would hit the good points first, but I want to get my complaints out of the way.

On the plot side, the characterizations of the different pilots can be pretty cartoony, to the point of things becoming unbelievable. Lieutenants have an alarming tendency to order captains (and even generals) around, and it's done with complete impunity. It was hard for me to suspend my disbelief in that area. Further, there is an outsized amount of profanity used by a particular pilot, and it seems to be gratuitous rather than character establishing. (Maybe it's just me.)

Speaking technically, the game does have some nagging, but mercifully un-fatal bugs. The first is that the Ingress/ hacking loop still delivers invalid codes in some situations. It's incredibly frustrating to select what should be the right code, only to have it fail...and be taking fire from a number of turrets at the same time. Also, there's an occasional graphics glitch where a "sun" overlay gets plastered all over the center of your screen. (The problem can be quickly fixed by selecting a different screen resolution, and then reverting.)

Every once in a while, a rough edge in overall experience design makes a glaring appearance. The most notable of these was a mission where you have to save some transports that are dropping through atmosphere. The success/ fail conditions for the mission are not at all clear at first, although the success condition is so low that I suppose you can shrug your shoulders a bit.

My final negative point is that "jinking" in a tough dogfight doesn't seem to be possible. If an enemy fighter succeeds in getting you "zeroed," you either have afterburners available for escape, or you're in big trouble. The only turning option you have seems to be heading directly toward your attacker, which lets them hammer you several more times before they overshoot. Hopefully, you're not in a crowd.

But the above paragraph leads me into what's really, really good about the game:

Energy management.

Really.

There are lots of other space sims that give you the ability to transfer energy amongst three systems, such as shields, weapons, and afterburner. In every other such game that I've played, that energy management is fairly secondary. In "Battle Of Sol," it's front and center in a very neat and satisfyingly challenging way. Especially when flying the Hades(?), each energy reserve is pretty shallow. You have to keep your head in the ETS game, or you will be in enormous trouble. This lends a nice boost to the tension of combat, especially because the basic dogfighting isn't all that hard.

The criticality of the energy management also helps to create noticeable differentiation between the Hades and the Arrow fighters. Arrows don't let you manage energy transfer manually, and the afterburners are "all or nothing," but the regen time is fast...for two out of three systems. The bugbear you get to wrestle with is that shield regeneration isn't under your control - you have to escape from combat almost entirely if your Arrow gets mangled. This "personality difference" really keeps you on your toes, and is a great way to add variety where a whole bunch of different ships aren't a gameplay option.

Another great choice by the developers is the need to master the "slide" mechanic. In other games, the ability to keep your heading while changing your orientation is handy, if not necessarily required. In this game, you'll either get it or get torn to shreds. Giving thought to your heading and then engaging a slide is the only thing that will keep you effective against gun platforms and capital ships. Once you do get it, you'll feel very much more like an ace pilot, especially since you'll actually be able to do some good.

Another thing I like was the (seeming) overall homage to the reimagined "Battlestar Galactica." The UCS missions often feature percussion-heavy music that would fit right in with BSG, and the Hades guns seem to behave - and sound - very much like what you would find on a Colonial Viper. Maybe this was all intentional, and maybe it wasn't...but it's fun either way, and made me smile.

Bit Planet has really done some fine work here, and I think they could build a real challenger to Wing Commander and Freespace if they keep iterating and extending what they've got already. This particular game isn't an instant classic, mosty because it's not deep enough for that, but the seeds do seem to be there.

Review: 2/5

In this game you pilot small fighter craft (think battlestar galactica style fighters) in narrated and linear space combat missions.

The story and voice acting are boring and laughable at best. Graphics feel quite dated for a game released in 2015.

As far as gameplay goes, the game attempts to make you feel like you are part of epic fleet vs fleet battles when in reality you are pointing your ship's crosshairs from red circle to red circle easily picking off enemy fighter OR pulling your hair out trying to shoot small turrets on large ships while dealing with the worst controls out of any space sim I've played. I attempted one mission atleast 10 times as I repeatedly would ram into the ship I was shooting at because you have to get within 2 meters of your target to even think about shooting these small turrets accurately. Too bad that's again rediculously frustrating to do when your ship weaves and bobs all over the place.

Overall not recommended. Would need a serious overhaul.

Recommendation - Not so much (After about 5 + hours)

I love Space Sims so I try a new one every now and again. This is not Freespace2, Freelancer, Wing Commander or the Alpha of Star Citizen. This is a mission to mission game where a single failure and you cannot move on.

Pros
1. Easy to play

Cons
1. On the rail format for story - (You pass or fail a mission but cannot move on if you fail)
2. No customization for ships.
3. No choice for load out.
4. Cardboard props for characters.
5. No interest in re-play.
6. Voice acting... Meh.

So why should you play. Well to be honest if you need to blow stuff up without caring of story or characters than this can get you by.

Edit 07/07/2015
Just finished the storyline and the game definitely left me wanting more. The devs are also very responsive, I encountered a bug and it was patched immediately. Another patch dropped today so it is obvious the devs are looking to support this game. Very pleased and looking forward for a continuation of the storyline!


Original Review
This game is an amazing accomplishment because it does something that a lot of these new space fighter games have not done, remind me of the old days. The flight mechanics are straight old school. Many have complained about the lack of strafe but old school games like Wing Commander did not have strafe. Slide however works exactly like it did in Wing Commander 3.

I do have two complaints and please note I have not yet finished the game. The ships, while controlling great, do not feel to have much speed. There are afterburners but they are used up quick, which I do not mind. I just wish there top speed of the craft was higher. My second complaint is that I have only been allowed to pilot two different fighters. Again I have yet to finish the story line so maybe I will get additional starfighters as the game progresses.

If you are a fan of old school starfighters I highly recommend this purchase.

If you are a fan of any of the following:
-Wing Commander
-Freespace
-XWing

GET THIS GAME! These guys understand how to make a fun arcadey space sim without mining or economics. There's dogfighting, there's really big ships, and there's space debris. Pew pew pew! Enjoy!

After playing five hours of the game I can highly recommend it. I highly enjoy space sim like Strike Suit Zero, Wing Commander and star citizen

Story is enjoyable and kept me entertained were playing the flight controls on an Xbox controller where a little slippy for my liking but I quickly learned to adjust and the art style was pleasant to look at

Just picked this up, played the 1st 3 missions (died on 3rd). I have to say, nice job guys. You captured that Wing Commander feel, with an interesting story. First two missions are training, but fear not, it ramps up quickly in the 3rd, I got overwhelmed pretty quick, but it was fun.
Well back to the game, just wanted to give this it's due.

It's a fun old school space sim. With about 70 min of game play I'm liking it, it was well worth the $15 I paid for it. A lot of nostalgia value, feeling like Freespace or Starlancer, on a $15 budget.

But, MY JOYSTICK IS NOT WORKING. I have an X-55 with a set of rudder pedals. The game defaults to using my rudder pedals as the input device - which, for reasons, leaves me spining in space. I'm sure that I can work around but using the whole HOTAS set up is out of the question right now.

That's not a deal breaker though. Although I am I proud HOTAS user that's not the way this game is meant to be played. The game plays more as a arcade then sim. But that's fun.

Bottom line: If you've played through the real old school space games then this is something fun to do.

Just a couple of things...

There are a lot of great things about this game - graphics, story... lots of potential.

That said, flight mechanics and a couple of other things leave A LOT to be desired.

1) No side thrusters - up, down, left or right. Unless I don't understand the controls, you can't control the direction of your ship... only backward or forward. Even Tom Hanks had side thrusters in Apollo 13.

2) Buggy. Sound goes in and out (I've checked my machine and settings.. definitely on the side of the game). You can travel through ship models... I've designed 3d spaceships for games before and this isn't a hard issue to avoid.

I DO recommend this game as it has a lot of potential. I suggest they model their flight mechanics as Allegiance did, which is considered semi-Newtonian.