Battle for Orion 2

WAR!!!!1!!1!1!1!!

This game is very simplistic and boring. After 8 hours I could not take it anymore!

A fun gem of a game.

Pros:
+ Nice story
+ Smooth game play

Cons:
- Short campaign

It's like Circle Empires in space, with story and mission design similar to Creeper World 3. I liked it.

This was better than I expected. Poor mans sins of a solar empire with a very slow tutorial but at least a map maker that works?! Pick your battles and take this for what it is. It's not very deep, but its a really solid 1 nighter.

Look, I get this is a labor of love by the dev. Definitely a decent game for a new dev. Playable, I had fun the first few missions. All things said and done, you're probably getting a handful of hours in this, which isn't worth $15 to me. I found particle fleet emergence to be a mildly similar game, that had much of what this was lacking.

The gameplay become boring after 10 or so map. Build a big army, max upgrade, and you can crush your enemy.

Solid game. What I'd call simple RTS. They get rid of the extra bits and let you play a good rock paper scissors RTS. Overall game is solid, but not perfect. Generally there is never a purpose to using the lower tier ships under any circumstances. All ships travel teh same speed so maneuvering is generally not valuable. But none of these are deal breakers. Its quite a bit of fun to bring your doomstack and smash the enemy.

Ok, well, First off let me say that this has the potential to be a really fun game... I haven't played the campain yet only skirmish type scenario. The Galaxy can be really large but only a max of 500 command points. Well that might be fine but... and a big but! Small ships take 1-5 supply or command points. Capitol ships take 50. I Had a maximum sized fleet of 15-20 vessels in the late game. All research completed all systems maxed out. More metal and research powers than god himself. Only not enough competent officers to crew said vessels... Perhaps the refinery ships count toward your unit cap? As far as I can tell there is no way to determine how many I have unless I count them 1by1... But even if I did there isnt any way to self destruct them. ecspecially after the Asteroids and moons have been mined completely away. One would like to shift system focus to more factories or turrets... Speaking of turrets... there is one that you can build over the stars in your upgraded systems. Lots of HP EXTREME rate of fire! Try killing that with 20 ships max... Yeah right! Fun but so empty of ships! I like the gameplay and the pace.

I suggest Having a look see at raising the unit cap, DRASTICALLY. Like with these graphics you could field like 10000 ships or more! With the Ludicris economy you can get going on the bigger maps there is no reason that you couldnt' afford that many ships. Needs some work but all in all fun. just Need more SHIPS!

Running Battle for Orion 2 on Linux. Clicking on planets doesn't seem to work right. Is it single click? double-click? right-click? sometimes clicking on planet brings up the controls to build a module, sometimes it doesn't. Makes the game very frustrating.

Great game but it won't let me go past the first campaign level, it shows me the screen where I press exit, it's the only button, takes me back to main menu and I can't click on anything after that

This is a fun little game. I've been playing on and off again. I had a small memory issue, which was fixed by changing the game to play as administrator.
Unfortunately, the community is a little quiet, which is sad, because the game is full of customizable content.

Also, right now (Aug 30, 2018) the shared map content is offline. ***EDIT : It's fixed, Hubs fixed it! YAY!*** However, you can still post your maps for people to play on the game forums : http://infloopgames.com/forums/

Definitely worth the money if you get it on sale (which I did).

This appears to be a great game so far, with an editor Sins of a Solar Empire could only dream about. The sale price of $1.50 is ridiculously low of course, but I cannot recommend full price until I have played it more. But the interface so far is logical and help menus are just good enough. Just moving through the tutorial right now, but would recommend immediate purchase at sale price, and will add any comments regarding a full-price buy after more time with the game.

Okay, I need to give this a thumbs-down for full price. As someone else stated, it is a very, very simplified version of Sins but has a campaign. I was hoping on the editor, but unless I missed something you are on your own and it is not very intuitive.

After playing for a bit, my initial lukewarm feelings have changed to negative ones. There are a few glaring problems with this game that do not get better with time. Worst is the white text on light-blue background icons, which are barely possible to read, with no way to change the colors. The other problem that I have with the game is the endless back and forth of battle, that is caused by the game mechanics. The game can easily get to a stalemate, where both the player and the AI have the same number of units, and the AI will wait for your unsuccessful attack with tons of defense turrets. It causes the end of the level to drag on forever, because you can't throw all your units at once, or the AI will attack your undefended flank. For a simple game of moving tiny dots around the screen, this is a high asking price without a lot of depth. Take a look at Galcon 2 for another steam game that has fast play, with similar mechanics.

Another weird thing about the game is how you can only see half the map at one time. So, with no minimap nor shortcuts for moving around, it is entirely possible for the AI to sneak attack or start building covertly in a sector you thought was secure. There are a lot of little things that made me wonder what happened. Like, why are the keyboard controls so wonky, and there is also no way to change them? Makes no sense.

I played halfway through the campaign on ubuntu linux 16.04 & 18.04 & 19.10 with radeon mesa drivers. The game uses the Unity game engine, and it uses the keyboard and mouse for controls. I really tried to enjoy the game, because I thought the campaign story was pretty cool, but the levels felt repetitive with just one new unit each time to change the grind. The game was on sale for a dollar, but I feel like I paid for it with time, instead. (Was there really a Battle for Orion 1, and what was that game like? Geez..)

Oh the game is fun I give you that but the fact that the AI auto starts with all the research done, all their planets kitted out, and full fleets make it too hard to beat a simple mission.

Either make the AI start out with no units and research done or add a dffficulty setting because unless you're an RTS vet or a Save Scum pro its a bitch to get past missions after mission 4.

Oh, once you get a fleet of ships rolling the mission is done but before that happens you would be 10 or 15 minutes into the mission with only 2 solar systems trying to build while the AI send 50 to 200 ships at you on a set interval destorying most of your building everytime they attack.

Heck the AI doesn't even need to be nerfed. Just make it that the refinery ships doesn't use pop cap and the game becomes 50% more easy.
Because if the AI takes out your refinerys you're pretty much F.U.C.K.E.D.

The eco system runs on SC and PA rules so have none is game ending for you and having them use pop cap too is just limiting the amount of ships you can put of and the amount of refinery ships you have mining too.

Simple but deep RTS.

Easy to pick up, and somewhat dull at first, but it soon warms up and really stretches you strategic skills.

Like a simplified Sins, but with a scripted campiagn thats worth playing.

I have had this game for a few months, It was a purchase I made based on a recommendation from another game developer.
I don't recommend it, there are 1 or 2 missions where the difficuly is ramped up to a point that it becomes boring. The difficulty should be either selectable or should stay about the same thru the whole campaign.

They have a community map page but nothing has been added to it on months. I believe the same 4 maps are there that were there when I bought this game back in may.

Its strange that you get games that are not particularly good and thousands of people buy them.
This is not a bad RTS and it ticks the boxes for RTS so why are not more people getting involved with this game. In the sale this worth a buy.
When you start the game there is the campaign mission which is basically the tutorial which gradually leads you into the game. You are given missions that gradually get harder until you are playing the full game. I don’t usually like tutorials but I learnt very quickly and enjoyed it. The second option is to play the skirmish mode which is called “Battle Simulator”. In this you get a nifty Map Generator with from 2 to 40 stars to set and up to 200 planets. It gives from 1 to 5 AIs these can be set from very easy to brutal for a total 7 options. Options for all the resources .starting Metal, Base Metal storage, Starting Research, Base Research storage and Base Command points . The upgrades can be set. Module Upgrade 1-4, Economy Upgrade1-10.Military Upgrade 1-10. All these can be randomized. As you can see you can setup for a very different skirmish game each time. The third option is the editor. This is extremely easy to use.It can be randomized then edited after or built from scratch. Very different scenarios can be made with a few clicks. Up to a 100 stars and god knows how many planets will make for a big scenario if you want it. With the Editor you can make games as easy or as hard as you want for yourself.
The fourth option is shared maps made by other players or yourself to download and play.
This game should be supported and I hope it will.

It's a nice game and the price is okay.
I think the story is a little bit too short, but the story is great.
You feel, that the 3 factions are ALIVE, with their own ideologics.

You can get in touch with the developer and he's glad to help you with your problems.
(Got a bad bug, because I use Linux AND use a language, in which , and . are switched in numbers.
As example for 2 and a half.
In my language it is 2,5
In the english language, it is 2.5)


But there are some bad things.
3 Missions are nearly impossible to solve
and the units arn't balanced.
I mean, if you only build the strongest unit, you win, the others are loosing it's use.

Edit 2021-04-22:
Using Arch Linux with newest nvidia drivers.
Regardless of running the game on my iGPU or with prime-run, after the start logo, I only get a black screen.
Game seems to be dead.

Edit 2022-12-18:
Game works again on arch linux with prime-run.

This is a really fun game. You can pay attention to it or be distracted and play it. Very flexible for intense and casual play. I am more of a casual player, especially for RTS style games, but sometimes i want to challenge myself mid or late game. This game allows you to do that to a good extent. I'm a simple person when it comes to understanding things, and this game is easy to pick up fairly quickly just by playing the campaign.

Aside from the Campaign;
You can go into battle sim where you can customise a game with a randomly generated map. I've played around with this a lot and enjoy it.
You can create your own maps and share them. I haven't tried this feature yet, but i did download a couple shared maps. Definitely felt different from a random map.

A fun indie RTS space game with 4x elements. It may lack the depth of more traditional 4x games, but if you are looking for something you can sit down and play whenever you have some free time during short periods this game works well. The graphics aren't very flashy, but that has never been something that concerns me much so when reading this review please take into consideration.

Positives:

+ Heavy focus on decision making: You need to decide a lot of things at once. How many ships should you be producing and which types? Which technology should you research next? Should you be building more relay stations to increase command cap space or more refineries to increase metal income? Learned the "flow" of this game is keep and it is a rewarding experience.

+ Total control of time: You can set the game to a variety of speeds which is nice. You can also pause and still give orders which is an extremely useful tool when thing get more hectic in the late game.

+ Fun campaign: Each mission presents you with a bit more of the lore and story as you progress and unlock new ships and other technologies. I'm a third of the way through the campaign currently and I look forward to each following mission.

Places for improvement:

- All friendly/enemy units are the same: From what I've played of the campaign it appears all factions both friendly and enemy use the same ships. I would have preferred to see each faction using different ships with varying strengths and weaknesses, but there is enough variety in ships in general to keep things interesting

- AI difficulty: In some of the early missions I was getting overrun by swarms of enemy ships which seemed to spawn out of nowhere. I eventually learned how to counter them but it grew frustrating at times and other players might grow tired of it and give up. I will note the latest patch notes did say they addressed AI difficulty in a couple of the earlier missions so progress on this issues appears to be a focus for the dev.

Overall I feel my money was well spent. I'll be spending more time with this game as I progress in the campaign. It will be something I come back to when I have a spare 10-15 minutes to play and I don't feel like starting up a more in-depth and involved space 4x game.