Reach for the Stars is a turn–based game of outer space exploration and combat, reminiscent of Space Empires or the aforementioned Master of Orion titles. You’ll take control of one of 16 different races — all with various strengths and weaknesses — and fight to achieve dominance in your particular sector of space. Each race has their own graphics set, and even their own tech trees — however, before long you’ll realize that a "+10 percent Berbelblatz" is just a "+10 percent defense shield" cloaked within an exotic name. By deciding not to create a few different paths in the alien races’ technology trees, SSG squanders the opportunity to give the game some personality — something in which Reach for the Stars is severely lacking.
Once you’ve selected your race, you’re given a home star and a map of nearby star systems, all just waiting for colonization. Your two main focuses as you build your empire will be in planetary development (boring) and ship design (not so boring). Each planet has a maximum "build number" that — combined with your races’ predilection for the given atmosphere — dictates how populous and productive that particular planet can become. These ratings range from 1 to 4, so if you’ve colonized a Level 2 planet, you’re going to be limited to Level 2 Industry, Level 2 Shipyards, and so on. The planet building portion of Reach for the Stars is really quite tedious and shallow — there simply isn’t much to do here. Usually, you’ll just load up the game’s default build queue and be done with it. There may be times where you’ll need to tweak your production to match the events transpiring in the game, but there’s really not a whole lot of "meat" to planetary management. Couple this tedium with a downright quirky production system wherein universal build queues can override your individual planetary queues, and you’ve got a less than inspired — and somewhat frustrating — portion of the game.
Ship building fares a bit better, with a plethora of ship hulls, ECM devices, weapons, and shields to choose from. You’ll have complete control over the look and function of the ships you design, and with as many as 30 tech levels worth of hardware to deal with, you’ll be hard pressed in not keeping your ship designs state–of–the–art. From quick little interplanetary scouts to lumbering, armed–to–the–teeth killer dreadnaughts, the fate of your Empire’s fleet is entirely in your hands. It’s quite fun to build a fleet of fighters, send them off to battle, and then tweak them to better match up versus your enemies. There’s a feeling of accomplishment when you finally build the perfect fighter with which to attack your enemies. Unfortunately, the lack of personality in the technology tree is a problem, as most of the increments only result in percentage increases in stats rather than any interesting new functionality.
The game trips up a bit in its combat model. Combat consists of a static screen with tons of bizarre icons and confusing numbers that’ll send you running for the game manual. During combat, you basically select a formation and an optimal distance from which you’d like to engage the enemy, and then select "Attack". The computer then plays out the turn, complete with lackluster animations and uses even more cryptic statistics, which results in the removal of battlefield casualties and the start of a new turn. While the game’s combat is boring, it must be said that the enemy AI is (as usually is the case with SSG's AIs) quite good — a trait that shows up throughout all aspects of the game, not just combat. Unfortunately, a good AI does not make for a lack of entertaining game play.
The diplomacy model is quite limited as well, consisting of a few states of war (or peace) and a couple of trading options. The interface with which you engage diplomacy is another mess of strange, meaningless icons that undermine playability. As a matter of fact, if I had to pick the one major problem with Reach for the Stars, it would have to be the totally counter–intuitive and confusing interface. While the look and feel of the controls are slick and futuristic, they simply don’t work well and tend to get in the way of game play. It’s far too difficult at the beginning of the game to figure out what the heck all the little icons stand for, and which "key" you want to expand from your "wing" in order to go to the part of the game you need to be at ("keys" and "wings" are how the game refers to its menu system — I guess "menu" wasn’t cool enough). If SSI/SSG was trying to create a game that was friendly to newcomers to the genre, they failed miserably, as I'm certain this interface would send neophytes running back to Wal–Mart to pick up the latest Deer Hunter game.
Where Reach for the Stars does shine is in its replayability and customization options. Frankly, I’ve never seen a space 4X this flexible. The Scenario Editor is an excellent piece of work and allows you to create totally new species, scenarios, and complete customized technology trees. If you can manage to get a grip on the game’s interface (which you do after a while), and get past the overall "blah" feeling of the game, you’ll enjoy a nearly endless amount of replay possibilities. It’s almost sad that this superior game editor is attached to such a run–of–the–mill game.
In the end, Reach for the Stars is an intelligent and well–balanced strategy game that is simply overcome by design blandness and confusing mechanics. The Scenario Editor is something that should be emulated and copied by other turn–based developers, but unfortunately, a good Scenario Editor is not enough to save this game from pure tedium — and a probable quick trip to the bargain bin.
"Thank heavens Reach for the Stars includes a truly fine Game Scenario Editor, otherwise, the tedious aspects of the game and that overall ho–hum feeling would relegate this title as a non–issue. Reviewer Michael Askounes finds some merit, but the bargain bin is where this title is headed."
