Shattered Galaxy

"A rare unique MMOG"

Shattered Galaxy is a massively mutliplayer real time strategy game, with heavy emphasis on player-vs-player combat and teamwork. The game also has some RPG elements which mainly restrict access to units and equipmnt to increase strategic planning and unit diversity.

Each player has a "commander," which is equivalent to the player character in an MMORPG. The commander does not engage in combat, but has a set of statistics which determine the abilities of its units, and the options available to them.

Commanders have a set of four levels: Infantry, Mobile, Aviation, and Organic. Each corresponds to a set of units. All four divisions are quite varied in themselves, however, so any playstyle can pick units from each set.

A commander can have fourty-eight reserve units (paying players can increase this through periodic "reincarnation" events, in which they give up all their existing posessions and experience in exchange for a slight edge as a new character). Starting out, they can take up to six units into battle at a time (this also can be incrased through statistics, more on that later). In the majority of situations, matched sets of units perform better than mixed sets, and you can usually rely on your team mates (at least the experienced ones) providing a balanced set of units to complement your own, rather than you yourself dividing your forces.

Your commander can move about a grid of 64 maps and engage in combat with enemy factions (Each planet has three factions for players to join. A faction is effectively your team, and you need to work together to win battles with the other factions). Factions battle for control of the grid of maps, leading to a constant ebb and flow of colors accross the planets.

In battles, units gain experience based on a number of factors: How many enemy units they kill, how long they survive, and how many points of contention they capture. Points of contention ("pocs") are anywhere from one to five circular pads on each map. Land units can occupy these, and if they hold their position long enough, ownership of that poc changes to their faction.

What happens when pocs change hands depends on the battle type. Some maps are standard, meaning that when the time limit of the battle runs out, the defender must hold more than half of the pocs to win, and must hold at least one poc at all times to last that long. Others are all-or-nothing, meaning that the attacking faction must capture every poc at the same time to win. These maps require careful coordination to win, since if pocs are captured earlier than others, it makes it more likely they'll be lost while capturing the rest.

The third type of battle, and often the most fun (and frustrating), is Victory. Victory maps give each faction a score based on how many commanders have joined the battle. This score counts down constantly, and counts down faster as that faction looses units. Holding pocs will slow down the constant score loss, but won't stop the score loss from destroyed units. When one team's score hits zero, they lose. If the battle goes to the time limit, its decided by pocs just like a standard map.

If units die, they aren't lost. When a battle finishes, units can be repaired for a nominal fee at factories located in each faction's capitol, as well as the four maps at the corners of the world map, and the center map (often called the Crater). In this way, units can be improved through levels and equipment even if they're lost repeatedly.

When units level up, the commander gains experience in the corresponding division. Each division level up to 50 gives a single point that can be used to improve the commanders four stats: Tactics, which gives a small hit point bonus to units and increases the number of units that can enter battle at once (allowing for more firepower or support units); Clout, which allows units to be upgraded into more advanced forms, or even into completely different units; Education, which allows units to be equipped with more powerful armor, weapons, and other special addons; and Mecanics, which increases the weight of equipment that can be loaded onto a unit.

As I said before, each division is diversified. There isn't really any combined theme that can cover all the units within them. Infantry includes a variety of covert attack units, most of them can becom invisible, Appraritions have extremely high range, and Imps will actually appear as allied units to enemy forces. But, it also includes heavy assault units like Gasts and Revanants that can demolish enemy forces, and tacitcal units called Spectres that can launch devastating nuclear weapons.

Mobile includes the strongest artiliery units such as Trebuchets, the fastest skirmisher units like Pegasi and Gryphons, and the most heavily armored assault units like the powerful Behemoth, or the more specialized Leviathan, which can render itself completely invincible from certain types of attacks. The mobile division also includes many support units, such as Mantlets, which act as pillboxes for infantry, the Geardoc and Triage, which repair allied units, and the Redeye, which doesn't look like much but is very often the deciding factor in major battles as it reveals enemy units outside of allied view range and can disable enemy radar.

Aviation units include fast interceptors like Owls and Hawks, slower assult units like Eagles and lumbering Condors, and even its own seige weapon, the Vulture.

Organic units have their own artilliery, the long range Slanths, and also skirmishing Larvae and Podas for heavy assault. Although, in general, organics tend to be a bit weaker than simmilar purpose mobile or infantry units, they also have characteristics that make them more useful in some situations. Slanths are better at hitting fast hit-and-run units than Arbalasts, Podas are much faster than Behemoths, and so on. The organic division also has a unique support unit called a Manta which can detect cloaked, camoflaged, or infiltrator units. While not neccessary to kill these units, since you can manually target them, it makes them much, much easier to keep track of.

Organics also upgrade differently than other units. Most non-organic units have multiple upgrade routes. Base units can either stay in their original form and upgrade to higher levels (Hawk Mk-2, for example), or they can change to a different chassis, like Owls or Falcons (which also have multiple Mk levels, but they're fewer and take longer to attain) These units may be more powerful, but usually have different strengths and weaknesses, and need to be used differently. Upgrades are based on Unit Quality (Unit level+(Commander clout/2)). If your division level+clout/2 is high enough, you can buy the higher chassis directly instead of leveling base units, but you can't buy higher Mk levels.

Organics, however, have only a linear series of evolutions. Each upgrade improves their armor and speed. At certain levels, they change into a more advanced form, which usually works very much like the lower form, but have a considerable boost in power. Organic armor and attacks also evolve based on the unit's Alien Tech Level. Unlike normal units tech level (unit level+education/2), ATL is unit level+(education+mechanics)/2. Organic units upgrade their weapons and armor automatically at certain ATLs.

There are also special organic units available only to paying players who have reached 120 in Clout, Tactics, Education, or Mechanics. Each stat gives access to two extremely expensive Super Aliens. Some of these are freakishly powerful units, but thank God commanders can only have one of them. I get physically dizzy when I imagine seeing a group of twelve Miasms entering a battle.

There are also Abominations and Quorgs available to paying players who have won various events (And also an upcomming Infantry unit, the Wight, which as of this writing is an event-won unit, but will later be available to all paying players). These two units are basically beefed up versions of the Revanant infantry unit.

This all sounds pretty daunting, and honestly, it is. So much so that I'd suggest starting a new character with a name you don't want, and waiting until you know what's going on before you start over with the name you want to keep. Character and unit development takes a lot of preplanning. Some choices in commander stats will make certain units much less useful, or some upgrade decisions on units you have may may make you spend much more time obtaining higher level units than you'd like.

The in-game help doesn't help, either. Although it has a very extensive listing of units and equipment for them, it has a good deal of missing information, and some out-of-date entries. For example, the Banshee unit has a caption in the help screens calling it an Engineer - which the Banshee most definitely is not.

The game also has a number of obviously unimplemented features. The most striking is the resource list you see in the factory. The game is mostly based on money (which just from casual playing, you'll obtain in far higher quantities than you'd ever need), and Uranium, which is the main unit of currency used for payer-only features. Super Aliens, Quorgs, and Abominations cost uranium, as do various special options that can be activated by commanders. However, the list also includes ore, silicon, sulphur, and so forth. Even the point of money escapes me. The most expensive units (that don't cost exorbitent amounts of uranium) cost under two thousand gold, and some cost nothing at all. Some of the highest level equipment can cost a few hundred gold per unit when you upgrade, but that usually comes at long enough intervals and the revinue generated by battles is enough that the cost can be ignored.

This really isn't a bad thing, especially if you've been frustrated by the constant rat race of trying to obtain equipment and money in most MMORPGs. Likewise, leveling isn't a serious issue. Single battles have a very noticeable impact on your units' level progress bars, and individual levels don't make all that much difference in units. Well equipped level 1 units with careful management can still be useful in a battle. They won't win the battle on their won, but in truth, even sets of twelve units all at level 60 (the level limit for units) with 120 tech-level equipment can't win battles all on their own.

Probably the worst thing about the game is how well many people can do with that whole Teamwork thing I mentioned earlier. Starting out, you'll probably notice a lot of people who don't capture pocs when they should, fail to provide supporting fire where its needed, and a few people who strive to set new levels of stupid by dropping nukes on allies or trying out their new self destruct units with allied artillery close at hand.

The overt stupidity is rare, thanks to a player government system that gives the elected overlord and regiment commanders the ability to punish people for things like that. Also, battle commanders can deny people entry to battle who are known for this sort of thing. For the most part, the stupidity improves when you move up to the second planet, Morgana Prime, which is dominated by very experienced players.

The starting planet limits characters to level 22 per division and units to level 25, but Morgana allows units up to 60 and players up to level 99 (however that will take a very long time. Over 1000 units taken all the way from level 1 to 60, in fact. Above level 50, however, its mostly academic, since you don't gain stat points anymore. Nonpayers also gain reduced experience above 50). Many people stay on the starting planet even when they reach the limit. The smaller number of statistics points available and the lower maximum unit level greatly limits the options available, meaning much more spcialization. For example, only players with a certain amount of clout can obtain Spectres on Relic, and when they do have them, they're far weaker than spectres on Morgana. High quality units like Leviathans and Falcons are very rare on Relic, and don't live up to the potential that the same units could on Morgana, but when available, they often serve very useful roles in battle.

Overall, Shattered Galaxy is worth a try. It's an excellent game with a very attractive concept of cooperation and team based combat, and it usually lives up to that. It's highly addictive, and highly fun, once you know what you're doing. Since you can play for free as long as you want, there's really nothing to lose. You don't have to invest hours on end into the game like you do with so many other MMOGs, but you'll very likely find yourself addicted and doing so anyway.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/08/04