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Review

Duration: 40:57

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I'm playing Beyond Sol, a grand strategy action game by Praxia Entertainment. Featuring both single-player and online gameplay, victory conditions include reacting economic, military, or diplomatic dominance in the galaxy. The interface uses the mouse for movement (right-click to change facing, middle mouse for thrusters, left-click to target) and the keyboard to activate abilities of the capital ship: a low precision, somewhat awkward scheme. The base city can be expanded by placing and upgrading buildings, while the empire territory is grown by constructing stations for mining or defense; each structure has specific monetary and resource requirements. Resources can also be spent recruiting intelligent wingmen or improving the ships. Empire strength escalation is relatively easy to attain as long as resources are dedicated in the right directions. Frequent, though repetitive, random events offer resources or battles against pirates. Each star system contains several AI factions that must be dealt with, but diplomatic options are very basic. Beyond Sol is a unique, though not completely satisfying, marriage of grand strategy and top-down action gameplay mechanics.