A Case of the "If Onlys"

A Review of Ascendancy

by Edmond Meinfelder

Ascendancy is a turn-based strategy game in the vein of Master of Orion and Civilization. In some ways, the comparison is unjust; Ascendancy is a visual and aural feast unlike the SimTex Master games or any Civilization version. Unfortunately, as I played, I realized the game suffered design flaws blocking this game from smash-hit status.

When you reach the main menu, the show begins. Evocative art, prevalent throughout the game, depicts an alien with eerie ambient music setting the prefect mood to conquer the galaxy. I wish more games were as successful as the Ascendancy was with mood.

To start a new game, players select their race from a list of 21 alien races. Twenty-one is a far cry from the 8 in Master of Orion. The large number is nice, but the design supporting diversity is weak. Most races have a special power, usable once in a time period varying from race to race. For example, the Chamachies, being great technologists, can instantly discover their current research pursuit. To effectively use this ability, players must time what they research and wait to use the ability when starting a new research project. I prefer the Master of Orion method where the Psilons simply advanced at a faster rate regardless. In Ascendancy, many of the racial powers require player intervention in a game already suffering from micro- management issues (more on micromanagement later).

After the player selects race, galaxy size and the racial hostility setting, gameplay begins. At first, all you see is a large galaxy with your home system and one or more star lanes leading away from your system. Empire building begins in the home, apparently. The player’s first task is to create the requisite technology for space travel. To acquire technology, players decide a research pursuit from a web of possible advances. To keep technologic momentum, players build laboratories.

On planets, players build structures to achieve goals. If the player needs better weapons, build laboratories for research. Should the player require more ships then building more factories is the solution. Players also build structures to increase the planet’s population limit as well as augment planetary defenses. Later in the game, new structures exist increasing any combination of population, technology and science.

Ascendancy, like Civilization, has problems with micromanagement. With dozens of planets, all with on-going building projects for defense, offense, research and industry, among other things, players can suffer information overload and micromanager burnout. Thoughtfully, the Logic Factory added a self-management option, where the game AI selects construction projects on each planet, minimizing player intervention with trivialities. Sadly, the self-management falls short in a few spots.

Only the planet list screen displays whether a planet is self-managed, yet players turn self-management on at the planet control screen receiving no feedback. Sometimes, toggling screen with convenient short-cut key is tiresome. Worse, war and peace status appear to make no difference to the AI when selecting what to build on each planet. During peace-time, finding a stockpile of shields and missile batteries on many planets disappointed me. During war, many planets were developing industrial resources when lacking any defense or offense. Master of Orion possessed a simpler, more elegant model with three sliders per planet to direct science, industry and war. After discovering all the science in Ascendancy, some planets kept building science improvements. If Ascendancy allowed players to introduce priorities when building, the self-management option would not be so awkward.

In short order, players gain the ability to travel the stars via star lanes. Rather than the flat 2-dimensional star map of Master of Orion and so many other games, Ascendancy sports a stunning 3-dimensional map. The inclusion of a third dimension, with interconnecting star lanes, adds tantalizing puzzles with strategic points. However, finding a particular star is a royal pain the rear. Spinning the galaxy about or zooming in rarely helps. If Ascendancy only allowed players to define hot keys for certain planets, players could side-step this problem. Even hitting a hot-key to center the screen on the last planet scrutinized would help immensely.

Heck, if Ascendancy only had more hot keys, navigating the game interface would be effortless. Games should have two interfaces. The first interface is for the novice, sporting easy to find and use controls. A second interface, with hot keys, provides a quick means of interface navigation for the advanced user. The advanced user wants to rapidly execute commands for speedy game play, while the novice wants guidance. Shackling an advanced user with a novice’s interface is a recipe for frustration. Sadly, Ascendancy frustrates.

Starlanes as the only way to travel between planets creates another tedium. Moving ships from one end of your empire to the other is tiresome. You must direct ships in the planetary system screen to the star lane entrance points. The problem is, more often than not, you forget the Byzantine star lane map and have to hop interfaces to the star map, to get your bearings. The combination of the interruption and interface surfing, playing find the planet to mobilize star ships tedious. If Ascendancy only allowed players to select the final destination star, Ascendancy would not shackle players with ferrying ships from system to system.

I quickly grew tired of ship building as well. In Ascendancy, 4 sizes of ship exist: small, medium, large and enormous. The difference in ship size determines how much the ship can carry. Players create custom ships selecting types of generators, engines, weapons, shields and special components. In Ascendancy, you almost always build the largest ship you can, since players can have only as many ships as star systems under their control. An enormous ship holds a lot of gizmos. Repeatedly selecting gizmos is tedious. If Ascendancy only had a way to store and save ship configurations, the tedium of ship creation would vanish.

Worse, there is no way to qualitatively compare all the gadgets your ship can carry. Yes, you heard right game fans -- another case of inadequate documentation. The CD jewel-case insert serves as a woefully incomplete manual. Forget the Official Strategy Guide, 2/3’s of the book is merely a narration of others’ battles. The chapter with a paragraph on each race is marginally useful. Two brief appendices at the end of the book give all-to- brief textual descriptions of many bizarre gizmos. If you look, you can find better references on the Internet for free. I refuse to pay $20 to learn a game I spent more than $40 to own. If only Ascendancy, and many other games, had adequate documentation, I would not spend more time playing my games then experimenting to intuit the abilities of game objects.

Ascendancy has a diplomacy option like Master of Orion’s, but without the bribes and recriminations. Unless you play either the Hanshanks or Balifids, diplomacy is likely not where you will win the game. When on even grounds, races are reluctant to trade anything. When you have the advantage, other races trade willingly. I would welcome either capriciousness or generosity here. Ascendancy frustrates again during trade negotiations by offering no way to see what technologies, if any, other races offer to trade. You can not even see what you offer to trade. Star lanes, at least, become visible upon a star map located on the diplomacy screen. Once again, I find myself saying, If only.

When diplomacy fails, battles follow. For a change, I had no “if onlys” here, but you may. When ships cluster on the solar system screen, selecting one ship quickly is slow; either you rotate the entire 3d planetary system or select the ship from the list of objects in the planetary system. In a similar vein, selection of planetary defenses is slow as players select each planet manually and then the defenses for the planet. The combat AI is brutish, much like Command & Conquer. Expect enemies to sacrifice ship after ship to your planetary whoopers (silly name, great weapon). Apparently, the game AI does not learn, but sometimes considers retreat prudent -- just not always.

Ascendancy suffers interface tedium exacerbated by game design decisions, but look at the art. The renditions of the races are creative and inspired. I admit, the Balifids, shown as rat-people, the Govorom, drawn as a lavender woman-thing and the Oculons appearing as an eyeball on legs all left me cold. However, the visual concepts for the remaining 18 races, like the Dubteks, fascinated me. Each of the 21 races had 4 ships all stunningly rendered. Any ship would cause me to day-dream like a kid after reading too much Heinlein.

The ambient music, all digital, sets a mood as well as, if not better than, Vangelis’ work on the film Blade Runner. Each race has a theme, played only after the player selects the race. The game has an overture looping constantly. Though I loved every bit of music in the game, I desperately wished for more. After hearing the overture for the 15th time in one game, I had to turn off my speakers. The music was good; I would buy a music CD of Ascendancy themes.

Though the game interface is quirky and tedious, the game play is good. You lust repeatedly after technology for better weapons, better factories and bigger ships. The ship battles are tense, leaving you on the edge of your seat, wondering if you will survive another day. Despite the better art, good gameplay, and awesome music, I still think of Master of Orion as the better game. The simpler interface, the ease of ship management and creation, and the ability to know what each gizmo does were all present in Master of Orion.

Herein lies the shame, I see more raw talent in Ascendancy than Master of Orion. Sadly, the lack of good documentation, the tedious interface, and the ennui of micro-management for ships and planets combines to drag this stellar game down to earth. What remains is a good game, definitely worth a try. Just prepare yourself for a bad case of the "If Onlys."

Despite the flaws, I encourage you to try the game for yourself. At the very least, download the demo, to get a feel for this game. Though I enjoyed the easy AI, making the games shorter, veteran strategy gamers should consider downloading the Antagonizer -- a hyped up AI patch for Ascendancy.

486 DX2-66, 2x CD ROM, 15 megabytes of disk space, MS-DOS 5.0 (or higher), 6 megabytes of memory, SVGA video card, keyboard and mouse

Overall Score:

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