RATINGS:
Graphics: 4
Gameplay: 4
Sound: 0
Overall: 4
Pros: Quite simple and easy to play, could be promising for those who like this type of game.
Cons:Neither sound nor music, many spelling mistakes, tedious gameplay in the initial stages.
We recently dedicated some of our time to check out on Looki’s latest free-to-play browser-based empire building and management MMO, Empire Universe 3. In comparison to its predecessor Empire Universe 2, this 3rd instalment of the Empire Universe game series sports a number of enhancements while the gameplay at its core pretty much remained the same: players have to build up their planetary base, set up an army and expand their empire through trading, diplomatic acts and territory conquest. Never having played any title of the series, we considered Empire Universe 3 purely on its own merits when taking our first look into the MMO.
Getting into wasn’t much of an effort; we just signed up for an account, logged in and we instantaneously taken into the game where some useful links to the knowledge database/ wiki and the forum as well as some supportive pop-ups lent us a hand in figuring out what you are supposed to do. For starting out, we needed to decide for one of the nine available races, ranging from typical humans to various one-of-a-kind alien races. Each of them was characterised by their own strengths and weaknesses in regards to the game’s major aspects combat, trade, research and so on. We finally opted for the Magumian race and its traditional appearance of a small, grey-skinned and big-eyed creature. We then got to pick and name our commander from a narrow selection of eight characters dressed in uniforms of different colours as well as our planet. All of this doesn’t have any other purpose than allowing for a distinct aesthetic.
Then it eventually was time to really start playing and we have to give the user-interface its due in admitting that though being simple, it fulfils its purpose, doing all it needs to do without being especially confusing. However, Empire Universe 3 is a particularly casual title and its features are therefore quite comparable: players opt for building/ researching/ upgrading something and then have to wait the specific amount of time, from many seconds to several minutes, which is required to complete the process.
And that basically is the crux of the matter in the game’s initial stages. Our plight map allowed us to construct specific key buildings in pre-determined places and we were gated in our freedom of decision in a way that our map finally looked incredibly similar, to not use the term identical, to the screenshots you can find on the official Empire Universe 3 website.
The tutorial guided our first steps and told us where to place our initial buildings, which have to be erected in quite rigid order to be able to continue and progress through the game. Those initial few levels that corresponded to entire hours of gameplay are in fact extremely linear and although certainly meant to introduce people to the way the game is played, they truly were extremely tedious. As we continued our play and unlocked additional buildings and research technologies, set up our army, etc., we were eventually given some more options to undertake, meaning the game branched out a bit more.
Sifting through the different menus, we came across some "quests", which realistically considered were just a means to task players with constructing a particular building, researching a particular technology or performing an upgrade (all of which they would have to do in any case). We also discovered a system that allowed us to detect other players’ planets nearby and moreover had a look at the ranking system to get an idea of how we were progressing in comparison to other players with a similar level. This was quite redundant though, for pretty much anyone in the game was probably doing exactly the same in the initial stages as we already mentioned before.
We feel that this is the major issue with this MMO; it simply takes way to much time until you’re eventually able to do anything actually fun, which isn’t due to mitigating any steep learning curve at all that would perhaps warrant this pretty slow pace. Empire Universe 3 is quite simple to figure out; it simply is a matter of having to wait for a prolonged amount of time to build up anything. When we wanted to start the construction of a second building, we were presented with a building time of 30 real-time minutes and felt like this should seduce players to spend premium currency to speed up the completion of an old project. And bear in mind that this is the fact already in the initial 20 minutes of playing the game! You won’t want to imagine how many days or even weeks it would take to complete anything in the later course of the game...
Though the endgame content perhaps has a lot more to offer, you truly have to be dedicated in order to get there and benefit from it. Empire Universe 3 nearly forces players to employ a casual manner of checking in to see if their projects are finished in the meantime, which seems to be the most reasonable way to experience the game for quite a period of time. Based on our first impressions and on the fact of not knowing what the endgame might be like, we personally didn’t have the feeling of wanting to spend more time to find out.
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