Lost Empire: Immortals is one of those games you're going to love or hate. It is a strategy game with a low budget price, but it offers more than most console games that run you about 60 bucks. I get the feeling that the game started out as a small game, but the developers snuck in as much stuff as they could before they got caught. I usually associate depth and scale in the same sentence, but what the game lacks in depth, it certainly makes up for it in scale.

Lost Empire’s premise is that there are two Immortal races vying for power and control of the galaxy. You play as one of six races, including human that will either help or fight against the Immortals. The Immortals will also try and play the races against each other. This is where the player comes in. You have plenty of options when starting your game. You can select the number of stars, the shape of the galaxy, how far everyone starts from each other and how many minor (non-playable) races there are.

The galaxy can be a huge place up to 5000 stars, all of which are habitable to some degree. I selected for my first game, about 1000 stars. I colonized approximately 37 planets. I have yet to come across a single species. Expanding your empire can be a long and arduous process. It takes many game turns to have a balanced, economically stable empire.

You can easily expand your empire into bankruptcy if you don’t manage your resources correctly. This was no small feat, considering you only start out with one scout ship and one colony ship. Finding suitable planets is also a chore. You’ll almost never find that perfect system that has the right temperature, food, and minerals. Once you find a suitable system, you can select how it will be developed.

Running out of food? Make your colony an agricultural one. Need to build that battleship? Turn that colony into a factory planet. I love the way the planet development process works. You can select up to seven types of colonies that you wish to develop, including outposts, fortresses, metropolises and mining planets. The game has the usual resources you’ll find in most 4X games, minerals, food, credits and science points. Research is the most important aspect of the game and the most demanding of your time.

You’ll need research for everything from developing your planets, to building ships. You’ll also have to decide which route you’re going to take when it comes to research, because you can’t research everything at once. Do you want a strong military or a race of scholars, it’s your choice? Planet development is strictly hands off.

Your planets will manage themselves on their own and will develop in conjunction with your research. In other words, you don’t actually place buildings on planets, they’ll grow as you acquire more technology. As I’ve stated before, this can be a long process. As it stands right now, only my home planet can produce ships in a timely fashion. This usually means that you’ll have to stay close to home when expanding your empire. As it stands you won’t be able to defend yourself if you colonize far away from your home system.