Hegemonia: Legions of Iron is a 3D real time strategy game developed by Hungary developers Digital Reality - the makers of the award winning Imperium Galactica series of games. The story begins in the not too distant future, where Earth and the Colonies (which is represented by the strongest independent one, Mars) are in a serious conflict. In the beginning of the game, you can choose any side, either Earth or Mars, but the real challenge that of conquering space "outside" the borders of the solar system can only begin, once Humanity is united again. That's why your first task is to restore peace in the Solar System. Then you will need to colonize the surrounding systems, build up your forces and later handle the issues which come from the appearance of aliens...

Hegemonia features two different campaigns, three races (Mars humans, Earth humans and Solons) each with distinct characteristics and specialties, over 40 different battleships, a huge technology tree (200 inventions for you to research), spying system, heroes management, wormholes enabling multi-system battles, 20 minutes of full-motion video (FMV), and up to 8 players in multiplayer (LAN/Internet) with the following modes: cooperative, campaigns, scenarios, skirmish, cooperative campaign.

Although some elements of Hegemonia's presentation are highly reminiscent of Imperium Galactica 2, Hegemonia isn't simply a clone of Imperium Galactica 2, even isn't simply clone of Homeworld. In fact, it plays as a cross between Imperium Galactica 2 and Homeworld which is a pretty good thing really - I could say that Hegemonia is easily the most complex offering in its genre. Unlike Imperium Galactica 2, you are not inundated with micromanagement, you only have to keep an eye on your money, research, and your fleets. Later you will also have to build colonies, set taxation levels and even form trade routes. If you can handle these, you can be a very successful commander :)

One great feature is that the campaigns let you carry over heroes, technologies, and a few of your fleets from the mission before. There are four types of heroes: military commanders, governors, scientists, and spies. They all can have different abilities, which improve as they get experience. Hero units that gain experience points during conflict and other critical situations. High level heroes will have improved skills that can affect whole solar systems. The skills have wide variety from simple weapon improvements to special spy mission bonuses.

Hegemonia also offers a skirmish mode for play against the AI and humans, as well as cooperative multiplayer. I can't help feeling that if they'd added a skirmish mode with random star system generation Hegemonia would have had an amazingly long-lived appeal. Anyway, the normal multiplayer mode is extremely interesting and tense. Needless say that multiplayer is definitely much more fun than single player portion of the game, especially the co-op mode, meaning you can get 1 to 7 friends and play through the game together.

Many people have wanted to know if Hegemonia is better than O.R.B and vice versa. Well, Hegemonia shouldn't even be compared to O.R.B. In my opinion it is more like Conquest: Frontier Wars or so. I liked both games, only O.R.B costed me more time than I expected :) For the beginner, Hegemonia is much easier to play. It's no wonder that there isn't a tutorial in the game. But don't fear I'm pretty sure that you will need only a couple minutes to learn how to play it. So, if you like easy playable space-strategy games, go and buy it. Download playable demo (166MB).

Related links:Hegemonia Rebalance Mod (HRM) 1.0 (1.33 MB zip) - The purpose of the HRM is to make a better balance between Hegemonia units, races, weapons and inventions to make the skirmish and multiplayer experience more enjoyable.

System Requirements: 600 MHz Intel Pentium III or AMD Athlon (1GHz recommended), 128 MB RAM (256MB recommended), CD/DVD-ROM Speed: 4x (16x recommended), 550 MB free Hard Drive Space, 16 MB Direct3D compatible video card (32MB recommended), Sound: DirectX 8.0a compatible sound card (EAX recommended), Input: Keyboard, Mouse, Supported 3D Cards: All NVIDIA GeForce cards, ATI Radeon, Matrox MGA-G550, Matrox Parhelia, Kyro II cards

Required for Multiplayer: 1 disc per player per computer, Internet (2-8 players): 56 Kbps or faster Internet connection, Network (2-8 players): TCP/IP compliant network connection Internet service required for Internet play.