I’ve always been a sucker for epic space battles, whether it was those in Babylon 5 that I watched every week on TV, or the ones in Descent Freespace, where I was an active participant, fighting to stay alive in my small fighter or bomber. To my great disappointment, besides the two Freespace titles, no other game has ever come close to recreating the thrill and sheer scale of such battles, in which two or more capital ships were fighting it out, each one trying to give the decisive blow. Homeworld came pretty close to my vision of how space battles should look like in Real Time Strategies, but it was far from perfect. Enter Nexus, a game which had to overcome two name changes (first it was Imperium Galactica III, then Galaxy Andromeda and finally Nexus) and a change of publisher to finally hit store shelves. And although some features that were first announced didn’t make it into the retail version, what’s left is still enough to please sci-fi fans.

     I must inform you right from the start that if you’re a fan of tank / zerling rush, or have little patience for games, Nexus is not for you. This is because the action in the game is so slow at times, that you might have the impression that the Jupiter Incident is actually turn-based, rather than real-time. This is a direct consequence of how battles in Nexus are fought.
     Unlike Homeworld or Haegemonia, in Nexus the player doesn’t have the possibility to build an enormous fleet to destroy his enemies, or manage colonies or newly conquered planets. Instead, he will have to rely on the ships which are assigned to him at the start of each mission, using the resources at his disposal as well as he can. This is also the main difference between Nexus and the above mentioned titles: micromanagement plays a key role, and this doesn’t mean you just select your ships and get them in battle formation.
     Right after you watch the interactive briefing before each mission, you will have to configure your ships for the upcoming battle. And if you think that all you’ll have to do is just pick out the meanest weapons and the most powerful shields that you’ve got, you’re in for a big surprise. This is because there’s a wide array of weapons to choose from, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Some are excellent against the ships hull, but can't get through even the most primitive shields, while others can knock out shields with relative ease, but after that they become almost useless. You’ll have to choose from gatling guns, lasers, flak turrets, energy bombs, plasma torpedoes and more. But you will also have to decide what shields you will use, the ECM systems, sensor arrays, engine types or the fighter/gunboat/commando squad complement for each ship. An important thing to note is that you have limited resources at your disposal, so you won’t be able to fit every ship in the fleet with the best laser or flak system. Therefore, you will have to carefully choose the load-out for each ship, or even bolder, you can try to specialize them: one for taking out shields, one for destroying the hull and another for fighter/bomber suppression.