An overlooked gem whose facets could still sparkle today...
Holistic Designs was not "central" to developing White Wolf products, the individuals who later formed Holistic Designs were.
In direct regards to McDonald's 1997 review, I don't believe it is at all fair. The scores for Graphics and Sound are rated at 5 but no mention of either comes up in the review itself to explain why they were judged to be mediocre. The best we get are two words, "modest graphics". As memory serves the graphics, while nothing to rave about, were more than acceptible and comparable to games of the time and the sound was actually quite good. As one of the earlier reviewers mentions, the music is varied and you could actually play the audio by itself should the desire strike you. Of course, the first reviewer claims that there was no music... which is quite wrong...
I also don't remember the AI being a push-over as McDonald seems to have experienced and the statement that nothing could make them act aggressively is completely false in my experience. While not astonishingly difficult, the AI did not just sit idly while you conquered the galaxy.
The only real flaw of the game was its complexity. There was a LOT to do and consider in taking your turns, as to be expected from the kinds of hex-based empire simulations that are still played on tabletops around the world today and which EFS is entirely based upon. It was not a game that you just sat down and were good at.
McDonald proves incompetent in calling the emailed multiplayer option "hardly a good solution" in favor of online or net play. For starters, we're talking 1997 here. Not every company could afford to host persistant servers for their games. And as much as there could be to do in a turn, they could be quite lengthy and there wasn't a lot their your opponents should automatically know about what you were doing. So would YOU want to sit around eating up your online time, which many people were still paying for by the hour or even minute at the time, waiting for your opponent to finish their turn? No, live online multiplayer was NOT an option for this game and it is testament to the developer's wisdom that they came up with an alternative. It may be quite laughable by today's standards, but it was passable for its age.
I would LOVE to see EFS dug out and rebuilt to today's standards. It was a game that begged for advances in technology and could be an astounding, deep experience powered by the latest generation of equipment. It was an amazing concept and game that just needed more going for it.