Absolutely beautiful but is just lacking
Empire management is what takes up the bulk of your time. You control multiple solar systems with up to six planet (up to one moon on each) in each system and on each planet you build structures which affect one of four categories Food, Industry, Research, and Dust (FIRD). Food is used to increase the population of a system, industry affects how quickly structures/ships are built, Research affects how quickly you can research new techs, and Dust is used to hurry production, upgrade heroes, etc. Every structure you build is color coded to help the player know what they will affect and each new building has a maintenance cost (in dust). This system is quite simple but once you get to about ten or twelve systems it becomes extremely difficult to keep track of them all. You can let the AI do it but the AI tends to completely focus on only one aspect meaning everything else suffers. Its a good and simple system but it requires constant babysitting that really detracts from the game.
Research is separated it four sections Empire, Expansion, Research, and Combat. Empire contains items that improve your empire unlocking new structures that improve happiness and production of FIRD items. Expansion contains improvements to travel, colonization, and ship size. Research contains items that improve your understanding of the universe, unlocks more resources, and building of research structures. Combat is full of all the different weapons but there isn't much variance its the same weapons they just become heavier and more powerful. Research is where almost everything about your empire is decided, focus to much on combat and you will still be unable to colonize new kinds of worlds, focus to much on your empire and you will be left defenseless, etc.etc. The problem is most other empires will focus on one of the four options meaning its almost impossible to defeat them all with just combat or just expansion.
Combat is probably the weakest point in this game, its broken up into three sections long, medium, and short range. There are three weapon and armor types that work best against/at one armor/range. You have absolutely no control over the ships except to decide which of the rock/paper/scissor options to use, these options affect how good/bad your weapons are. However if you don't use them your weapons retain their base values meaning you have no bonus but also no weaknesses unless the enemy causes one. Choose the wrong option and you are almost guaranteed to lose no matter what.
All in all the game was made beautiful but the effort that was but into the graphics failed to make it into the game play.