An astonishingly great game from 2005 - I'm just sorry that I didn't find out about it sooner...
If it weren't for its sometimes frustrating ship order system and steep learning curve, it would certainly have been a 10/10 from me.
The bad: Steep learning curve... (restarting a mission several times so that know what you need and what should you expect)
A lot of times you have to restart/reload the mission because there is only one way of solving it... For example, you need to protect a ship (which you can't control) from a bunch of enemies... if you wait for everyone to talk (the story to unfold) and then you act, it's impossible to finish the mission successfully... you have to send your ship to attack even before the attack "objective" commences... or you need to have a certain weapon loadout...
Another example is that sometimes it's not enough doing what you are told to do (*small spoilers at the end of the review).
Ship behaviors are not working as they should... (if you issue a move order with no enemies in sight, ships mindlessly drop shields - on Aggressive behavior). When manually controlling ships it's hard to issue move orders (you can't issue manual moving orders to wormholes).
The annoying:
Ship loadout is a bit strange - using resource points - not really detailed information about what each weapon does... (heavy weapon destructive has 3 points in damage, the same as light weapon destructive)
You have to google if it's even possible to complete certain mission objectives...
The acceptable: Story ending leaves you with questions , some voices that are not "acting" that well...
Some command's can't be issued from the mouse (for example N creates a waypoint at the place where the camera is located - so that you can make very complex strategies).
The good: The story is quite enthralling...
The exceptional: Everything else, to be honest.... music is epic, gameplay is epic, battles are epic...the feel is incredible, it's really like huge ships battle each other firing round after round.. the graphics are great even for today with beautiful light effects, shield shimmering and everything. And what I like the most is that you don't build ships and you have to take care of what you have, plus it has a pause button so that you can change tactics when you want, precisely the way you want, its absolute control over your units. (its not like other games where you build 100 fighters and when you loose all of them it's no problem you can make others - here if you loose a ship it will become a big problem - if not immediately, in the long run most certainly)
All in all, this is an amazing game - there is nothing quite like it, I don't know how I missed it all these years and only now I've played it.
**** small spoilers
Why mission restarting (more like repeating) is a pain:
mission xx1 after completing all your objectives you are ordered to depart, leaving 3 enemy ships behind..
mission xx2: now you have to fight those 3 enemy ships (extremely hard)
-repeating mission 1: now you destroy one of those 3 ships - the other two enemy ships depart -> mission xx2 : now you have to fight only 2 enemy ships (even that's hard)
-repeating mission 1: - after 10 loads, you find out that if you destroy the InterPlanetary drives of the 3 ships at the same time, they can't run away.. so you destroy all 3 ships.. good.. next mission you have to kill a ship that doesn't exist... BUG, mission can't be completed... so reload the last save and don't destroy the last ship of the previous mission....
I hope that you understand the pain....