Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

100 or More Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Ambitious"

As the summary states, Space Empires V is loaded with just about any options a strategic-space gamer could ever want: ability to design your own ships (stocking them with a variety of components, hull sizes), units, a large technology tree, diplomacy, experience levels for crew, stellar events and hazards, customizable races and on and on.

The main problem is that early releases of SE:V had many bugs because of the enormously complex interactions that program would undertake in processing turns. The good news is that most, if not all of the major and minor bugs have been squashed. The only remaining concern is that the Stock AI is not particularly challenging, though there are several freely available (and easily accessible) mods that make significant improvements. Still for veteran SE players a little more work on the AI would be appreciated -- and fortunately is being done.