Has potential that was nowhere near fully utalized.
As far as game play is concerned this game is smooth and can offer a wide appeal to fans of this genre, like me. It might not look like a top-of-the line game, but it can still provide some very interesting and fun gameplay.
The major apeal of this game is the sheer size and scope at which the game has a potential to be played on. 600 stars is a big game and 5000 is almost beyond comprehension.
I did notice that the mechanics of the game were designed to be at a large scale in the way you don't have to micro-manage anything. You just simply set planet types to specialize different production areas. The flow of managing your empire is very streamlined in this game, it sucseeds in reducing micro-managment wile not dammageing the depth.
The six races are very different and allow for large re-play value just in playing the other races. The special abilitys of each race drasticly modify gameplay and require compleetly new strategies to be able to succeed in the game, which gives a new experience every time.
The major con of this game is the utter lack of customability. I don't know about you, but those annoying minor races really start to get on my nerves so it might be nice to play a game without them. This game, however, offers no custom galaxy creation so you'r stuck with picking from a list of set galaxy types which doesn't give you much room for customization. I also like games were you can customize your race, but yet again it can't be done in this game.
The core of this game is an outstanding space strategy game that can be a lot of fun to any fan of this genre, but lack of customability and some peculiar hardware issues realy bring this game down. If the producers could produce some patches that fix some issues and add to the game it would be way more fun than it is now.