About time we got another totally unbalanced and buggy 4X game with the sex appeal of an Excel spreadsheet.
And it's a simple reason. MOO2 got everything right:
You always knew where your fleets were and what they were doing, what the heck you were researching and why, how your planets were doing and stuff - you'd even know how to unfold your zero G toilet paper in total darkness so to say.
LE:I is so wrong in all those aspects that it made me wonder if the developers would be able to find their bare backsides in bright sunlight. Not even mentioning toilet paper. Honestly.
But agreed, you want facts:
LE:I suffers from a badly designed GUI. Ships are parked on top of solar systems so you're bound to click on the wrong icon all the time unless zooming in real close, and when zoomed out into galactic propotions it takes a marksman to click the exact right pixel on your screen to select the system you intended to.
Game Feedback is almost non existant, a killer for 4X games. You'll never get notified of a fleet reaching its destination for example, and while you may click the news item "BlahBlahBlah discovered" to open the research window, be assured that you will land on the wrong page.
As for game concepts, let us take a look at planetary bombardments for example. You will be notified via a news ticker that it happened. First, you need to bring up the combat report for your fleet to make sure it wasn't fleet action instead. Then you check your fleet which usually suffered some damage even when there were no defenders at all. And lastly you click on the enemy system for damage - which only makes sense in some way if you remembered last turns statistics.
And yes, don't forget to zoom in close for all those actions or you won't be able to click on the right icon, and yes, be prepared to do this all for 10 turns in a row.
Talking bugs, i uninstalled LE:I today after receiving a combat report telling me that i lost my full fleet of 4 destroyers and 4 frigates in a fight. Well, i'm not that picky about losses. But i know for sure i never built more than 2 destroyers, and that i was down to one frigate after suffering losses from a previous engagement.
As a final word, i hereby accuse the AI of cheating heavily. Maybe i just suck at 4X games, but i think this to be a bit unlikely. Nonetheless, i found myself on the bottom of the score list in all my games.
I played version 1.2, maybe 10 games in total, enjoyed none of those and am currently looking for someone to blame for that time lost for nothing.
Beam me up, Scotty!
kailii