A Sublime RTS in Space
The basic premise is that it is a 4X (Explore, Expand, Exploit and Exterminate) strategy game - like Civilisation, and Galactic Civilisations - except set in real time.
This is a game that could have gone horribly wrong, very easily. But somehow they (Ironclad) have managed to produce a game that retains most of the depth of a turn based strategy, with most of the franticness of a real time strategy.
Due to the large scope of this game, it is relatively slow paced - you usually won't find your capital ships or planets being destroyed before you can respond to it. And the graphics are not the most beautiful ever produced, however considering the number of ships that can be rendered at once, and, again, the massive scope the game has, this is understandable. In fact for the number of battles that happen simultaneously, and the number of ships that can be involved in a battle in one system, it is quite remarkable that the system requirements are as low as they are.
As such, I would not consider the pacing or the graphics as a weakness of the game, but instead something that is spot on for the product.
The weakness that the game does have is a lack of a single player campaign - though admittedly most 4X games do not have these campaigns. However Ironclad set up three races with a backstory, but the backstory is never explored.
The other weakness of the game is that it is not completely balanced, between the three races, one is plainly stronger militarily, which is not adequetly compensated for in the other two races that are more economically orientated and more culturally orientated.
There is also a fairly cheap tactic, which the computer excels at using, which can be sumarised as building 30 seige weapons, going to a planet and ignoring the defences and just nuking the planet, then run away.
However both of these problems are apparently going to be fixed in future downloads (though I imagine the story line will most likely come in an expansion pack).
Anyway, on the positivie note, once you have done the tutorials, the game is fairly intuitive. The computer is generally smart enough to provide a good fight. Large battles can be quite impressive, and generally feel rewarding.
The game has quite a lot of tactical depth, and, though you can "tank rush" on the smaller maps, on larger maps becomes very difficult to do so.
And, most importantly, for a 4X game, you sit down for only 5 minutes, and before you know it, it is 4 am.