Fun, addictive RPG gameplay -- one of the best I have played in years.
As for some of the other "official" review sites linked from Gamespot's "they say" scoring section, there are several poor reviews that I can only qualify as predisposition and /or superficiality on the part of the reviewer. And looking at the rather petty, low-level analysis and mediocre writing skills shown by some of these review sites, I am frankly surprised they are referred to on a site as polished (for the most part) as Gamespot.
This is a real-time outer space environment with sharp, beautiful graphics. The game's combat segments play along the lines of the Baldur's Gate series; there is a lot of pausing and selecting, and your characters are capable of pulling off special skills -- some of which amount to outright wizardry rather than tech aptitude -- numerous times per mission.
You have full control over all of your characters, and can split them off into separate groups (wings) which, among other things, allows you to take advantage of character traits like Leadership, Safe Wingman, or Lone Wolf. You can deduce the ramifications of these by their titles.
After each mission you can distribute each character's experience points among special skills available in a branching technology-tree-style attribute screen. You can swap ships and equipment, outfitting your crew with new and better equipment. Weapons, ships, ship systems, and such can be purchased between missions either through the Trade Post or the Black Market (if you have access to that illicit trade network). And some of the best equipment is sometimes salvaged in outer space during missions.
The game formula, the ships, the weapons, and the overall atmosphere (helped by a very mellow, very appropriate lead-guitar-based soundtrack) combine with a high level of character control (including some very cool and often very original skills and perks) to make this an engrossing single-player Computer RPG. The game length was satisfying and not short, although I was definitely hungry for more and would have gladly forged ahead for many hours, if additional missions had been available. Not since Freelancer have I craved an official expansion pack where one was not available.
(By the way, the images posted on Gamespot show some instances where Russian text is used; in the version I played the entire text was in English. Another thing, there is at least one image showing some atrocious, barely intelligible English writing: I noticed this on an image which included the in-game description for the character attribute "hard missile hit." In the version I played the in-game text was cleaned up considerably from the example in the Gamespot image -- perfectly acceptable English grammar was used for accurately describing attributes and equipment.)