A lot is already said. In first quarter hour i had to fight the UI, which is not intuitive. But if you know it, you know the logic of it, then it becomes ok (not very good, but good enough. ive seen way worse UI^^ (looking at SupremeRuler)). And there are keyboard shortcuts for all the important stuff, which is nice. Next hours i had to learn stuff about the game. Using ingame descriptions, and because ingame a lot is not descipted enough, using the manual and internet. You can see, the game has some depth. Might not be for everyone. Its for those, that like it deep, not shallow, and wide, not narrow. With the different planet types, it adds A LOT of replayabilty, as different planets will feel very different, and need different buildups and empire managment. Some planets may be very hostile (immidiate death if a soldier gets wounded - aka gets a hole in his protective suit, or immidiate death if a soldier stays too long outside supply range -> running out of oxygen to breathe, or extreme heat and radiation), so your game will develope slower, because you have to build your cities out and expand your borders with your infrastructure. other planets might be very welcoming (breathable atmosphere, drinkable water, edible native plants etc), so you can expand borders beyond your infrastructure faster. except if there is extreme native life, thats hostile, or huge mountain ranges, that are basically impassable early game, and also mid game only passable with extreme cost to build infrastructure through it. The planet generation is pretty powerful, but i bet most people dont have a clue what different planet traits have for an effect. if you want to have nice easy first game, go for planet around red/orange/yellow star; avg temp ~10-18 degree celsius; 0,6g - 1,2g; some rain; breathable atmosphere edible alien plants so replayabilty comes from enviroment, and isnt artificially set with "idea groups" "cultural traits" or other arbitrary statistics. i like that.
