Spacefaring opera? Mankind's survival at its finest hour? Moral crisis? All this in a 4X grand strategy game? COUNT ME IN! That's what I THOUGHT when I bought the game. And here I am, sadly, having to write a 2 star review to it... I am not even doing this out of spite, like in Ci*****ation 7 (such crap, Jesus). Let's begin. 1) The story started strong, but is falls short of everything really quickly. The characters are not compelling, the plot gets too generic without the adequate depth and in the end it just feels like an excuse to say "hey we got a campaign mode", 2) The soundtrack was good at the beginning, too, but then, also, it gets repetitive: not a lot of variety and very short repertoire. 3) The UI is bad. Really bad. At first (like everything in this game, damn, what a good first impression and what a HUGE disappointment) it looks polished, simple, effective... but no. It is just bad. Lacking in crucial information (where is the detailed breakdown of my mineral income?), uncomfortable for many things (why can't I quickly scroll on my systems from the planet view) and many other small things that keep piling up. 4) Learning the game through trial and error can be fun sometimes, but not this time. You need to plan, so you need to learn first. Mechanics and rules are progressively explained until... poof. No more explanation. No more tutorial and no more encyclopedia. There IS an ingame manual although you cannot zoom in to read some of the important explicative pictures. 5) Probably the most important thing: gameplay itself. The battles seem extremely random sometimes. Lots of tactical options but in the end it's just: NUCLEARS OR NOT? Colonies are not complex at all. Just fill the slots, spam buildings and there you have it. Many other things but I run out of space for the review, it seems there is a character limit. There is no grand and there is no strategy. The saddest thing of all: I could not stop thinking about playing Stellaris again.
No need to explain.
The grade of immersion you can feel in this game and its predecessor are sublime. Don't mind the reviews complaining about bad management, randomness or other fancy words typical of modern gamers in the Contemporary Age. This game, as the manual (yes, there is a manual, and yes, it is there to be read) says, is meant to be "experienced, rather than beaten". You should not, if you intend to enjoy it, think of winning or maximizing your gains or whatever. "You're not likely to fully succed until you get into the spirit of acting like the chief of a Hyaloring clan". If are able to read, you must play this game. Then judge for yourself.
The game is bad at everything it attempts. The story sucks, the narrative is painful, the controls are pure garbage and the game mechanics are a distasteful mix of a simplistic engine with no instructions and a horrible GUI. Some people are even praising the music... OK; I won't get into that. But the rest of the game is really undeserving of such praise. Pay no more than 2 euros for this, and only if you are really bored. I own it on a CD when it came out, by the way.
