This game is a really nice space sim at first, although the storytelling is... lacking. Severely. As in Wattpad level lacking. However, the gameplay mechanics are kinda fun, until it gets extremely repetitive. Moreover, you don't get a feeling that you get more powerful as you upgrade, as the enemies you face also get more powerful, so regardless of what you install on your ship, the combat will always be the same. And there are the crashes. I doubt you can complete this game on a modern PC, unless you're extremely lucky. Otherwise, at some point, you will just see a white screen when crossing into a new system and that's it. Game over. Even a fresh reinstall doesn't fix the issue.
It's an interactive story with pieces of information scattered around, dialogues with choices that don't matter at all. In between, you have extremely boring exploration on a cluttered map using an interface that would be considered outdated in the late 90s.
I had very high hopes for this game. And I'm utterly disappointed. This is the first game I bough on GoG that I requested a refund for. Tried two gameplays on Medium, twice everybody died before Year 4. There's always not enough food, regardless of how many people you assign to foodmaking. And if you almost manage to feed everyone, they die of cold, because you run out of wood, for there is no one left to cut the trees down, as everyone is farming, fishing etc. Why can't people hunt/fish/gather berries without having to build them an overly expensive building? Why can't I plant the onions the gatherer found? Why on Earth can't I find any seeds for edible stuff in the wild? To say this game's designed is extremely flawed would be an understatement. Plus it has no story mode, no missions, no nothing. Just the excrutiating 'try and fail only to fail again' poor excuse for gameplay.
It's really hard to rate this one. It is a set of very well designed scenarios, but... a very poor campaign. This is not a branching campaign with hypothetical scenarios, like the ones we have in the Panzer General series. Regardless of how good you do – capture Stalingrad on the first approach, stop the Russian counter-offensive, etc. – you only get the historical outcome, negating your gameplay. This is a real let down, hence only 3 stars.
The beginning is very promising. The court simulator, with some politics in the background, trying to make the work-family balance work. However, it all falls victim to several tremendous flaws, of which the greatest is the writing. Calling it mediocre would be a compliment. It is illogical, naive, ruins the atmosphere, and has no sense of logic or continuity. In a game where so much emphasis is put on making choices, the actual choices you make DO NOT MEAN ANYTHING. Everything will be just railroad down the utterly stupid path someone else came up with. The interesting mechanics of persuasion and battle prove to be shallow and deeply flawed after two or three attempts. Later on, it just becomes a chore (thank the gods for the option to auto play the battles, I would uninstall the game much earlier if it was not there). And, lastly, dice. A complete random element with more impact on the story than the player's decision. Seriously?! All in all: avoid, even at a bargain price. It's not worth your time.