Poking beneath my review window, I see another review centered on the same key element: you can't go up or down. The solar systems are pancakes. Your ship can rotate right or left and you can change your speed, but reality ends there. At times, this feels like the old boardgame "Ironclads," a USA civil war simulation, than a battle that transcends planents and stars. That does NOT mean that the game isn't fun. The mix of economic decisions, the choices in which types of missions your skills and your ship's capabilities can handle, and story missions that will occasionally test your skills in all of those elements at once...It's hella fun, is the long and short of it. The graphics are about all my older machine could handle, so I personally had no real complaints there. YMMV. Reasons not to buy: * you are a hotshot pilot in spaceship sims and want another reality to test your 3d dogfight skills * you don't like seeing things blow up * you're broke and have to choose between this game and food * your doctors told you that you have two weeks or less to live (it took me a little longer than that to finish) That last reason is iffy: if you're going to go, why not do it while blasting a space pirate? Cheers
