Compared to Kingmaker the characters are awkward and poorly written. Most Lawful or Evil dialog options make you seem idiotic, petty, or just plain wasteful. The tactical battle system is so bare bones as to be painful to utilize and horribly unbalanced. But at least the core party gameplay is still there. But again a lot of encounters are balanced for an EPIC party, even early on when you're still level 5-6. Always fun to face down an enemy that can drop any character in your party in a single round, every round. Hands down the first RPG that seems to think save scumming should be part of the designed gameplay. I have a lot of experience with these sorts of games, and the systems overall are quite familiar. This thing needs a serious balance pass.
I mean exactly what I said, it's a strange mix of ideas. But they mostly work, only have one complaint that I'll address first. Politics: It's all black and white and mostly pulled from today's political scene. No middle ground even when both extremes are clearly foolish. Could have used more thought. Now on to the good stuff. The hub (your ship) is relatively well done, beautifully detailed and fairly well thought out. The characters found within are rather one dimensional except for your generals who have some depth. Not much, but some. The tactical battles are fairly straightforward, rush to get resources, fight a couple small skirmishes, and gear up for the slugging match... Throwing your dragon-self into the mix enables you to augment your forces in MANY ways, and when done properly can make them nearly unstoppable. However it denies you the ability to continue delivering construction/production orders... A tradeoff I think they intended. And now to the Strategy portion of the game, where you maneuver forces, build facilities and armies and where you REALLY need to out think your opponents. Not so simple when they're perfectly capable and willing to outflank your advance to tear at your soft underbelly. My advice, watch your enemies (plural) very carefully. Very heartily approve of the game and it's unorthodox styling. Maybe it'll shake a few more developers out of the fog of cookie cutter crap that's usually produced.
My usual opinion of RTS games is that they're Real Time Spam games. Pick the unit most useful in the most situations and crank that unit out as fast as you can. THIS is the game that showed me that style of game is a flawed and poor excuse for strategy. Yes, you need a large force to break down your opponent's base (even against the AI) But bringing a single unit type is just as disastrous as too few units. This was the first game that ever required me to scout my enemy's base, learn what he was building (and where) and decide if I wanted to soften him up with air strikes, off shore bombardment, or a nuke. And very frequently any or all of the above were a VERY good idea before the full assault. Before this, and for a LONG time afterward, there weren't any truly strategic RTS games. And though many have picked up pieces from this, I cannot think of anyone who has fully replicated the experience save for Supreme Commander (1 not 2). It is still, to this day, the masterpiece of real time strategy gaming, and I still own my original discs.
