Alright to begin I feel I have to clarify that I have read the other reviews and that I do understand and agree with most of what they say, but that they really overreact on some minor details. Anyway onto the actual game. To begin I will start with the good parts. First off the back-story is actually entertaining and made the aliens actually look like the bad guys without just saying their evil. They actually did something and that is good when trying to something that you want to beat. Another good thing is that they have in many ways changed the game so that it is not just a better looking game. It is actually a new story with new races and game-play elements. Also it is mostly better looking as well so that is a bonus. Also the customization in this game has been improved over the previous games significantly. Also it is still a master of Orion game, even if the worse in the series, so it is still an OK game. Anyway now on to the bad stuff. To begin, the sheer amount of tabs can be confusing at first, and more importantly once you have it figured out it can be a pain. And it just keeps getting worse. And worse. And that really is not what you want in a game. Also half of those tabs are useless. Continuing on to the planet screens, i have to say that These bugged me. I don't understand why they changed moo2. this one was overly complicated for no reason while before you could just see most if not all info on one screen without having tho click anything. Another issue is the computer AI controlling your stuff. I found this annoying. Also i am not talking about how you can win the game with just the AI (which you can), no i am talking about how it got in the way. It is not fun to do something only to have it changed next turn by the AI that's helping me. And finally, the issue everyone knows about, how bad it is compared to the last games. normally i don't base things on stuff like this. But this is the final on one of the best scy-fi civ games series ever.made so it is important. It just loses to much. There are more issues but these are the most prominent of all. So for my final opinion i have to say the I enjoyed it but never finished it. So while it is not the worst game ever, it is not worth the price it selling at. so if you have the money just buy the first two games. its a much better deal.