From a 4x junkie, this game is kinda bland overall. It plays extremely well and fluid on my 3rd gen i5 and 970. Graphics are pretty good. Captures a good bit of the "feel" of MOO. But ultimately falls flat. Tech tree is kinda short and playing as creative is an overwhelming advantage. MOO2 balanced this out better in my opinion. You had to take so many negatives to be a creative race in MOO2. In this edition all it took was choosing low grav for planet pref. I do not like how they did the galaxy with the jump points and such - that gave this game a very "cartoonish" feel and just didn't play well for me - way to simplistic. Commanding a battle has no real strategy. MOO2 was so superior to everything (even stellaris) with strategic space battles. Also the ship building/design is the pits. And the fact you can only build a single titan class ship is mind boggling. With that in mind, the upgrade mechanic is also the pits. It is almost better to just scrap and rebuild the newer design sometimes (aside from loosing experience that was gain of course). In the end though, it was fun for the most part. Newcomers to 4x will find this game very accessable (maybe that was their goal?). However core 4x fans/junkies should stick to Stellaris or even MOO2.
