It's dated now, but worth playing for the change of setting if you like the orignal Panzer Gneral.
I put off buying the game because the lack of a true 3-D universe in some reviews made me think the game was a platform shooter, but it went on sale and I bought it cheap just to see why some people liked it so much. In a word, it oozes a serious Firefly/Privateer/Sundog vibe. I love interacting with the NPCs, flying around with Fireflyesque country music in the background, and blasting space pirates to bits (when I'm not running away from one's about to blow me to bits). While your ship doesn't move in true 3D everything else does, so you get a pretty good 3D experience. Unlike most RPGs, your ship doesn't start out capable of overpower hordes of cellar rats. It's a capable ship, but you can run into ships that way outclass you early in the game, making you turn tail and run. So you have to pay attention, make money, and continously upgrade your ship. The only negative so far has beent he lack of documention. The interface takes some getting used to and the game will give you missions that require you to buy special upgrades for your ship (minig lasers...all around super weapon, who knew?) and buying your first upgraded ship isn't very obvious (seriously, I sold back the thing like 5 times before I went online to find out what was going on...lol).
