not flawless, but it does what it sets out to do mostly well. every now and then i feel the urge to play some MoO and when i do i alternate between MoO2 and this one. the worst thing about it imo is the horrendously low mousewheel scroll speed in menus. i have to move the mouesheel down 19 times to scroll through all my 30 colonies in the empire view. it also doesn't matter if you scroll fast or slow, it always scrolls the same distance. tried changing the mouswheel scroll setting in windows, but it isn't connected to that, so made no difference. god, i hate this so much. still, a good game though.
luckily GOG offers both the original MS-DOS version and the Windows DVD version and while the DVD version obviously looks better with much nicer FMVs, the lack of customisability is a huge detriment to the game. the MS-DOS version is easily playable in windowed mode (through DosBOX config) and if you play with a joystick with more than two buttons you can use DosBOX's keymapper to remap your spare joystick buttons. you can't do that with the DVD version as far as i know. i could live without the windowed mode (barely), but not being able to remap those joystick buttons which forces you to rely on keyboard commands for a wide variety of tasks is a no no for me. anyways, the game and story is really nice, it's Wing Commander at it's finest, just if you can't get into the DVD version due to the controls or lack of widowed mode, just try the MS-DOS version.
i used to own it on steam & i couldn't refund because i was over the time, but that didn't stop me from writing steam support, begging them to delete this abomination from my library. usually if i dislike a game it goes into my "ignore"-folder and i only refunded maybe 2 or 3 games out of aseveral hundred, but this one had to go, it's one of the worst games i've ever played. the "story" & the cringeworthy dialogue is something you might expect from a horny, edgy 14 year old. the voice acting is servicable, not great, but also not offensive. from a technic perspective it was even outdated when it came out, which is okay it's no AAA or even AA, so that could be forgiven if they even tried to use their limited resources creatively. apart from that, it reminds me in many ways of the worst games published by spiders and/or focus home interactive. you know what i mean, overusage of the same assets, unimaginative, limited control sets, dull level design and it gets boring real fast, since after a short while it's just the same over and over again. but the games by focus home interactive at least often feature very nice world design and unique premises. if you expect something like that from this game you will be disappointed. this game just isn't worth the money, not even if you are a die hard "realms of arkania/the dark eye/das schwarze auge" fan. it feels nothing like a the dark eye game and that's not just due to the lack of proper RPG mechanics. if you want to play a really good "the dark eye" RPG, stick with the nordland trilogie (in the us it was titled "realms of arkania"), especially the second one, "Star Trail/Sternenschweif" (1994). i didn't try the remake of star trail, only the remake of the first game "blade of destiny/schicksalsklinge) and it was servicable, though i still prefer the original, or for a more flawed but still good game you can get "drakensang"(2008), which captures the spirit of the dark eye a thousand times better than demonicon.
