I played this a lot when I was much, much younger, and for its time it was a pretty solid strategy game, and pretty memorable. It's similar to Civilization II in playstyle, with some enhancements. What it does really well: the setting. Even with the dated graphics, the cold, alien nature of the planet really shines through. The game is interspersed with narrated quotes from the various faction leaders, minor story characters, and famous philosophers, which paint a vivid picture of the environment of this distant world, the motivations of the factions, and the psychological stress of colonisation. Even the default names of the settlements you found, while rather cheeky, give each faction its own personality. This is the part of the game that really shines, even today. What it does not do well: The gameplay tends to be rather tedious. The game encourages you to expand relentlessly, building as many new bases as you can, and they all need to be given direction on what to build. Unlike Civ, where you would eventually run out of land, you can build on the water in this game. By the middle of the game, the beginning of every turn is a voice saying "drone riots" repeatedly for every single base you need to manage happiness in, and then managing 30+ production queues. You'll be managing a large number of terraformers to develop the land around all those cities. You can customise units, which seems really cool, until you realise the majority of potential units you can create are so expensive that they're not worth it, and you spend a lot of the mid-to-late game trying to find the best ways to clear your 63 unit design slots. All of the aforementioned can be automated, but the AI in this game is as dumb as a box of rocks in the choices it makes, so you need to do everything yourself to win on higher difficulties. Overall: the game is innovative and interesting, but maybe it should be called Sid Meier's Micromanagement Hell.
