Not a flame, or putting anyone down, this is just my (humble) opinion on DOM2.
Having played, and owned
pretty much all the 4x games out there lemme say this. This game absolutely rocks. PvK is *dead* on about DOM2. The depth of this game is simply amazing.
As far as pretty graphics as opposed to content? The multimedia aspects of this game ain't too shabby (imho), and I'm not playing on dog old system that can't handle the new stuff.
I've said it before, I'd rather play something interesting and involving than just "ooh" and "ahh" at shiny objects. Too many of the big time publishers push things out the door in a hurry and only worry about the eye/ear candy (MoO3 anyone?). I'll support Shrapnel and their product line any day so long as they continue to focus on quality of content over "shiny objects".
Not to mention, $50.00 isn't too bad considering how long you can play this game.
I also don't think it's too hard to figure out. I started testing w/o any documentation whatsover (I play first, read later
as I'm lazy). It only took me about 5 minutes to figure out how to get rolling on the game. Of course the more complicated nuances took me a bit to catch on to, but overall it was pretty intuitive.