Impressions: Overall, I like the game a lot. It has its issues, definitely, but I've found I can overlook most of them quite easily and don't even notice them that much after a while. A few things though, really irk me, such as the inability to pan through the main screen map using the arrow keys, you have to use the mouse. Pain in the arse. But a minor one.
On the positive side, the game hasn't crashed on me once in about 12 hours playing, haven't noticed any glitches even. The graphics are very nice, even including rotating moons above planets. The ship designing is a very welcome addition over the original, though I'd say it's a little more clumsy than that of SEIV, though more detailed. For example, you can't (yet) automatically upgrade your designs if you research better weapons, but on the other hand you can totally customize how your ship looks buy adding all the components and extra aestetic features onto the base design.
Combat is also much better than the original, but no where near as detailed as that of SEIV. Still, I've found it to be quite enjoyable, though one thing that bothers me is the huge advantage attackers get over defenders. Many times I've had a couple decent ships defending a planet, when the enemy comes with a single ship, blows hell outta me, and goes on his merry way. Oddly enough, any one of my ships if
I attacked
them would be enough to blow him out of the sky without a point of damage. It's odd how they gave such an advantage to being the attacker, so much so that a weak ship attacking a stronger ship can win many times. That is one of the most annoying things that I have found.
I had wondered how they would implement a campaign in a TBS games such as this, but to my surprise it is actually quite well done in my opinion. It's also quite difficult, as the enemy they have you face is extremely advanced technologically. You have to act very fast to accomplish your goal, or else the numbers of advanced ships the enemy throws at you will be overwhelming.
I haven't even touched on many aspects of the game, and while there are a number of issues, mostly they're quite minor. More annoyances than issues to my mind. It could be that I'm not as picky as some people, or just haven't noticed some things (quite likely), but I am enjoying it thoroughly. And given its potential, with the updates that are pomised and new features to be implemented, issues to be resolved, I'd say this game will be on my computer for quite some time.
9.2/10 For comparison, in my book SEIV gets a 9.6 or so out of 10.
