[Hugh Manatee]

Bought the game before the 1.08 patch, played it for hours the day I got it, didn't crash, didn't break, had a blast exploring the galaxy and tech tree. It was plenty complete(more so then the likes of moo3, civ3, star fleet command, tribes vengence and a few other games that did break on takeoff), and in no way a "beta" version, aside from stuff that I knew was in the bug reports that would crash the game(IE guy goes to a doctor and says it hurts when I do thi, doc goes don't do that) I still managed to find tons to occupy my time and attention, I had fun, I enjoyed it, these aren't lies. Maybe I'm just more intuitive then the average guy because I picked up the UI in a few minutes(I really don't see how you can't... between the lower right panel, the right click menu, the bar up top the hotkeys and the map....), even found the scrap facilities button on my own. Also, with the promise of further patching and maybe even an SEV gold, a rock solid community, I knew this was a very sound investment and would be more then willing to recomend it to other players.

Truth is computer games(and programs themselves, IE windows) have bugs, they will always have bug, SEIV still has bugs, nintendo games with all their army of QA still get bugs, glitches and broken games(IE the +5 bottle trick in LoZ OoT, the skulltulla cheat, ect). It's not like we have another MoO3 here, a game that was given tons of delays, and still released in terible shape and then abbandonned by it's company to a few modders who managed to make it about half as playable as SEV is now. SEV was developed on schedual, released more or less on time(jumped the gun a little but still patched within a couple weeks with another on the way), patched on time and will continue to be patched regularly for years with the combined efforts of a community far larger then moo3's. These facts alone should either negate any innitial dissapointments, or a tleast give enough of an optimistic outlook to warant a resounding recomendation to anyone from the hard core strategy fan or the newbie who has never even played checkers or chess but secretly longs to be a space emporer.