Make sure you weren't reading a review of SE4 Gold, for one.
For two, SE4 was just as buggy/weird, but its bugs were a bit different. Less crashing, more game-breaking: ground combat continuing after a victory, dumb AI, losing value when looking at the Empire Report screen, stuff like that.
SE5 shouldn't have been released when it was, but I'm still happy I got my hands on it then.
