Buy It?

[Philip Tarbuck]

Should I buy it? I have just read a 'rave' review in an English gaming magazine. I notice that it has by far the biggest following of any of the games on the Shrapnel Board.

[Nitram Draw]

Depends on what you like. If you like 4X games then the answer is YES. If you are not sure try the demo, it give you a good sampling of the full game.

[rdouglass]

Best game I ever paid money for (or stole for that matter). If I was to put a cost per hour of all the time I've spent playing SE4, checking into mods, or learning things off this forum, it probably would be about $.02 per hour. Pretty good value if you ask me.

If you enjoy 4X games, this one is hard to beat. You may get 1 or 2 that might be 'prettier' on the surface, but when you factor in customizeability, variety of gameplay, replayability, and vendor support, I think you'll find there isn't a lot out there that even holds a candle to this one.

And Yes, I'm biased. I love the game. It's the only game (of mine, not my kids') still on my harddrive after months of play....

[LeTharg]

I bought the game because of a review. It was my first excursion into turn-based strategy. While I was dissapointed with solo play, I tried PBEM and was hooked. Like rdouglass, I've gotten more value for my money than any other game I've purchased.

[geoschmo]

I too suggest getting the Demo first. This game has one of the most fully functional demo's of any game out there.

The demo can be played PBEM, if you kind find someone else on the demo to play you. You can mod it. You can do almost everything with the demo you can with the retail game. It's limited to 100 turns though.

If after playing the demo you find yourself hooked like the rest of us, by all means buy it.

Geo

[Taqwus]

And if you do try the demo, you might want to get the History.txt from the latest patch just so you can see what's been changed -- the patches have never been ported to the demo, methinks.

------------------
-- The thing that goes bump in the night