Very good game, well-made, has the nice bells/whistles that comes with Triumph Studios games. Similar to Blizzard games (back in the day), always had the "extra quality feel".

Gameplay-wise, this is very similar to Age of Wonders III but taken to extremes, some good, some bad.

The Bad:
As an overall 4X game, but as a consequence of being under the Paradox umbrella now, it clearly shows by ditching the massive freedom found in past games of the AoW series, where you can build anywhere, no replaced with an absurdly restrictive 4X design, where now everything is in "sectors". In AoW III and AoW: Shadow Magic, for example, you can build forts, towers, settlements, ANYWHERE, like in a Civ-series game, and grow your borders, your domain.

NOW, in AoW: Planetfall, everything is divided in sectors...like a HOI or Europa Universalis game, but in typical Paradox fashion, you can't simply "conquer the territory". Instead, you have all these anal rules like you can either annex the sector to attach it sector that has a city, or make a "forward base" to claim it---but can't collect income from it or any tangible benefits (just dumb), and can't build a city adjacent sectors. No, the magic powers of absurdity mandate cities must be "2 sectors part"). Says who? Whose idea was this? It makes no logical sense. You can't even manage development of annexed sectors from within those sectors, but from the sector it's attached to which has a confusing screen. The annexed sector itself lacks info or it's too convoluted to understand. Even "How to Annex" is mis-handled. The game guide, which is very well-designed, can't say. No one online can say. The game "assistant" says "click on the sector and select to annex" which isn't true. I cilck on it and my units are there and so it just selects my units. Only after reading tons and trial/error, I figured out you have to "double-click" to open the screen for that. Just dumb design. What's worse is how no one online or the game guide or assistant didn't know that. Going over forums/sites, it's full of confused ppl, unable to explain anything correctly, accurately, or coherently - and sad when they regurgitate the useless info.

So it's just dumb now, with stupid rules like that. It gets worse, in that you can't do anything with the sector until the adjacent sector achieves prerequisites like certain population size, or resources, or development progress. It's just flat out dumb. This game could easily be a kick-butt 4X game by having all that trash rules modded out of it and make it play more like AoW 3. At times, it will tell you, you need to "explore a sector" but you already control it. No explanation given. A sector border will start flashing, as if you need to place something down in it or click to do something, but nope, it's just doing that SOMETIMES after you build something, without explanation. I built lots of things and it seems to do this randomly, with no explanation. Was this another anally designed feature that was scrapped but bits were left in? What gives?

The game overloads the player with information. I hope you like reading. Every screen is like 2500 words. There is an "assistant" when you first play that just reads it to you (that helps at least for those who are audio-learners). But yikes this could make Rainman panick and go into overload. What the heck? It's like they had a team just to focus on how anally retentive they can make every-single-thing. You'll never get anything done because you'll be stuck reading/studying something that should be more "fire and forget". It's just overly complicated which would be more digestible without all the Paradox-style idiotic rules.

Oh yeah, I was playing one faction whose secret power is super weapons but get this...can't use them on other factions that also have that same secret power. Why not? What for? What the heck? Why didn't it tell or warn me before? You only find out after building up to the point you can start using it, powering it up which costs resources, then go to use it "OH WAIT, FORGOT TO TELL YOU HAHAHAH..."

The game is riddled with stupid things like this. It's like the game design philosophy at Paradox is: "YOU'RE NOT PLAYING THE RIGHT WAY! REEEE!" Everything is designed to grief the player into accepting absurdities, un-realisms, "Simon-Says"-isms. Like they're conditioning swaths of generations for an abominable planned future.

I hope someone mods all this bad stuff away, just simply removes the clownish restrictions.
"OH NO! THEY'RE NOT PLAYING THE 'RIGHT AWAY'!" and then we go: "No, NOW we're playing the right away. HAHAHAH!"

The Good:
"The Bad" is now out of the way. That is the worst of it. Is it really THAT BAD? No, it's just an annoying stain on the game. But you CAN GET PAST IT.

OK, so: solid graphics, sound, music, quality, highly polished. Aside from the above, fans of AoW games will feel "at home". Everything else works/feels generally the same, with armies at 6 units, how you select and move them, view their stats, the pre-battle interface, the turn-based combat. It's essential AoW III but in SPAAAaace and it looks and feels great. AoW games are all medieval fantasy and I always thought "wouldn't it be cool if there was a sci-fi version"? AoW touched on technology being a thing and now it's here mega-style. Goodie!

There's tons of custom-ability to your leader, your empire. One thing I really liked was the "conquer the galaxy mode". Instead of just playing the campaign or skirmish on some giant map like you would in the past AoW games, you can instead take your custom empire and embark on conquering planets in a galaxy, that boost your powers as you do. Essentially, the "planets" you pick are basically akin to playing "skirmish" but consider it remembers your progress. The planets are customizable (like size, how much land mass vs. ocean etc., how many opponents, etc.) very similar to skirmish. This was a very cool way to take the Skrimish-style gameplay to the next level by making them different worlds in your galactic-empire-building playthrough.

I also liked not having to "mail" items to my leaders anymore, and how the skills worked, the "mods" too basically replacing the traditional "skill point/talent point spending" getup of the past games. Instead, the items are stored in your 'arsenal' and you can select to equip from it, and the skills/mods works similarly, you just select from a list of what's available - that cost resources, so you just pick and "buy" them.

Furthemore, the military units you build can also be "modded" which reminded me alot of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri or Civ4 allowing degrees of customization. Brilliant!

Conclusion: It's clearly a "Paradox-version of AoW". Despite "The Bad", AoW:P still returns much freedom of gameplay, play-style in other areas to make up for the clownish restrictive reas of design. It's a worthy game due to it's sheer depth and things you can do, the winning AoW design, the immense amount of play styles (the gear, mods for characters and units is vast) that offers more freedom than the past AoW games, and utter universe of content to explore. It's insane. The level of details is off the chart, all the races, the varying abilities. Can easily spend a massive amount of time diving into it.

It's a 2X game but still a great game.
Explore? Yes. +1X
Expand? Nope. It's not "real" expansion. -1X
Exploit? Sure, tons of options to mess with independent factions, rival factions, others, etc. +1X
Exterminate? Can't use superweapons due to dumb rules. -1X

The successor to Heroes of Might and Magic III.