Very detailed game, a lot of work put into it, many bells/whistles that comes with Triumph Studios games. Similar to Blizzard games (back in the day), always had the "extra quality feel".

Unfortunately, the game greatly deviates from the past gameplay systems of the Age of Wonders series which had evolved, but here, de-evolved into ludicrous, oft broken, expansion/expand mechanics that haven't been fixed after years, finally collapsing under it's own bloated weight. The gameplay is literally broken and overall game is extremely difficult to play as a result.

Just go play AoW 3 or previous games instead to save yourself the headache and hassle.

The Bad:
Fake 4X game. Now 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. Instead, here, you have grossly restrictive design, and illogically so. Everything is in now in "sectors". That have to meet a plethora of special conditions to conquer. Most of those are bugged and don't work correctly. Just DUMB.

The new HOI or Europa Universalis-style "territory" doesn't work. It's loaded with absurd anal rules like you can either annex the sector to attach to a 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 in neighboring sectors. By the "magic powers of absurdity", mandate cities must be "2 sectors part"). Says who? Whose idea was this? It makes no logical sense. ON PLANET? Imagine you only build a city in Italy but not Switzerland because "it's too close", ' welp, have to build the next on in Austria instead'. Now just GAPING-WIDE DUMB.

The menu options don't pop-up and nothing is explained coherently, or correctly. An icon to open the menu is lost on the player and the in-game guide itself, and tutorial. You actually have to "double-click" but nothing says this. You go online and ppl literally regurgitate the useless instructions or gross lack of basic communication skills. Only through extensive digging or your own trial and error will you maybe figure it out.

This game could easily be a kick-butt 4X game. It's a confusing and poorly implemented design. The worst part of it are the bugs, that it doesn't even work correctly by it's own rules majority of the time. For example, there were sectors I had no options available to do anything with. Only after digging around online did I find "oh that happens to me too, you have to reload the game". WHAT? I save the game, I reload it, and voila, there the options are!
So you will constantly be having to save/reload your game for this to work correctly. I don't use mods but looking at them, even the modders appear confused how things work and are unsure based on their own comments, Q&A, etc. SAD.

They should make a mod that removes "sectors" system entirely but I imagine they'd have to completely redo the game. If they did, i would buy it. AoW 4 apparently uses the same system so that I will not buy. I will not buy any AoW game that uses it. The fact they haven't fix these issues with Planetfall is discouraging and my guess is they realized how borked it was and it's probably unfixable.

Next, 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). 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. It's just overly complicated which would be more digestible without all the Paradox-style idiotic rules (which again, don't even function correctly).

The game is loaded with contradictory design choices and self-nerfs. For example, 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? Why wasn't it disclosed before? I started random map, with random factions, and it made them all the SAME as mine. So after all the work to unlock it...I can't use it after all? Just INTERGALACTIC-level of DUMB.

The game is RIDDLED with stupid things like this. It's like a snowflake-level of design philosophy of Paradox is: "YOU'RE NOT PLAYING THE RIGHT WAY! REEEE!" and has poisoned the AoW series. 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.

The Good:
Solid graphics, sound, music, quality, highly polished. Ran very well for me. Game is moddable (sort of). Aside from the above, fans of AoW games find some things very familiar. Like, the armies capped at 6 units, how you select and move them, view their stats, the pre-battle interface, the turn-based combat. I dig that they took AoW and made a modified but sci-fi version of it. Everything is highly polished which makes it a real pain to have to suffer the clownish "sector" system that just buzzkills and craps on all the work they clearly put into this to make it a quality title.

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.Cool.

I also liked not having to "mail" items to my leaders anymore, how the skills system was enhanced, more options, easier to equip acquired items or just "buy them" with resources. Nice.

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

Conclusion: It's clearly a "Paradox-version of AoW". I originally recommended this game but was bothered by some "sectors" I can't do anything in so continued playing accepting that, only to find out, I SHOULD BE ABLE TO but the game itself is broken. It was bad enough putting up with the dumb sector system but to now find out it wasn't even work correctly. Who knows what other parts of it are broken and not working correctly? Constantly saving/reloading the game just to get it to work is not acceptable.

Imagine playing HOI4 and the ability to manage your territories randomly stops working unless you reload the game. Is that enjoyable? No. And you'll never get anywhere.

SCREW THAT.

This is not a 4X game, but a broken 2X game.
*Explore? Yes. +1X
*Expand? Nope. it's literally designed against it, see everything above I described; also, you need "influence points" to capture empty territory on desolate planets where no one is at which is laughable; the forced victory conditions allows you to win before you can conquering everyone; -1X
*Exploit? Sure, tons of options to mess with independent factions, rival factions, others, etc. +1X
*Exterminate? Can't use superweapons due to dumb snowflake-level rulemaking; super abilities only troll enemy units, cities; can't wipe out whole armies, cities like in past AoW games; and you can lose if enemy simply claims more land despite your strength -1X

Triumph should ditch Paradox and remake this game correctly.

While I do enjoy the game itself have it on console and then here.
Besides some things that other strategy games struggle with like loading turns, the biggest issue is the paradox influence that brings down most things published by them.

The successor to Heroes of Might and Magic III.