Recent reviews by EVWeb

Really loving the game. It fixes one of my biggest problems with Deck Builders, in that any cards you are offered ACTUALLY combo with the cards you already have because they are part of the set for that specific ship component instead of being completely random. Also, unlike many rogue likes that force you to always move forward, this game only limits your ability to move freely for a cost. Overall, I really love the style and feel of the ships and the sheer variety in the ways to build your ship. Looking forward to what they do next with the game.

After playing this game for almost 600 hours, I can say that it is the ground work for a great game, but even now it's a good game. Even better, like most Paradox games, they will be making many updates and improvements over time. Hopefully that won't cost a small fortune in DLC though.

Pros:
Good graphics
Various exploration and galactic events
Diverse government and race types
Multiple races in an empire are actually handled properly
Designing ships and stations is pretty easy
Research is not all one type, but instead is split into physics, society, and engineering (about time someone realized that not all scientists are experts in all fields and can just bounce between them with no regard for their specialty)
Stations can be used to increase your amount of resources and expand your borders, not just build defenses
Research costs scale with empire population size, so you can't just blob out and expect to out tech everyone instantly
Updated balance and techs

Cons:
Defending your empire is still fairly difficult due to space combat encouraging doom stacks with only one or two minor fleets to go around killing enemy stations
Interface is functional but could still use some work in terms of being able to quickly and easily manage your empire when it gets bigger
Some notifications pop up way too much, while others don't pop up enough (why no combat warning when my stations are in combat)
No control of ships during combat, and no way to give formations or any type of orders beforehand
Most ship graphics are overly blocky and don't look like actual ships. For reference on how to make ships look awesome while allowing multiple sections, look at SotS2.

Overall, it's a good game, but with more work on the interface and the combat balance, the game could be epic. So while, I recommend it, I still think it needs more work to be a truly great game.

Let me state that I have played way more than the 40 hours listed as I bought this on DVD many years ago, but only the Steam version seems to work on Windows 10. I also will state that I have enjoyed playing this game and I feel that it could be a very good game, if only the dev had put more effort into the base gameplay engine and less effort into the "cinematic" features. Read More:

Pros:
- Epic feeling space battles with fighters, bombers, cruisers and battleships
- Mod Support!
- Skirmish modes for people who don't want to play a galactic campaign (more 4x games need this)
- Galactic Conquest mode allows you to conquer the galaxy
- Land battles add some variety and breaks inbetween the space battles

Cons:
- Pathfinding ( and by that I mean the complete and total lack thereof ) - I mean seriously, ships refuse to obey basic movement commands, they can't path above or below each other, they can't squeeze between each other (even if 2 ships at the same time should be able to squeeze between), they retreat into the enemy, they face the wrong direction and ignore you when you tell them to turn the right direction, they take the longest possible path to the destination, and they stop before being able to engage the target you just told them to attack. As for ground pathfinding, units constantly get stuck on terrain and other units, sometimes permanently making them useless for the rest of the combat.
- The Defending side in battles have a massive advantage as they get a station or buildings plus the garrisons (infinitely respawning defenders), possibly a super weapon, and they can get upgrades, because upgrades aren't empire wide for some odd reason.
- Fleet incoming warnings usually don't go off and so randomly you'll get hit by an incoming fleet with no warning even though you have long range sensors and sight on the systems the attack came from.
- You can't give orders while the game is paused, unlike many other strategy games like this.
- Battles are separate from the galactic conquest mode, so they constantly break the flow of conquest.
- Auto-resolve will always cause you to lose way more ( ie. Instead of a victory with no loses if I played it out, auto-resolve gives me a complete loss with no enemies killed), but when you get attacked 3 times every minute, it looks appealing.
- Gravity wells don't prevent the enemy fleet's reinforcements from retreating even though they should be holding right there in hyperspace and should be effected.
- You can't have your entire fleet fight the entire enemy fleet all at once due to pop cap during a battle, although this is probably to limit how much frustration you get from the absolutely terrible pathfinding.
- A criminal empire is by far more powerful than the Empire and the Rebels combined, with only one required money building that also provides a super weapon in orbit, meaning they can fill their planets with massive garrison buildings, they have insanely good ships and no tech level requirements so they can build tech 5 ♥♥♥♥ at tech 1, and oh yeah they can corrupt the galaxy which gives them money, and buffs including, removing control of planet from the owner if corruption removed, moving past enemy fleets to pretty much anywhere, and gaining vision everywhere.
- Ground combat devolves into artillery catching other artillery off guard with maybe a few spotting units.
- You can't get rid of heroes which take up pop.
- Space maps feel claustrophobic ( Coruscant being one of the worst with my defending ships started facing the wrong way and the enemy could already shoot them while the game was still in the battle start view) while most land maps are too big and slow down the game.

So yeah, while I had fun with the game, it has some issues, so I can't recommend it, primarily due to the complete and total lack of pathfinding.

A good game. Good tactical depth, good immersion and awesome units. Lacking some newer RTS features, but still very fun and challenging. Pathfinding is decent, with the occasional hiccup. Some bugs still remain, although most are just minor annoyances. Overall, I really like this game, definitely better than the sequels and definitely more immersive than many modern RTSs which have felt more tame in terms of the feeling of destruction and devastation.

Another game I wish I could recommend. It has so much going for it, awesome looking and feeling battles, good weapons control, and some interesting strategic choices.

However, the slow and clunky interface get in the way at every turn. In multiplayer you can't save custom ship designs to speed up ship creation, as well as very few map choices. The campaign gets very slow very quickly. The combat takes forever to do anything at all, especially once shields are introduced. The strategy is hampered greatly by the lack of proper movement controls as well as super hard counters in the forms of weapons. In the end, it feels like the creators were actually wanting to make a game where you controlled a single ship, but decided not to at the last minute, and therefore the entire game suffers.

I would love to recommend this game. It has good game mechanics, the combat is fun, and can be challenging.

HOWEVER, the game is not complete. It only has 9 missions, even though from the dialog it's obvious they meant to add more, but just couldn't be bothered. Not only that but the same ships from the campaign are different in multiplayer so you can't use the same designs. There is no way to fix this, unfortuately since you can't mod the game. Even worse is the interface, which constantly gets in the way of doing things (I blame mobile for this), but the last straw really comes down to not only is the game unfinished, but they want to charge you to make it slightly less unfinished with the DLC, which doesn't finish the campaign!!! WTF!!!

I personally feel that it should be illegal to pull the ♥♥♥♥ Paradox is pulling with this.

A buggy game with poor design decisions which can prevent the player from getting critical techs and makes the combat slow and clunky.

Cause it allows your own troops to turn on you and ♥♥♥♥ you over.

It's awesome with explosions!!!

Edit: Overall I liked this game, but it does have it's failings.

Pros:
Great graphics
Awesome looking bases
Interesting UI that can be quite powerful once you figure it out
Rebindable keys
Awesome base building mechanics, which are different for each faction
Lots of tanks
Lots of explosions

Cons:
UI is still clunkier than DoW or Starcraft
Hardcounters are way too OP, for example, most units do 30% of their regular damage vs buildings, while artillery does 1000% their regular damage vs buildings, meaning they can kill a building in 2 shots while your entire army does no damage at all to the enemy base. This even extends to regular units, for example, if you have a tank with regular armor, it will only take 10% damage from regular attacks, but 100% from everything else. So if you happen to guess what the enemy is using, they're ♥♥♥♥♥♥, if you guess wrong, you're ♥♥♥♥♥♥.
Unit customization only leads to more hardcounters, and doesn't really give you much freedom
Anti-missile defenses don't work properly
Units feel cartoony and wimpy compared to Earth 2140