The community support is top notch! Seeing the developers on the forums is inspiring in this world of huge corporations and "give us your money and shut up" game development that was close to ruining gaming for me. This is the first game (in several years) that I bought when it was "new" because one of my firends showing me how awesome the game AND the community are. The large amount of care and concern from players and employees convinced me to begin taking part in the Sins Community as well. About the game itself?
It's scale is EPIC. You see these huge fleet engagements in the movies, and it's always from the hero's (very small) perspective. We finally get the Grand Admiral's (sweeping) perspective! Not to mention options and modding let you scale it up literally to the limits of your computer.
The races are distinctive. Each race has it's own flavor and distinctiveness. When you play them, you click a button in the UI to build a ship: the button is in the same spot as another race, the ship that will fill the same fleet role as another race, but the races are all so distinctive that you find yourself using radically different strategies and different fleet compositions to take advantage of each race's strengths while you try to minimize their weaknesses.
Multiplayer options. This one is most important to me. Any game has a learning curve, and players start with whatever single player modes are available until they learn the ropes. The single player modes are great, and all of the options that you can set before a game gives the game great replayability. As players finally start itching for a little more human in their games, this transitions to the cooperative comp stomp. It's multiplayer, but it's not cutthroat. If another player is much better than you, it's evident, but doesn't end with you feeling helplessly steamrolled! Plus the comp stomp is a great place to learn from other people. Finally, when players feel ready, they can go head to head in whatever types of games that suit their fancy. The options available for speed, size, map, teams, resources, and modding gives any type of player the kind of strategy game they want to play.
Empire tree. Can't forget this one! The empire tree was needed in strategy games of this scope and I can't believe that it hasn't made an appearance in any of the galactic conquest games I've played so far. "Leave no hard fought territory underdeveloped because you can't figure out where it was!"
Great game!!! 9/10! I'm eagerly awating whatever remaining expansions are planned. And (not to rush anything) but I am excited to see where this franchise goes in the next installment!
Please, Stardock, Ironclad, and the rest that brought us this great game: Keep your companies small enough to be agile, and large enough to meet deadlines. When you've gotten so big that a good idea in the morning can't be a project by the afternoon, then all the good ideas will be watered down by commitees to the point that they are now just compromises.
