Nexus 5X

needs a lot of help

Good game, feels very much like a board game.

This is what I'd consider the most digestible 5x (4x+'eXpress') I've ever seen, complete with all the good bones of the Twilight Imperium Boardgame while navigating around the pitfalls of that expansive game. The Public Lobbies are completely dead, but the Discord lives on with a LFG, and if you have a gaming group, this game is a steal for hours of interesting and varied play. Let's talk about what this accomplishes over Twilight Imperium (TI). •Game Length: Our first game took three hours, and ever since turn timers have been implemented, our games stay at about the two hour mark. This puts it faster than a lot of boardgames with similar complexity, without sacrificing on depth of interesting mechanics. •Complexity: The game has a wonderful set of varied objectives that get voted on every handful of turns. All this variation and depth doesn't come at the cost of needing to pause play every half hour for a few minutes to look into an Alphabetized Index to learn what mechanics do. Everything is keyworded and able to be hovered on to explain exactly what their function. •Digestibility: All of this complexity plays well as the core actions of a 4x are broken into what can essentially be called 'Edict Cards' ([i]think[/i] 'Action Cards'), and of the list you'll get 3 (or More, depending on various faction actions) to spend an action resource ('Support') on to execute.. This —along with the idea of more generic actions that you can do without a card— makes up the sum of the minute-to-minute gameplay. Move your ships, play your cards, manage your resources. [i]Want to do more on a turn?[/i] Build 'Support' growers or tech into things that make your 'support'-use more efficient. It's such a neat, elegant system. I highly recommend this for gaming groups that want to play a digital boardgame, and EXPRESSLY recommend this over digital ways of playing Twilight Imperium that exist at the time of this review.

So I had to refund this game as it went like this: Me: "I'd like to see what happens if I build these structures." Game: "Best I can do is this cabbage." Very unsatisfying.

I'm enjoying it WAY more than I thought I would. Normally, I like my marathon game lengths, but for some reason, this works beautifully!

Good game

It's a fun, fast paced game

Absolute hidden gem. My only regret to getting it in 2026 is that I didn't get it in 2024

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4/4

Good game.