Shattered Spheres

So after trying this for a weekend I have some thoughts. Someone else compared this to Space Empires III as a big fan of that game back in the day and its sequels... and I would agree with that assessment this game is a throw back in both the good and the bad to those old 90s 4x games. I enjoyed this game but it is certainly a diamond in the rough. There is very little hand holding here showing you what to do or what things do. If you are new to the genre this is NOT a good entry point. If you are a fan of this genre and know all the standard points and way they work, especially the SE series then this may be right up your alley. It is VERY MUCH a diamond in the rough and I look forward to seeing where it goes in the future as it does look like the dev is still supporting it. The Good and the Bad. It scratches that 4x itch. It has some great nostalgia vibes. The UI is simple and intuitive. Nothing is more than a screen away. The mechanics are very genre specific and if you know the genre you should have no problems figuring them out. It will NOT hold your hand or have any sort of real tutorial system. There's a few pop ups with some text but that's it. The music isn't fantastic but it isn't bad either. It's serviceable. The tooltips are only somewhat useful. It doesn't really show you the number of what you are doing or how it gets there in most places, then in others it gives you full formulas. The AI is like most 4x games nothing to write home about. It's there and sometimes it does something that surprises you but mostly not. There are a few basic game functions that are missing and annoy me. Examples: I have not found a way to give a ship orders that traverse them through multiple systems. You send them through a system warp to the next and then give them orders through that one. It's very micromanagement heavy and means I would certainly not want to play any sort of large game with many systems. The planets are actually less micromanagement heavy than most. You can setup large build queue's and once you have the planet developed tech advances auto update what's on them. Game has some very simple win conditions. Did not finish my first game yet so not sure fully what it entails when you get there but the game describes it simply as get rank 10 in all techs. No next fleet button... but you can set it to tell you if a fleet doesn't have orders and then click a go to button. No way I have found to switch between two fleets in the same location, work around has been to move the fleet on top somewhere else or to merge them and work from there. There could be ways to do these things that I've missed, but as I said the game throws itself at you and it is up to you to figure it out. The price was right and I was looking for a new 4x. This fit the bill and works. If you are also a fan of the genre and don't mind the rough edges it might be for you as well.