I first played this game as its demo when I was very young, around when Space Empires 4 was about to come out. I have loved this series ever since. every couple of years I boot one of them up and spend a week or two of free time growing my empire, and my hours in this game on Steam are not reflective of my total time played. I just got a new copy on Steam a little ways back and my time is spread across 3 and 4 especially. It's a bit like spreadsheets in space, more so than Eve online for sure, but when the game clicks you'll have so much fun. This is one of the first 4x game series ever made.
In this game you make an alien species with a wide range of options, none of which are graphically supported in the game, by the way, but just think of this game as a text based game and the graphics you get will seem useful for visualizing things. You are tasked with managing your planets, designing your own ships, researching new tech for your ships and planets, and surviving the troubles of a galactic civilization. Anything from planetary storms, space anomalies, population rebellions, enemy sabotage, enemy espionage, enemy war fleets, and so much more can occur that you must overcome as you grow.
This play-through I had one of my colony ships early on this play-through get dragged through an anomalous worm hole and it ended up halfway across the galaxy. Unfortunately the story this time wasn't that I had a remote planetary system, as it happened to land right in the middle of the starting star system of one of the other factions. Bad luck lead to them destroying my ship, and declaring war. Of course, I had focused entirely into research, and so far outstripped them that their only chance would have been an immediate strike at my systems. They delayed. I have crushed them so hard under my boot that I stopped worrying about their final planet and am now at war with 2 other species.
Anyway, I think for its time this game was a hidden 10/10, and for today it's still great. One final word of warning going into this game, though, is this. This game provides what psychologists might call the good kind of boredom. What I mean by that is that it requires thorough thought and preparation as you progress, but it's one of those forms of entertainment that slows you down and encourages you to take your time without anything getting in your way. You will make many mistakes if you try to watch videos in the background at the same time, and this may wreck your play. This game is like chess with the computer, and kind of like fishing in that it's slow and spread out and you will feel your mind settling into a less overstimulated state even to the point of floating above the waters of boredom, not in a bad way, but in a way that encourages your mind to rest and grow. It's a defrag game, a recuperating game, whatever you want to call it.
Please enjoy one of my favorite games of all time.
