It was genuinely nice to see a sequel to such an engaging space RTS. Back in the day, the first game pulled me in for dozens of hours.

Unfortunately, this one only managed to hold my attention for a bit over ten.

The game can hook you into multi-hour sessions in a single sitting, but after playing it three or four times, it simply becomes boring.

For me, the opening and the first hour are always interesting: you plan your strategy, carefully choose your research, balance resources between infrastructure and fleet, rush to colonize planets… but then, in the late game, everything turns into a do-or-die slog. When both are at the cap of 2000 units, you frantically chase the enemy fleet across the entire map just to finally finish them off and end the game. In one match, after four hours, I finally caught up with the enemy and that part was done… and then I spent another 30 minutes slowly flying to the home planet just to actually end the game. Along the way, pirates kept attacking me, and small remnants of the enemy fleet tried to sabotage my economy. I ended up having two games exactly like this. After that, I completely lost the desire to try again.

The mechanic where planetary orbits change, sometimes opening shortcuts to desired routes, turned out to be very interesting. But once again, in the late game, even this becomes a drag.

The research tree is enormous, and at times it feels like you’re supposed to research every single tiny thing. In reality, after the midgame, there’s little point in doing anything other than increasing military power. By my third run, I was already automatically researching planet colonization and nothing else.

I never really understood the point of developing “culture.” Sometimes it was established, sometimes it was lost—but what difference does it make if, in 10–15 minutes, the planet might be completely "destroyed" and changed factions?

Apart from war and the occasional alliance to “spam out” other players, there aren’t really any alternative tactics here.

The battles are spectacular, and there’s a large number of ship upgrades. You can click around and experiment to your heart’s content. That said, some ship abilities aren’t very clear in what they actually do—but as long as the stats UI shows that something increases, it feels acceptable.

Maybe I should have tried multiplayer, but unfortunately I don’t have the time for it, so these impressions are based purely on the single-player experience.

Thumbs up overall, because there aren’t many space RTS games these days, and I bought it at a discount. I did get my share of enjoyment, and that’s enough for me. I recommend giving it a try—you might like it more than I did. As for me, I’ll just feel a bit sad that nowadays we don’t have many truly engaging space RTS games, and the ones we do have don’t always manage to keep you hooked through gameplay alone.