Fancy that, it is basically the same review I wrote over a week ago (November 2nd). I think most everyone feels the same way.
"I am a big fan of the original Sword of the Stars 1, a 4X space game with a turn based strategy component and a real-time battle component. It was an innovative and fun game that the developer (Kerberos) strongly supported over the years with patches and expansions. The game was long on content and provided interesting strategic challenges, while still being a blast. The space battles in particular were a both fun and beautiful.
Due to the above I eagerly awaited the October 28th release of Sword of the Stars 2 (SotS2). SotS2 promised to follow the standard sequel formula with updated graphics and some overall design improvements. In some ways it has met that promise. The graphics are breathtaking, and there are many improvements to the overall design.
Unfortunately, I am badly disappointed with the game. The game is not particularly buggy, and does not crash overly much for a new release, but it appears to be simply unfinished. Many core features are simply unimplemented even after a couple hurried patches. Large stretches of the game look as though they are just rough drafts. With so much of the game unfinished one wonders how any balancing work or AI development could have been seriously undertaken.
The most frustrating thing of all is that it is clear there is a tremendous game here...or at least the potential for one. Yet, until A LOT more work is put in, the game is borderline unplayable. This makes the game very hard to rate. It is like a brilliant student with good test scores who just didn't write a term paper. Sure you could fail them, but that doesn't seem fair. On the other hand just grading them on potential isn't fair to the rest of the students who actually did the work. I really wish I could just hand out an "incomplete", but metacritic does not work that way. With another few months of work this could easily have been one of the best games of the year (95). But as it is now I would not recommend anyone buy it, even hardcore fans of the genre (25). I guess I will average those and give it a 6. If the developer survives long enough to complete the game there should be many long hours of fun to be had sometime in the distant future. Whether that is weeks, months, or years from now only time will tell."
