Endless Space preview

[Kekvit Irae]

The Endless Space review is now up, share your opinions. In short, good game with some bugs and incomplete features, but will with highest probability get fixed and improved very fast. Cheers!

So how much were you paid by Amplitude Studios for four stars?

But seriously, and I mean no offense, but this is the reason why I don't trust reviews. You need to work on your scoring system a bit. If a review is mostly negative (and it was; I counted), then it should reflect that in the score. A good way of measuring score is start at 100%, remove all sentences (or whole statements) that are neutral (or just those that give background, such as the introduction), and then count how many parts are negative about the game. Subtract that percentage from the 100%, and there's your final score.

I have gone through your review and did just this:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

+This is most likely the cleanest, leanest, meanest UI we’ve ever seen!
+Beautiful, intuitive, making all the game’s features easily accessible and only a couple of clicks away.
+Overall, the artistic approach to the game, coupled with the sense for technical functionality has done true wonders for this title.
+Zooming in and out all over the galaxy, getting into system’s view, picking out planets and assigning build orders is swift and enjoyable, so that one actually gets the feel of sliding between different areas of your empire management.

-Currently, there is no talk about modding tools and their release yet, even though there was some showing of the principles how the game was designed by the developers.
+However, there was a loud call for Steam Workshop support for this game, but no matter how exactly it turns, the modding future for Endless Space looks like a winner.
+Combined with the strategic depth of the game, modding might give it a longevity beyond what even devs thought possible.

+Soundtrack of the game is incredible, and well worth having; if you pay a couple of bucks more for admiral’s or emperor’s edition, you will get the Endless Space soundtrack and may enjoy it even outside the game.
+The music is perfect, giving you the sense of the slow play within the vast regions of space, perfectly calming and soothing, the kind of compositions you might listen for hours and simply keep relaxing.
+Sound effects are suitable and well executed, they too fit well in the surroundings.

-We didn’t like the space combat before, and we don’t really like it now.
-Personally, a flat 2D turn based combat aka MOO2 would be preferable to the “on rails” fights of ES, where you pick three cards (corresponding to the different tactics) and hope for the best.
-I found myself in many cases auto-resolving the space combats, especially when I had an hero admiral in command.
-After all, it seems that the combat itself will stay the same, depending to which extent it can be modded by players across the world.

+But considering all the circumstances and indications (plus my firm intention to keep on trucking with Endless Space), the game seems downright superb.
-A slight disappointment was the specific nature of the combat, but not because it is bad per se, but because we would love to have the actual control over the ships, whether in 3D space or in a 2D version of battlefield, hell, even if it were in a turn-based mode!
+But the game is still a remarkable piece of strategy, and making a full game out of fleet fights would have probably postponed the entire development for a year!

-But there are actual problems in this game concerning AI and its cheating; AI gets insane bonuses per each difficulty, and doesn’t really change its behavior.
-Left unchecked, almost every species will spread like a wildfire throughout the galaxy and will gobble up systems like there is no tomorrow.
-Pirates being what they are, or rather should be, are incredibly overpowered in the game if left unchecked, so that they can, if no species spreads throughout a certain region, grow more powerful than all of the factions, and very fast!
-Fortunately they can be turned off in the starting menu, but they should be nerfed anyway, and fast.
-AI is cheating with the fleet building and is also cheating in the research department.
-Diplomacy system is incomplete and has inexplicable features, your ally making peace with the mutual enemy stops you from being able to attack the enemy systems, because the peace treaty that your ally signs up binds you as well!
-Many times in the game, the AI will demand something, mostly some rare element, or propose a deal; you can either accept it or refuse it, there is no option to alter the deal, and that is disappointing.
-Also, my relationship with my neighboring species has deteriorated to the point of war with the reasoning that “my territorial expansion makes them believe I am up to no good”; the fact that I didn’t colonize a single new system during the last 150 moves doesn’t seem to matter much.
-A 4X game like this should exceed this pitiful level of diplomacy by far.
-One more thing that made me giggle: in my first game, I’ve lost all of my planets and was effectively defeated. There was the notification that I had just lost the game and the option “would you like to keep playing?”. I said yes, just for giggles, the game went for another turn, then the same message appeared. I find it hard to see why the game thinks I would like to keep playing when I don’t have a single ship or planet anymore…

-After all, the AI and the various omissions one can spot only after a longer time spent in the game have reduced the overall enjoyment.
+The positive news is that the devs will with almost an absolute certainty fix all the broken features and iron out the current bugs in the game, but on the other side, we need to assess the game in its current state.
+And if we then consider the possibilities that the modding community and open-minded developers are presenting, well, it seems as the sky alone is the limit. And in this case, it is full of stars!

+ means positive
- means negative

I have taken out the sentences or statements I felt you were neutral or didn't contribute to a positive or negative feeling of the game. I have also removed summaries of statements or paragraphs, as they were simply summarizing what you have already stated.
We are left with 17 out of 30 parts that are negative, leaving the final score at 44%. On a five star rating system, we're looking at 2.2, or two stars if you round down.

Please don't take this as flaming or trolling, but rather as constructive criticism.