If it weren't for the hype, I'd have missed this game.
I just can't get my head around this one. I am all excited about the release of this, hearing the great reviews, seeing the beautiful screen shots, getting pumped about a different type of game. It was even one of the reasons (albeit small) that I bought a brand new computer that would be able to handle the graphics of this and others like it. Maybe if it weren't for all this I wouldn't have been let down so hard.
To start, the game-play is recycled. Builder ships and basic 'infantry-type' ships are just the start, but its rock-paper-scissors from there on out. Discounting, of course, the big fleet commander you get for technically free in the beginning that counts as just one big rock. But other than that, building and waiting for slow amounts of resources to trickle in is all you get for the first 10-30 minutes of the game. You could venture off and settle some new worlds, but you don't have much of a fleet to fight random colonists and defend against pirate raids that will probably get to you since you don't have any resources to buy them off!
So let's say you made it past the beginning stage and you've assembled your fleet. Time for those amazing screen shots, right? Well, no, not all the time. Playing the game that close up is technically impossible unless your ships are engaged in combat already. In which case, you're just watching dotted lines and missles fly in the space between them. For the rest of the game you're zoomed out in 'god-mode' building and moving your ships from planet to asteroid to... the sun? This makes all your and the enemies ships and buildings appear as little primary colored icons. So technically, its icon wars for the rest of the game.
And back to those ships. Feeling bored with one of the three races offered by Sins? Well, no problem, just switch over to one of the othe... oh wait. They're all the same. No difference between them except name, look, and the annoying persistent voice acting you get from clicking on and moving each and every one.
So now that you can't enjoy the beautiful ships view graphics of the universe, or mix up game play with different races' ships, or even see your ships, how about that tech tree? I'll give it to Sins they have a wonderful tech tree....to look at. Not that you'd be able to get enough resources from a 12 planet solar system to buy ships, buildings, and research for each of these annoyingly specific techs. You'd probably have to skip over the lower count planet systems and go straight to the 64 planet, multi-system maps to be able to enjoy the higher tiered techs. Or you could just wait patiently, twiddling your thumbs, watching icons move across the screen until you've got enough crystal at a rate of .02 per second to buy the tech that upgrades crystal recovery to .03 per second.
I'd save your money on this one...it'd be a Sin to buy it.