Very Good Game for space RTS fans.
Now got the Entrenchment and find it as fun as the first one. I put a few more hopes into this one as it is made more player friendly.
I do feel a bit disoriented in this game in the beginning. It kinda feels like a sandbox. All the similar games I've played they have a storyline that kinda guides you through the game and in the end you face the most difficult race. You can of course recreate this type of play by making a map with 4 opponents for example. Make 2 of them normal difficulty and one hard. Make one of them your ally. But in the end you still end up using trainers.
Game is good if you're RTS fan. But if you like games like "The Nexus: Jupiter" Incident or Old style "Imperium Galactica" you may find yourself lacking the communication with some kind of host-guide quest system whatever. As for a multiplayer this is a great game in my opinion. But I don't play much multiplayer in RTSs. I play games casually and I get my arse kicked most of the time because I don't stick with one game like that for a very long time to become very familiar with ins and outs of the strategy of winning with the particular race fleet.
All in all I love games that have story-lines. This one while offers everything else has no real storyline. You get a sense of whats behind of all that, like some invaders and what not in the first introductory storyline but no continuance to it.
Great game overall - very good graphics, love the research tree, battle formations, fleet sizes, ship types. I'd give this game 9.5 if there was some sort of a dynamic storyline behind it that you could follow up by having more and more research tree available while you progress through the story line. At this point game is more of a free surf through the space with armada of your ships =).