Your Universe, Minus a few things.
In one word yes and in another no.
My personal review is after reaching space stage several times.
It all starts in the Cell Stage, and in this stage you have a 2D game play that almost never gets old and is quite addictive in an Atari 2600 kinda way. You can start as an Herbivore or an Carnivore in the Cell Stage and begin to eat your way to sentience, but you have to unlock parts along the way to spend your DNA points on.
A simple, easy, and fun 2D Game.
Once you finish the Cell stage you enter the Creature stage, and this seems to be the most involved you will be personally with your creature as you begin to unlock the parts that will allow you to create the creature you've been dreaming of. After playing in EASY and HARD you get a bit involved in finding the parts for your creature. Wings let you "glide", feet can let you dance or charge or jump, and your hands are good for posing or removing a face or two.
Once you finally reach the end of the Creature stage you've unlocked all the parts you want, or you can continue hunting for them, you will advance from having a mere 3 team mates to a full RTS style Tribal Mode.
Tribal Mode is pretty run of the mill, but you can make some decisions. You can fish, harvest eggs of domesticated creatures, find seaweed, kill creatures, or harvest fruit and all of these are required to advance as your money in this stage is purely your food supply.
Tribal mode can be difficult if you wanted to be a more industrious line as some creatures can go against your decisions, but otherwise it can be pretty run of the mill with "Kill this" "Charm that". Engaging but you want to get through it usually quickly.
The Tribal mode ends when you've killed or allied with all of the other tribes and this takes you into Civ mode which can be quite fun depending on what class you end up (Military, Economic, or Religious) and also difficult depending on if you have it set on Easy or Hard.. Easy is super easy, but hard can be idiotic with how fast the otherside attacks.
Once you finish the Civilization Mode it takes you into Space which is the longest and last mode of the game, and it can be pretty engaging but do not thing for a minute its easy.
You can start out lucky and be near some economic races, or you can be unlucky and start next to Religious (Followers of Spode) or Militaristic (Pay us or Die) as either of these will demand payment and then attack if you fail to pay up.. kinda like the mob but on a galactic scale.
The bottom line is that Spore can be very engaging, as the most detailed part is the editors. There are several editors such as the Building, Vehicle, Creature, and Costume Editors and each one is addictive in its own way.
If you love(d) playing with legos, then you'll love building in the editors as you can spend hours playing with a single building or spaceship to get it just how you want it.
In the end, Spore delivers many different platforms and editors for you to play with to your hearts content and the social part of the Spore.com website allows you to link up and rate creatures, buildings, vehicles, or ships and comment on them or add them to your game to play with or against.
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Graphically, Looks great but do not be expecting Crysis.
Sound/Music, Sounds are great as each creature can sound differently depending on the mouth you put on it and the music is cool cause of the Music Editor for your cities.
Game play, Addictive as you move around the different game modes.
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Minus a few things:
The Flora Editor was promised to go with launch and was later pushed back to an unspecified date.
The Sea Mode, for the creature evolution was also pushed back and is not included.
Cell Mode: Doesn't show any of your creatures you made except for the Maxis Creatures.
Creature Mode: Even if you have wings you cannot fly up and grab food off branches you have to throw a stick at it.
Tribal Mode: No Issues.
Civilization Mode: No Issues.
Space Mode:
Can be sucked into constant Pirate conflict, Eco Disasters, or get attacked by other races.
You only have your ship plus any ship you can get from your allies.
Random Crashes:
Game can and will randomly crash in the Space Mode.
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91 Hours of game time, 6 species in space and lots of the universe to explore.
Game is worth picking up.