Here is my personal take on this game after a bit of time with it and the beta that came before, and what I think Stardock is trying to accomplish with it.  I am certainly not a professional reviewer, nor am I an over the top Stardock fanboy.  I'm just a gamer who in addition to playing games, loves to tinker with them.  And this last is what has moved me to make this rather longish post as I've not seen as much discussion on this as I'd like to see.  If you want to know what I'm talking about, then read on.

To begin with, there are many who wanted to believe that this game was along the lines of either a remake of MoM, or it's successor and thus expected it to be similar to that great game or others like it.  I know I did when I first saw the Impulse preview of the game.  It is not though, it has been said many times over the past months that it is not only different from MoM, but also from other 4x games that are currently known or popular.  However despite the statements regarding how different this game is to those games in the genre that came before, there still remains quite a perception among many who bought the game that it is or should be somewhat like MoM, or Age of Wonders, HoMM, Civ, what have you.  I don't necessarily believe that this is the fault of the players however.  Many of them bought into this game from back in it's early days.  And at that time, the game was conceptually different from the final product; it was to be more grand strategic in nature with huge armies, was to have real time battles, and early screenshots seemed to indicate that it would have an off map city development screen similar to MoM or Civ. 

But the changes made to the system by the developers via both their own desires as well as feedback from the community changed the scope and scale of the game to a smaller strategic and tactical scale.  But many never saw or knew about that unless they followed these forums over the time of development of the game.  Clearly many people did not do so, and thus were still expecting the game to fit into one of the molds that came before it, and thus being rather disappointed with how the final game turned out.  I say all this because I believe that this underlying feeling has colored a lot of peoples perceptions of the game, and have done so in a negative way. 

Of course what then adds to all this is the fact that the game feels unfinished or rushed to many.  I have to admit that it does to me as well, and if this was pretty much any other company than Stardock, I would be probably be very concerned.  The bugs and tech issues are also unfortunate, however I have been through worse product launches, though that certainly doesn't absolve Stardock from blame on that.  Nobody likes to feel like they are buying a game just to be a late beta tester.  But I know how Stardock supports their games, and how they will in fact hammer, fine tune, and continue to polish this product over the months to come until it really shines.  Of course, many early reviewers are going to pan and gripe about these issues.  I fully expect the initial bouts of reviews will likely be mediocre due to many of these issues.  It's sad, but I do expect it.  Unless of course these reviewers are able to see past the initial launch problems to see the great potential this game has, and by that I refer to it as a modding platform.

And that last is where I feel this game will really take off, and something I would like more people to consider.  Personally, I have no problem with the scale and play of the game out of the box.  The bugs are irritating, and the lack of polish is annoying, but I know these things will get cleaned up in time.  I've been a PC gamer, and gamer in general, for far too long to expect a crystal clean release of anything.  There does persist the feeling that much of this may have been avoided by waiting for a Spring 2011 release instead, and I feel this too.  But that's irrelevant now, and thus not a point to worry about.  The game is out here and now, and all things considered will probably be a stronger game in Spring of 2011 after months of continued work and polish by Stardock along with the support of the people playing the game, than it would be via internal polishing and testing over the same time period.  Not saying that I necessarily agree with that mindset of doing things, but that does seem likely how things will turn out if Stardock's past performance with the GalCiv series is any indication.

But as I've said before on these forums and will say again in this post, what really has me excited about this game is the platform they have created for future modding and tinkering by both the public as well as internally at Stardock.  This is almost more than just a game, it is a toolset that can allow one to build all kinds of different fantasy or other type settings and games, particularly for those with skill in using the Python language.  But even without that knowledge, little tools have already been provided for making maps, buildings, and factions, and there will be many more along the way over the coming months to give even the casual modder the ability to change things to his or her liking. 

This value and aspect of the game is not something that can easily be quantified in the early stages of the release as after all, there isn't much available yet from Stardock or the community, but it is a value that should not be overlooked.  Of course, it will take some time before any big mods show up, but just go over to the Elemental Mods forum and take a look at some of the projects people are already starting to work on to get an idea of some of the directions this potentially amazing product can start to be taken.  And this will only get better and better as time goes on, especially as Stardock continues to support and expand the mod-ability of this game.  This is what has me excited about this product, and this is why I see this game becoming over time so very much more than just another 4x strategy type of thing.  It is unfortunately something that as I stated will take time to develop.  And there are those out there who don't care about the modding ability of the game, but rather just want a 4x game that works right and is fun.  To those people I can only say have some patience; believe those who have said many times that Stardock does support their products, and just wait and see what comes down the road in a few months.  I think some of the results will be very cool.

One thing I have learned over the years as a game player and as a small-time modder myself, is the tremendous talent that's out there among fellow gamers, some of whom go on to careers within the gaming community from their starts as modders.  And I can only hope that there are others out there, particularly among the reviewers but also those here on these forums and elsewhere, who can see beyond what they have in their hands along with it's initial problems, and can see instead what this game can, and will become.