The demo wasn't very gratuitous, is the game worth it?

I’ve just played the demo and it was a rather disappointing when it came to gratuitousness explodiness. I was expecting the twisted metal of Total Annihilation combined with the weapon effects from Mechwarrior and the ship design of X3 at it’s best. Instead the ships look small, the sounds are rather wimpy and it’s not helped by the interface which should be as minimal as possible but instead clutters up the screen with useless elements that it doesn’t seem possible to remove (I know you can press U, but that seems to stop the mouse cursor functioning as well so I can’t get the information I do need). I’d be nice to see everything removed except the ship details panel, and perhaps the scores integrated into that.

However, I’m wondering whether the game is worth buying despite it not coming close to living up to it’s main selling point. It does seem to have quite a lot of scenarios - I counted twelve missions for the federation and I assume the other three races have similar numbers of missions and the online option looks interesting but on the other hand the ships seem a bit inflexible and there doesn’t seem to be that much more variation than the demo has.

The site is a bit brief on detail so how much stuff does the game contain?

Try zooming in (scroll up on the mouse wheel).

Try looking over this thread.

The factions share the same missions, which aren’t terribly difficult.

Main draw is the online challenges.

I love the game but I admit the sound is a bit twitchy to get working right. Option pane fiddling is needed. I second Yurch’s comment that the main point of the game is the online challenges, which the demo just doesn’t have.

Also, the game doesn’t have any “in battle” controls that impact the outcome so it really isn’t like Total Annihilation, Mechwarrior, etc. This game is pure strategy!

Heres to give you a sense of space battle perspective:

Look up sins of a solar empire.

Ships=ants.

gratuitous space battles:

These ships=large, much more explodiness!

and you must compare this to other space games, mechwarrior isnt a great comparison… although i do wish there was one nuke launcher in the game just for that absolutly massive explosion feel…