All the stages are very different and will appeal to different people, my favourites were the creature stage and the space stage.

My favourites ranked in order
Space
Cell
Civilization
Tribe
Creature

Though really, creature phase is the only one that I find a bit boring. It just seems so tedious to me. But the others are fun.

I like all bar space. :)

The cell phase is good until you realise you always encounter the same Maxis designed cells.

The cell phase is good until you realise you always encounter the same Maxis designed cells.

*cough*$40expansion*cough*

I'd say Creature, Cell, Space

then Tribes-Civ are tied.

The addictiveness of Cell is trying to get the good parts off killing the creatures that are better than you.

Space stage certainly. Every other stage feels like a half-assed minigame with no real depth

The cell stage was the one I thought would suck, pre-play. Turns out, it's rather dynamic, and interesting. Sure, it's still basic, but it's as good as they could have made it.

The creature stage is okay. I'm bored with the play, but I love the creature development, so it really equals out. I wish they had more content as far as design benefits though. I feel like I'm forced into limited creature designs (if I seek good benefits) or forced to suffer in abilities if I chose designs I think look cool.

The tribal stage is okay. It has all that it needs, but I find it too much like the Sims, where you just execute what you're told to do by your tribe. There isn't much strategy.

The civilization stage is okay. Not as in depth to us Civ players, but not bad either. More content would be nice. I like designing the buildings, but I think it needs a little work.

The space stage is interesting. I like the graphics and the zoning in and out of planets, stars, galaxies. I like how there's multiple mini-stages in the space stage.

Cell > Space >>> Civilization > Creature > Tribal

They should of made it so what your creeature was designed like matters how it walks. And flying is just stupid you can have a single wing in front of the creature and fly fign.

I like the Creature phase most, because it's a true novelty.

The Tribe and Civ phases are essentially RTS games. And considering that the RTS genre is almost 15 years old, and designers should have lots of experience with RTS mechanisms, the Tribe and Civ phases are poorly done.

I voted creature stage, but not because the gameplay is amazing, but because it allows me to use the best part of the game, the creature creator. The creature phase is much like an MMO, where you grind to get a reward, in this case parts and dna points that let you trick out your character to look cool.

Tribe ranks worst for me, mostly because you zoom out and the creature I just created looses all of his individuality and charm. Now its just a bunch of generic units.

Cell is kinda generic too, but having one of those monsterous chompers come after you is exhilerating, even if its the same chomper every time. Its also fun to do the same thing to him when you've grown to quadruple his size.

Civ at least gets back to the design elements from creature phase. I enjoy making buildings and vechicles that take the place of my creature and express the attitude and character i've associated with that creature.

I haven't been to space yet.

The Cell Stage is surprisingly fun. I must say, it was the least anticipated of the games, but turned out one of the best. I'll vote Space and Cell.

I still haven't played enough to properly determine which phase is the best.

Warning: This whole post contains spoilers. If you don't wanna know, skip this post.

The Space stage:
Well, Space stage is rather obnoxious. The mere fact that I have to attend to pirate attacks and constant eco-disasters distracts me from terraforming (which requires alot of time, but cannot be attend with when you are constantly under attack!) and exploring (which I can't get to with so many crap going on). It is so annoying, it is far most the LEAST favorite stage of the game. With a few patches, it could be playable. I stop after the civilization stage.

On the plus side, destroying an enemy's planet is so sastifying, it's almost erotic... if you can afford the 4 million spice to get it. I once spent 24 million spice on a war (before I knew there were cheats for the game), and managed to barely scrap by with the constant attacks on my planets.

I showed my ex-gf of mine nuking a planet, she said I needed to seek help. (I only nuke T0 planets).

So I'll say the Space stage is ranked 5th place out of the five.

The Tribal stage:
The tribal stage is ok... it makes sense to look for food either by a fruit tree or hunting for meat or fish. But what I hate the most is constantly being under attack when you are fighting another tribe! What's worse, fighting seems like an impossible task, even in the easy difficulty, because unless you send your entire population to fight ther other tribe, you will get owned by thier seemly impentrable defense. And when you do, another tribe would come after you and attack your defenseless tribe! It's a lot easier to simply befriend them by sending them tribute and doing your little dance to earn thier trust. That's of couse if you again send your entire tribe to befriend them first, again strengthening my argument about leaving a defenseless tribe!

Still, even at the hardest difficulty, this is a very simple era that required more depth into it. It would've been great if you work your way up via technology (like Civilization 4) and use swords, shields and basic gunpowder (as well as astromony, music, and other aspects) into the game. But it all just seems too over-simplified (like when Empire Earth II was over-simplified when they made EE III) and not depth enough to draw this hard-core gamer into this aspect of the game.

Again, the tribal stage is not the best, and not the worse era in the game. Ranked 4th place out of 5.

The Civilization stage:
Civilization stage is possibly the most sastifying in the game considering it's not as depth as... say... SimCity 4. Bascially, your only option is build a force, conquer or trade and buy out... You can buld buildings (that you can create) to boost your ecomony or ad dhappiness for those cities. Basically the only true reason why you should add happiness is if youre going for a religious victory.

But the most sastifying thing about this stage is the military superpower that destroys any building. Not as sastfying as watching a whole planet go kaput, but good enough. Of course, you can't rebuild nuked factories when you do.

Compared to all the other stages, it's good, but not the best.

So the Civilization stage is ranked 3rd place.

The Cell Stage:
The cell stage is simply awesome. Simple yet complicated in it's own merit. It kind of reminds me of a great nostalgic arcade game. Bascially, there are three ways to play: You must hunt or be hunted as a canivore, try to survive the elements as a herbivore eating plant bits, or pretty much best of both worlds as an omivore. The only negitive rant about this stage is the fact that those larger fish won't leave you alone! That and it's IMPOSSIBLE to get all those cell parts! And the fact that you can't start as an omivore and the only way you can become one is if you can find that NEAR DAMN IMPOSSIBLE mouthpiece or merge two mouthpeices together as an expensive alternative!

I don't think you could get a new part after you pass this stage, but who cares when you spend well over an hour looking for the damn things! This goes for creature stage as well! Who's bright idea was it to impliment this into the game, because I'm sure Will Wright is kneeling over in his cave for (once) not interventing to this monstrosty of this crappy game we play today!

Ok, I'm done ranting. it's just the thought of hunting for things and looking around for something thats impossible irks me beyond belief. Back to the cell stage...

Other than all the negitive, it's fun to hunt for food and even though this is simplier than say the space stage, it's fun and playable for all ages.

The Cell stage, I think, is ranked 2nd place.

And for the best stage of them all...
The Creature stage.

A stroke of genius. Purely almost the entire planet is intrograted into a 3D spectrum of species created by either you, Maxis, or other players. Not only do you hhave to survive other creatures by dodging (or hunting) hostile creatures, but you must watch out the epic creature, which is basically an enlarged version of previous creatures created with multiple attack power and hit points. It is possible to beat that thing, but not likely. I wouldn't dare challenge the condemned. But what makes this version so awesome, dispite of hunting for fossils scattered throughout the game is the options of attacks, special abilities and diplomatic options avaliable (provided if you can find those parts which seems impossible to find), is the fact that you can actually get abducted by unknown ufo's (I recently ALMOST got abducted in my current game)!

There's no doubt that the creature feature (yes, I rhymed) made Spore as it is right now. And without this stage, I would've kindly sold this game back from whence it came.

I voted creature,It had that intimacy with your creation as a life form interacting with a new world.Also the awareness that you were not alone and space beckons in the eons that follow.

I have more fun at the creature stage than even the space stage. :)

My ranking:
Creature
Space
Civ / Tribe
Cell

The uninstall stage.

The refund stage?

@Cleric&Salty: Honestly, why do you feel the need to be here if you hate it all that much? Go play some Civ or something... :mischief:

My list:
Space
Civ
Cell
Creature
Tribe

Space is far and away my favorite stage, it lets you play in many different styles. The only thing you need to let go of is a desperate need to complete all the missions. Go ahead and experiment. :D

But I neeeeeed to do all the missions so I can get that cool-looking holographic planet walk-around dealy! :twitch:

Space is probably my favourite so far, for its sandboxiness (I play on Easy so I don't get so many 'OMG PIRATEZ' moments) but I also quite like Tribe (all my little guys have NAMES! This is a GOOD thing! That's the kind of gamer I am).

The refund stage?

:lol::lol::lol:

@Cleric&Salty: Honestly, why do you feel the need to be here if you hate it all that much? Go play some Civ or something... :mischief:

My list:
Space
Civ
Cell
Creature
Tribe

Space is far and away my favorite stage, it lets you play in many different styles. The only thing you need to let go of is a desperate need to complete all the missions. Go ahead and experiment. :D

I like the game! Just because I said the refund stage is best doesn't mean I have disdain for it. It was only a joke, anyway... ;)

Sorry, Salty, I didn't catch that. My bad. :)
It's probably because I have been asked to help moderate the Spore forums, and it's not a very friendly place yet. Returning to my trusted Civfanatics to relax and finding bash-like posts here too, got to me.

Moderate the Spore forum, eh? You know, others might be willing to help... :mischief:

And no need to apologize. It'll be alright, if we go and play some Spore that is. ;)

Tribe
Cell
Space
Creature
Civilization

Sorry, Salty, I didn't catch that. My bad. :)
It's probably because I have been asked to help moderate the Spore forums, and it's not a very friendly place yet. Returning to my trusted Civfanatics to relax and finding bash-like posts here too, got to me.

Good luck with that, a worthy moderator;) Compared to some other spore forums this one is very peaceful.

Moderate the Spore forum, eh? You know, others might be willing to help... :mischief:


Don't get your hopes up;)

Who said it was me? :mischief:

Back on topic, I think that Creature Stage is more deserving off my vote. It has a certain charm about it. Being a simple beast on a huge world is a good feeling. :)

A stroke of genius. Purely almost the entire planet is intrograted into a 3D spectrum of species created by either you, Maxis, or other players. Not only do you hhave to survive other creatures by dodging (or hunting) hostile creatures, but you must watch out the epic creature, which is basically an enlarged version of previous creatures created with multiple attack power and hit points. It is possible to beat that thing, but not likely. I wouldn't dare challenge the condemned. But what makes this version so awesome, dispite of hunting for fossils scattered throughout the game is the options of attacks, special abilities and diplomatic options avaliable (provided if you can find those parts which seems impossible to find), is the fact that you can actually get abducted by unknown ufo's (I recently ALMOST got abducted in my current game)!

Try to stay in creature stay as long as possible (maybe until you find all those impossible parts), because the game goes downhill from here.

My ranks.
First place: Civilization, as it provides creativity with the buildings and vehicles, plus I like controlling a lot of units, plus finding optimal happiness/income levels is an interesting brainteaser. :3 Okay, and I like the voices of the Economic vehicles, too. :P
Second place: Cell, simply because it's fun. :3
Third place: Space. There's a lot of stuff in place there, and it's always a bonus exploring the galaxy and making millions (or tens of millions) of sporebucks from spice trading. I do sometimes feel like I'm playing whack-a-mole with the ecodisasters and pirate attacks.
Fourth: Creature stage, which is alright. Not much to say with it.
Fifth: Tribal. This is the one stage I feel I could do with a little less of. Trying to keep the tribe constantly fed while trying to deal with the other tribes isn't something I opt for all that much.

I voted for all of them, except for none, I don't think I voted for that.

Space was my favorite stage - not so much for the change in gameplay, but because Space in general is my favorite setting. Having "evolved" from cells to traveling the galaxy, just awesome. Saved the game for me; since as a whole, Spore didn't quite hit the spot. I think I'll return to it eventually and I still would rather have more games like it but it never grabbed my attention the way Civ has: when I'm away from Spore, I forget Spore. When I'm away from Civ, I'm still thinking of Civ: where to found a city, what to research, what to build, when to attack, and thinking of narratives of my own.

I just got the game a couple of months ago, and I definitly think they get worse as the game goes on. In other words, Cell is the best, and Space is the worst.
As a whole, the game is not that overall great. It is very low strategy compared to Civ IV.

I found the creature creator to be the most amusing component, so I like the creature stage best.

my list
space,1
creature,2
cell,3
civ,4
tribe5

I'd start with Creature and Space equally, as you have lots of options for growing, and finding fossils is fun. Although in Space, it gets tiresome having to deal with pirates... or ecodisaster... or warmongers/Spodians declaring war.
Next would be cell, which is actually fun (nothing but finding various sources of food would seem boring, but somehow it isn't). Someone mentioned that it's difficult to get all the cell pieces, which I would have to disagree with.
I think civilization and tribal stage are at the bottom, since although they contain some strategy elements, they lack the depth of other RTS games.

Cell is the best stage, followed by Creature, then Space, then Civ, then Tribal (the 1st two are THE GREATEST, the last 3 are almost unplayable).

The creature stage is the best because it is the stage with the most sandbox feel, which is the whole point of the game. To me all the other stages are unexciting besides the last two and creature; civ and space

The creature stage is the best because it is the stage with the most sandbox feel, which is the whole point of the game. To me all the other stages are unexciting besides the last two and creature; civ and space

So all in all, only cell stage you dislike?

and tribe

Tribe is simply disgusting.

I'd rather it be there, than not. I guess. It's an interruption. It's a quick little side-game.
Looking at my time played, creature and space are obviously my favorite. Creature gives the most fun in the number of self-imposed tasks. Space is nice and long (if repetitive).

So all in all, only cell stage you dislike?

Yeah, pretty much