StarDrive

I read the excerpts on metacritic. The only full one I read was ign which gave it 4.5. Basically it said it did nothing special and was really bland. Sounds like ground combat was one of the worst features. Finishing games was tedious because the AI spams settlers and the only way to win is kill everything or diplomacy. There wasn't anything super striking, just in general a dull game. It gets dinged for not having a campaign too. One individual reviewer said the AI was super difficult on anything above easy, not balanced at all.

User score is much higher than critic though, 7.4 compared to 5.9. Anything over a 7 is usually pretty safe bet. It's still $15 though, I think I'll just get MOO 1&2 off GOG for a couple bucks and wait for price to come down more.

I do suspect that the replayability value is not great, but I haven't yet reached that point. As it stands, I'd stand by my initial review. I could write something with a bit more perspective on the game in the near future, if you'd like.

Reading the same Metacritic reviews, including the detailed user reviews, I think this game was really an Early Release (actually to be fair, I think this game was released before Steam had the "Early Release" section). This one looks like it has potential though.

It is still being worked upon quite a bit, and the game's creator remains very active on the forums, so I do honestly expect that the game's shortcomings (limited endgame in particular) will continue to improve.

Star Drive 2 is being released on the 9th of April from what I've read (only just found out that it was being made).

Having watched an LP I've got to say it looks much improved over the original. While I enjoyed the original I did find it quite bland which hurt its replay value IMO.