Firstly, just a few corrections for the person who wrote the "official" review. 1) Weapon stats are easily available on the research screen, including bars for comparison oon all those different areas you were looking for. 2) While it's true SotS is low on the culture and diplomacy as compared to its current peers in the 4x genre, it is designed to be largely a multiplayer game. Diplomacy is supplied by the people playing, how they want to work together or against each other. 3) As for your problems with reinforcements and fleet management, it really is a shame you missed the part in the manual and the tech tree itself about CnC (command and control) ships, and the fleet management screen easily accessible from the starmap. 4) Criticizing Kerberos for not copying homeworld's combat just made me laugh so hard. If you think about it, if they had you would have just criticized them for falling back on to something they did in the past and not thinking creatively. For people that criticize like that, every game is damned if it does, and damn if it doesn't. Now, I have to say I really enjoy Sword of the Stars. It provides an excellent fast paced 4x game that deftly avoids the redundancy and boredom rampant in other titles in the genre. The simplicity of empire management allows you to focus on your primary goal, securing yourself against annihilation and plotting the annihilation of your opponents.

I disagree with the Gamepro review. SotS was built from the ground up with multiplayer in mind. Up to 8 players can take part in network games; the AI can take over or step aside seamlessly as human players leave or enter the game. Annoying micromanagement, common to most 4X games, is abstracted. Do players care if the colonists on Tau Ceti 6 need an advanced Hydroponics Farm Mark VIII? I know I don't. The tech tree is random. So there is no best combination of techs to spam, you have to work with what you get. There are three ship sizes, the demo only allows the smallest (destroyers). Later techs allow more and bigger ships onto the field. The voices need work, but the game was also built to be moddable.

Reviewers don't seem to be giving this game the attention it deserves. Most reviews seem to be arguing about things in the game that were put there by design, omitting entire sets of features, or flat out ignoring details.

I disagree with the officail review on multiple accounts. Many of the complaints such as lack of information and such were implemented by design. The game was not made to be a stat fest. Knowing what to use and when was supposed to be something gleened from trial and error and experience. The tech tree was also randomized somewhat so that you can never count on having the same techs. It's all to prevent cookie cutter gameplay where everyone rushes for hte same techs and the same weapon layouts because they're statistically "the best." More information is also revealed as you open up certain techs on the tree, I believe, as well. Theres also something to be said for simply knowing the status of your ship by looking at it and saying "well, gee, it's more than slightly on fire and two weapon points have been destroyed, it's probably not doing terribly well." When you have visual representation, I think it's less than nessisary to have a superfluous little bar that says 2/30hp on every ship. As for only being able to bring a few of your ships into tactical battle at a time, and reinforcements, all I have to say is logistics. Besides the point that, having 90 destroyers on both sides and several cruisers would be slightly hard to render at once, only being able to field a few ships is nothing new. In Galactic Civ.II You could only group as many ships into a fleet as your logistics allowed. Likewise, you can only have as many ships fielded as can be supported by your CnC ship. Also, in reguards to the time limit, it can be raised to something longer should one desire, and it's simply in place to give you a break and replan your strategy/start a new formation before throwing into the thick of it again. A great deal was simply left out of the review as well, such as multiplayer not being mentioned whatsoever, and the details between the different races. Besides the "minor species specific bonuses," the Lirr AI attacks in a completely different manner than the other races and some techs are race specific. I'm aware this all sounds very reactionary, and I could go on and on, but the bottom line is it seems like the reviewer picked up the game, played it for a half hour, and then made his decision without researching the game whatsoever. I would just like to invite anyone who reads this to ignore the review, and look into the game yourself. The demo truely doesn't do it justice, but there is more than enough information around now to get an idea as to the detail put into the game, and how fun it actually is.