Ultra reviewer Bruce Geryk has completed his review of Galactic Civilizations II for 1Up.com  Bruce spent nearly a month playing the game before putting together a review to make sure it was thorough.

The review covers the major points of the game and like others, focuses in on the ship design aspect. 

He also observes that the game puts a lot of effort into being an open ended, create your own epic type game but laments that the game does not include multiplayer (and we admit, not having a final shoot out between Bruce Geryk and Tom Chick for ultimate mastery of the galaxy would have been cool -- then again, last time we checked, Mr. Geryk was interned in one of Tom Chick's gulags after the The Political Machine). 

In the end, he concludes:

Thanks to the great A.I., there's no question of the game's longevity. Because the game doesn't have copy protection or perform a CD check, you can easily install it to your laptop and home computer without violating a license. That's just the physical component of the game's ease of use and accessibility. The gameplay component of those qualities makes this the best space strategy game in over a decade.

Visit 1up.com to read the whole thing.