It has multiplayer, and Frogboy has been promoting it a bit, but the general consensus I've read from the forums has been it's not a match for GC2.

However, some have liked it, so it may be worth a try for you.

I had planned on getting it upon release, but with all the bugs, I will wait until they are fixed. I can only imagine that about the time to the bugs are finally fixed the price will be $19.99.

I've tried to get the demo going, cause it is MP, but it is a buggy mess, so much so that I cannot even get it to work which is BS. Speaking of Space Empires 5, or V, which I am of course, the demo, downloads and installs but there is supposedly an mp3 file that plays in the beginning and makes the screen go blank and just sit there blank, so you have to turn off some stupid sound setting from true to false, just to get it to not sit at the blank screen, then you don't even get to the splash screen on my system cause it causes some access violation. This is the demo, not sure if the actual version doesn't suck. But this is BS anyway, their demo is supposed to be indicative of what the gameplay is actually like and if u can't even get it to work there is no way I'm shelling out any money to play. That's just a given.

The concept and screen shots look alright thought. I've always been more about gameplay and depth, and a renewable exprience then flashy graphics, great AI, lol as if, and clean interface. But if you guys on here try it and get it to work, that is the demo, let me know how I'd greatly appreciate that. Thanks.

I bought it and it won't even run on my computer! How could it pass the game test???

Steam

Heh

I'm not buying it

I was a big fan of Space Empires 4 but just can't bring myself to play 5 (bought through Steam - I like Steam). It's a godawful mess. The move to 3D has been a disaster. Most of the development time has gone into the real time space and ground combat. By late game this could involve hundreds (thousands?) of ships and units and will become so unwieldy that I'm sure most people will skip the tactical combat entirely and use the strategic combat option exclusively. But even the strategic combat takes a ridiculous amount of time to resolve as the combat engine runs through the encounter but without the display on. It's accurate but still frustrating.

As somebody already said - getting anything done involves a left click frenzy opening options and then, bizarrely, closing them back down again.

There's also been a lot made of the modding options possible with the game but this really isn't much more than you'd see with any modern game, including GalCiv2.

There's a good game in there somewhere but the UI does a stunning job of hiding it. I've not had too many problems with bugs and any I did have were mainly caused by modding options I didn't understand (mainly trying to make the interface usable).

King of 4X? I think SE4 still holds that title. It's not gone away.


EDIT: The last 3 games I've bought: Space Empires 5, The Guild 2 and Gothic 3 have all been chock full of bugs and failed to live up to their predecessors.

BTW, Ark, I think you still can run SEV if you change your system language to Englsih from the advanced section of 地區和語言選項 in your control panel.

It's too much hassle to switch it back and forth just to play a game though. But since you have already paid for it, you may want to at least be able to see it in action.