Could'nt believe the demo ended!

I'd buy the gold edition. Not all people like all features new with Dark Avatar, but all in all it is an improvement. Aditionally you might miss out on features that will be added by Dark Avatar updates.

Get the Gold Edition, you won't regret it. I love Dark Avatar and the game is just getting better with each update, even surpassing the all-time classic Master of Orion 2.

The Gold Edition is worth every penny.

The expansion contains:

- Asteroid Fields (mining them boosts production)

- New Spy System (allows you to slow your enemy's production and research)

- ~Optional~ Mega Events (random events that have huge effects on the game)

- Hostile Environments (new techs are needed to colonize certain planets)

- Super Abilities (each race has one, and each has a big effect on how they play)

There might be more... I'm a bit sleepy...

Buy the gold edition. Good as GC2 is, it's markedly better with the expansion (and new stuff's still being added to DA).

DA is crappy right now only because it has an insane slowdown that makes it virtually unplayable......but I'm sure that'll be fixed!   

It would be a crime to purchase GC2 without getting DA. Granted GC2 is a fantastic game in itself, but DA adds so much to the experience that there's just no reason not to get it! With updated graphics drivers and the latest patch, I haven't had any problems with the game what so ever! You should most definitely buy It!v

Sadly yes, this is true. Not nearly unplayable though, just can't really play unless yer in tactical view. Which I play from anyway unless I need to know exactly what something looks like, then I zoom way in and take a look. If you get really close you dont have the slowdown problems, or at least they aren't as bad...

But again, I just play from the Tactical view, so that I dont really get the slowdowns even with 300+ ships moving each turn.

DA's working fine for most people, including for me, even though I play it on a crappy 2-year-old Dell laptop.

Apparently, Vista (and the associated video drivers) are to blame for a lot of it. I've personally seen performance INCREASES with the latest beta patches (running on XP) thanks to all the optimizations they're doing.

My problem is probably in that this is a laptop and I am using Kryo's DA mod.

No problems with DA here either, we shouldn't forget that for every customer with problems usually there are 100 or more that don't have anything to say.

If you only buy the Gold Edition to for the extra ship jewelery and hulls then you have spent wisely. The ships of DA make DL's ships look like something off an old Atari 2600.

That being said though, the new updates that continue from Stardock should alone make you happy you have DA. I don't think DL is supported to this degree anymore and as such after a few months i think you would be frothing at the mouth to get your hands on the expansion.

Get the Gold Edition and use DL first. Get some game time under your belt and then jump into DA....you won't regret it

Thanks for all the feedback! I think I'll go ahead and get the gold version with DA.It's probably cheaper to get the combined package, rather than but them separately anyway.

[B]Make sure you buy it retail and not used don't make the mistake i did i bought it on ebay then right when i got it i couldn't activate it and couldn't patch it.

Good to know! I had actually been looking at eBay prices;so if someone registers the game and then sells it you can't load patches? Think I'll just hit the brick and mortar stores. Thanks

Yes, you're best off buying it from a reputable retailer rather than from a random seller on ebay. Particularly as all of GC2:Gold auctions I turned up there with a quick search are blatantly bootleg copies.

Strange I got the gold edition at EB it was exactly the same price as GC2 so the choice was not very hard for me.

Gold edition all the way. I prefer to have all the options.