It's an okay game, and does its job for what I got it for, but I wish that it was more polished. It feels like the devs left it in an unfinished state, but it doesn't leave a bad taste in your mouth afterwards. Pick it up and give it a whirl to see what I'm talking about. Worst-case you'll walk away wishing it was more complete, but you won't regret it one bit!

This version of Lost Empires was a promising game when released. Shortly after that, the developers elected to make some serious changes to the game engine and the art assets -- a massive update and overhaul to an already good title. A giant patch.

Unfortunately, the development team chose to release this update as a new title altogether, effectively abandoning Lost Empires before actually finishing the game. Lost Empires: Immortals is the better version, with improved stability and presentation, but it left a bad taste in my mouth to have the proverbial carpet yanked out from under me.

Lost Empires is not a good value in comparison to the more recent Lost Empires: Immortals (also available here on GamersGate), despite the low cost. The developers took a significant risk in hoping that fans would buy the next, updated version so swiftly after releasing the unfinished original. The gamble did not pay off, for anyone.

I bought this game, cause it looked promising. However neither this one could outmatch the old champion of this genre, Master of Orion II. I had high hopes that I might have found a worthy contender, but in the end the gameplay was not as fun. However I had some good hours of fun, so I can recommend it, for genre-specialists.

I bought this game thinking that it would be a leap forward from Master of Orion 3 but in many ways it was a backwards step. The game itself is to big to mannage without letting the computer do most of the work for you which does tend to decrease the fun. I found the game to be underwhelming and generaly boring.

If You ever played games like Master of orion 3 or even galactic civilization which are clasic games of this genre You will see the difference. And in this comparison this game won't be reveiwed as even nice. Because there is no micro management like in those above mentioned games (which I do like most), there is no advanced diplomacy like in those above mentioned. You see, I think about this game like it is half-completed by developers, some things were completed and put in game and they are working good, but others IMHO very necessary are not inside.

I've had constant feeling playing this game, that my empire is living on its own, i do not need to manage it just fight and explore space around me, no complete solution providing tools to magage and build structures on planets, absolutly nothing what could interest so I play it longer.

My final word is - if You enjoyed games like "MOO3" of "Galciv" - this is waste of money, honestly.

The game has quite a few good ideas, and a number of bad ones.

The AI is very good, the concept is outstanding, and the back story seems really intersting.

BUT, the combat sucks, diplomacy is lacking, and the manual is less then helpful.

I'm not sorry for buying the game. I'm thinking that Lost Empire 2 or any other game from Pollux will become more polished with time. This is a very good first game.

The UI change from race to race, the Dragon race is very unique, the research is diffrent, and you get a sense that the universe is big and worth exploring.

My review of this product is based on playing 5 or 6 games so far.

The good: looks good, great tech tree and research, good concepts for exploration, archeology, story line etc., the size of your universe is impressive.

The bad: Very little in the way of explanation as to how the game actualy works, the manual is far too sparse and the nuances of the game are strictly trial and error or reading forum posts. Ship management from a ui standpoint is cumbersome. Diplomacy is totally confusing and lacking in the abilty to actually make alliances. All in all it seems like a start to a wonderful product but it needs polish and much more documentation.

Micromanagement is a must for this game as well.

I would rate the game 3 out of 5, because I am optimistic that it will improve.

This game looks like it has some good ideas behind it but IMO that is about it. The UI is klunky, the few tool-tips that the game does provide to help you understand the UI are riddled with grammatical errors and frequently unreadable because the scroll off the end of one side of the window in which the information is provided. The documentation is not helpful either.

If you enjoy exploring the rules of the game and figuring out how it is designed to work through trial and error, then I suppose you might consider it fun.

What can I say that is good about the game? The way the technology tree is designed is a great idea and would be a lot of fun if the game built around it wasn't so badly documented. The unit design tool also looks pretty well designed, but most of the items that you are able to load into your ship design have absolutely no explanation other than a vague word or two (frequently the definition of what the item does uses fewer words than the name of the actual item in question!!). The only way to know what the things do is by guesswork and trial an error.

Not worth my time. If I could rate the game I'd give it a 2 out of 5. I love this 4X genre, I just wish there were more than 2 developers (stardock and firaxis) who knew how to properly document and finish a game.

Gave this game 4.9 or something very close to 5 at least. I bought it after reading about it on a forum and on its site. Played a few games so far plus the tutorial, I’d say a total of around 10 hours of gameplay, and I definitely will be playing a lot more! However based on my first 10 hours I will now review it.

First of all, the atmosphere in the game is really nice. The starmap is huge and is said to contain 5000 planets to explore – and when you zoom out and listen to the sort of lonely sombre soundtrack, you get this feeling that you are truly in space, and that space is a very very big place, both beautiful and terrifying.

The gameplay itself focuses a lot on fleet management and conquest rather than planet management. On the planets you build planetary defenses, and set up trade and waste routes and expand the size of your moonbases to make room for the population to grow.

This fairly simple planet model lets you focus on expanding and conquering the galaxy and managing fleets. Thus, most micro management in the game is about researching new sciences, and designing and building new spaceships, put them together in fleets, and deploy them strategically. This makes the game a bit faster paced than most other 4x-games.

The combat is resolved instantly when two fleets clash, but you can view the battle afterwards in 3D, and fast-forward and rewind or control the camera yourself, which looks quite nice, and this help you see what ship components counter each other.

The tech tree is quite advanced – for each tech you have several levels – with no maximum level it seems, and besides this, each tech category has a level, so that when it reaches a certain level, you get access to numerous new sciences. This is a potentially (have only played for 10 hours or so yet) very deep strategic element. There really are lots of differences to which ship components you research, how high you research them, and which ones you put on your ships.

Another strategically important element is the leaders. The leaders have a certain skill in different schools, such as diplomacy, warlord, space engineer etc – and they can be deployed either on a certain planet to maximize their effect for that specific spot, or just on your whole empire for a small overall benefit. The leaders can be educated to gain more skills, but they die when they get old – though their lifespan can be lengthened if you research medicine.

There are 7 different races to play – and many of them are somewhat similar, though starting out with different stats and bonuses – except for the Dragon race called the Chi Lungs. This one is quite special.

The Chi Lungs are very different from the other races – they don’t colonize or build starships, and bases. Instead, they enslave the population on the planets and eat them to grow larger! The larger a dragon is, the more hunger it has – and you need to eat population to lower the hunger of the massive dragons. You can also eat population to make the dragons grow in size faster, but since you also need population for research this might be risky – cause if your dragons have eaten all your population, your research really slows down, and the AI will kill you fast!

This is one other thing which needs mentioning. The AI on hard is HARD to beat – I don’t know whether or how it is cheating, but so far I’m stuck on medium level and I’m lying like in the middle of the score list or so – and I’m used to this genre – played se4, a bit se5, and galciv1 and 2.

Well these are my impressions so far – of course I need to play the game some more, but so far, I am convinced that this game is a must for all 4x-fans. – I gave it 4.9 or so. - The last 0.1 they can fix in some patches – these are some irritating things with the UI which should be fixed, but if these things are fixed we are talking a contender for a true 4x-classic here.

Now I’ll go back to my dragons and devour a few million innocent people...