For a Grand Strategy fan, the game is great. But I cannot recommend the game in this state.

TLDR; slow performance, poor feedback, poor instructions, feeling of cheating to increase difficulty. Not a rewarding game, just one to get mad at...

Is almost impossible to get through the game without community help. There are too few hints (in game) about how to beat it. A few instances:

1. What are the benefits and disadvantages of each type of technology to build a ship?
2. How can an alien get 100% chance of instaflip a big economy country after I research all pherocytes tech?
3. How can I counter the bumps I encounter over time?

I like to play a hard game, but I think I should get some feedback about what the hell I'm doing wrong, so I can improve my playthrough over time. Or, may be, just give some tips of what I should do to when the game throw some rocks. For example, on a playthrough the aliens destroyed every single base, ship and asset I had. What should I do in this case? Is there any escape or should I restart?

The objetives instructed me very clearly I have to shoot down an UFO to progress in the game. In the other hand, if I shoot an UFO, aliens will punish me as hard as they can in a way it is impossible to continue the game.

Sometimes I also have the feeling the game just cheat to artificially increase the dificulty. Besides that, I have the feeling you should do a strict recipe to beat the game or else. Quite different from Crusader Kings or Galactic Civilizations where you have multiple ways to cross the finish line.

In top of that, I have a decent machine and, man, loading a save game takes abount 60-120 seconds. Get rid of that json save game, probably that's the culprit to that poor performance.

Running a turn, then, take ages, even without any incident.

Well, to sum up, get youself a favor and dig Steam a little bit more.

This a game for those who like to pull on each string of fate to see what happens. It is not for casual gamers; I have happily played 4X games for years, but the game play is too slow to enjoy and it quickly becomes a grind.
...although I did promptly resolve the Russia/Ukraine war so perhaps this can be my job interview for DJ Trump's cabinet .

This one honestly breaks my heart. It has the perfect sci-fi setting for me. My issues are heavily subjective but if someone is like me then maybe I can save someone for wasting 100 hours on gameplay and more on watching videos and asking around on all the possible platforms.

Pros:
- Charming graphics. I don't know for me it just looks right.
- An insanely good setting for a sci-fi game. We start the game with the first contact of an alien civilization. You control one of the factions struggling for power and influence in order to reach their individual objectives in this new situation.
- Really enjoyable Earth gameplay. Map painter.
- Some fun technologies.
- The early / early mid-game part where you are trying to get to different planets before the other factions and build there is fun.
- Since the setting is so good the atmosphere of the game is as well.
- Welcoming community.

Cons:
- An INSANE learning curve.
- Every bigger mistake you make might only come out hours of game time later.
- But they are feel near fatal so you just want to restart or rip your hair out..
- Either due to the small community this game has or the nature of the game (for me either is very bad) there's simply NO reliable full game guides out there. Things like build this here by year XXXX because it does xyz. Build ships like this here and here by year XXXX and so on. No step by step guides that you could lean on to learn the ropes and get yourself started.
- As I said the entire learning curve of the game just feels like multiple giant trial and error where each error will cost hours of your gameplay.

It's possible that maybe I should just wing it and stick with it even if the aliens kick my teeth in for the 10th time because apparently there's no game over screen. But I simply don't have the patience for it.

As I said I'm really sad that I have to give this one a thumbs down because it has the perfect setting for me but even that looses its' charm when you're on your 4th or 5th attempt and even then you feel like you are nowhere close to finishing ONE game and you are just done with having to attempt to learn one more extra layer with each 'lesson' taking more and more time to learn.

I honestly don't know who I can recommend this game to. I've never played XCOM but I heard that the devs behind the long war mod is behind this game so maybe if you played that you'll enjoy this?
I generally really like 4X games and grand strategy games alike but this one is just too complex and thus too frustrating for me.