[Azahiel]

Much has been said already. And I can only agree.

While I like creating stuff this is pretty much all that keeps the game going. The "game" part of the creature, tribal and civ itself are repetative, way too simple and often tedious. And that part was a disappointment. The game itself turned out to be boooring, as you do the same over and over. All that save it are the editors.

I like playing though the entire game however, because it is more satisfying for me to build a successful creature with what you can find along the way.

This is lost in the later stages as the look of the creature is only cosmetic and doesn't really influence the further gameplay. The later editors also are just eye candy (especially the building editor) which doesn't bother me that much, but a little more diversity than just pretty stuff would be nice. I often don't really feel like making my own buildings because they do nothing except look. I could put a white cube and it would work the same.

Personally I don't like where the game finally went. They put all the effort in the editors and the technical side which is a GREAT accomplishment. But they overlooked a lot of stuff. Will's urge to satisfy a wide audience made the game almost infantile and too simple. The Sims sometimes are a bigger challenge and more is going on there. In fact Will made challenging games that deserved the "SIM(ulation)" prefix. Spore is hardly a simulation.
But when I saw the "Sim City Sociaties" (which imo destroyed the Simcity line of games...it wasn't made by Maxis though) it made clear what "Sim" now stands for - "Sim(ple)".

What more?

Where's the flora editor?
There's the cell editor? (except the one "in-game")

Oh yeah, and all the things they said about the space stage. Here on the other hand there's way too much going on! Where's the freedom when you have to jump form one colony to the other. Why can't you have a fleet defending the colonies? Why can't the allies defend themselves? What do you need allies for when they don't help you at all?
The galaxy is huge, yeah but somehow there's no room to expand because you encounter alien races so soon. Somehow they develop a lot faster and you're stuck with your 3-4 systems with 4 other races already having 10 systems. It's a GIANT galaxy and the races are packed up tightly in one of it's corners.
Why not give it some time, spread the aliens a bit more, give room. Or better yet, give the interstellar drive LATER. After you terraform and put colonies on the planets in your system so that you can get a resonable ammount of cash for more exploration.

Now for some not entirely gameplay related feelings.

I don't like my personal feeling that they intentionally made the game lacking so many stuff so that the fans would buy addons just to fix stuff that should have been in the game form the very beginning! Call me paranoid, but that's EA I'm talking about...
Patches please!

What were you doing all that time? I remember the 2005 presentations of the game and aside the interface nothing seemed to have changed. It seems more effort went to careful marketing and not the game since it seems unfinished.

Just on the side, I love the game and all this doesn't bother me that much. But still...