The game gets progressivly less interesting as you play, culminating in the space stage, which is blatantly not a sandbox. Sandbox implies you can do what you want. Being forced to fly back home every 2 mins means you cant. Limits on how many times you can use things (even the secret end thing) mean you cant.
Also, as the game progresses the best feature, the editors, becomes more and more divorced from the gameplay. In the cel stage the editor vastly impacts how your creature moves and interacts with the world. By the tribal stage its got nothing to do with it, and in the space stage your reduced to playing dress up untill you can buy the single-use creature editor thing.
Gameplay is overly shallow throughout. Tribal and Civ stages can be beat by zerging the enemy, and since theres not much else to do, are very uninteresting. Space stage is only difficult because the computer cheats. by that i mean it doesnt follow the same rules the player is forced to obey. (you get one ship, they get 100. You have to buy heals, they just fly away and can do it as much as they want. You get 5-6 ships max, they get fleets)
This game could've been awesome. It has very obviously been dumbed down from its original design. such a sad sad shame.
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