[Hunpecked]

Well, the "ooooo.... shiney" aspect may capture the impulse buyers, but it wears off pretty fast when, like DarkHorse and me, you're trying to figure out how combat works and the game just isn't helping. Similarly, the voice responses are cute at first, but lose their charm with repetition (although I still get a kick out of the shipyard guy; he sounds just like Fat Bastard).

From recent posts on the Kerberos forums I gather that the manual won't clarify a lot of the game's nuts and bolts, perhaps on the theory that prolonging the learning curve will prolong the game's longevity on customers' hard drives. For "mass-market" gamers, however, I would expect just the opposite. Yes, all the answers will probably be available on the Kerberos forums, just as so much of Space Empires' lore is found here. But how many "mass market" players will bother with the forums?