SE:V, I'll be honest

[Possum]

Cube said:
Whoever designed the SE4 UI needs to come back and work on SE5. As it stands now, the interface is much too cluttered and busy, i.e. too many visual elements and no distinct organizational layout.

The SE4 UI had a minimalist technical feel and out-of-your-way quality that presented the game perfectly. It also had a cohesive graphical motif that gave it a palpable professionalism.

As SE5 stands at the moment (with its Starcraft command interface and OS X menu dock), it looks like someone just installed a badly designed WindowBlinds theme from 1998.

Hear him! Thank you for articulating what I hadn't the wit to say for myself

[Thermodyne]

Well here is my two cents. The UI is clumsy and ruins the game play. This version will have a hard time fitting into slot 5 of the SE saga. It is missing that special something that the other versions had. With 2 and 3, I spent hours and hours playing in the beginning. With 4 it took a little longer to warm up to, but was still an evolution of the series. This one looks like/plays like a knock off. IMHO we have traded game strategy for eye candy. For those of us who loved SE3, this is quite a ways off the path. I wish MM all the best and I hope the game sells well, but as it is now, I don’t think this will be my cup of tea.

PS:

I was going to skip this part, but the days that I have the energy to post are too few of late.

I have to wonder as to the direction that the SE series is taking. It is becoming less of a strategy game and more of a FX game with each new version. I am left wondering who has the greatest amount of influence on the evolution of the game.

[President_Elect_Shang]

So many bugs, UI lost me totally; I wasn't even sure if this was SE or a cheap knock-off by a no-name company. I will wait to see if later patches clean it up. Presently there is no way I would spend my money on a game that comes across as a cheap attempt at mass market appeal which has fallen way short.

This sort of reminds me of Metallica with their drive towards mass market appeal. They have a few good songs in the present but the past was clearly superior.