You know Brad I have read many comments over the last two years (has it already been that long) that you have written referring to GalCIV and many of those lead me to believe that you do not realise just how awsome GALCiv:TA actully was. That game was a masterpiece with only two problems 1. No Tactical combat. 2. No MP but other than that you made the true aire to Masters of Orion 2 (MOO3 was a POS)
Now As far as FE goes I have to agree with the previous poster it does not feel anywhere near 'finishes/ polished' for many of the same reasons he mentions. I still don't get that feeling of "Oh I will just play one more turn....ok maybe another turn' and so on like I do with Galciv:TA, Warlock, Civ 5, AOW:SM etc. At least not yet. But if the current game is the one you feel is the release version then I can only hope that some day we will get to the FE equivalent to GAlciv:TA.
I really appreciate the kind words on Twilight of the Arnor.
I guess what I mean by polish and what you mean by polish are different things. When I say polish, I mean, user experience.
For example, many people think Diablo 1 was a better game than Diablo 3. But Diablo 3, imo, is much more polished.
With FE, we go out the door with something truly solid. Something more solid than anything we've made before. It's a fantastic basis for expanding upon in the future with LH and EOS and beyond.
There was a discussion the other day on another forum about the "Best space strategy games ever" and GalCiv never came up because they had never played Twilight of the Arnor. So their memory of GalCiv was Laser I, Laser II, Laser III, etc. No influence wars. No rally points. No terror stars. No unique tech trees. Ugly graphics. etc. BEcause that was what GalCiv II had.
By Twilight of the Arnor, we had done so much to make it a better game.
What I think makes Fallen Enchantress so special, and this is just me speaking here, is that unlike GalCiv, FE opens its universe up to everyone. Sure, in GalCiv you could design your own ships. But in FE, people will be able to do amazing things that right now can scarecely be imagined. I don't mean just mods, in the traditional sense. I mean that we all will be able to expand on the experience from the get-go.
That's unlike with GalCiv where users had to wait years for us to do it with expansion.
That's why FE having such a solid, polished base is so important ad why we've made that such a focus. Now, with beta 5, the balance, bugs, UI improvements, etc. get addressed.
So to ramble. The point being, I hope people understand two things: 1) FE is a very solid, polished, good game and 2) Unlike our other games, FE is far more open to user generated content which means that people won't have to even wait for expansions to increase their replayability beyond what we have in day 0. I think in the long run, these two things are going to be what people remember.