I just pirated the gog copy and I've been playing it for about 6 hours. I've always complained that the people making shitty reboots and sequels to my all-time favorite games couldn't figure out what made the formula good or figure out how to replicate it. For the first time in my life, I feel like a formula was followed too strictly. It's actually a good game. Most of the hooks or archetypes from the original are here. The writing is roughly on-par with the original as well. It's still silly. Also like the original, talking to the same race for a long period of time makes you feel like you're sitting alone in a stadium while a comedian makes different jokes with the same punchline over and over. The lander mini-game is just as boring as the original lander mini-game, but I guess it was never meant to be a fun part of the game in either as much as a means to collecting resources. I like the 90s sci-fi of the original more, while this game has more modern polish. The music is pretty good, too.
Melee combat translated well although edited ships are awkward if you're doing the fleet battles mode. It's different, because instead of wrapping around a small map, it's just a large arena, but it's more detailed with asteroid belts and different gravity wells. It feels more strategic due to the map size, which makes you feel safer. Compare that to the original's combat, which made you feel threatened almost constantly, since a few ships could harm you at most any range with the map wrapping.
Honestly, it's a pretty good game. I'm definitely having fun. I imagine if you liked the original, you'd like this one, but if you're too attached to the races from the original, you'll probably be better off playing the original, because it's basically just a new version of the same game. If you haven't played the original and don't care for story-based games, I wouldn't recommend playing either.
>>15478437
>I was hoping for "Spore Space Stage, but good"
If you hoped for anything other than a clone of the original Star Control 2 then you'll be disappointed.
>>15478601
>Also only one side wants to stop the other from creating a new game.
That's verifiably false. They both demanded that the entirety of the IP be handed over to themselves, along with all IP-related assets. That's not really an arguable point when both sides produced (and publicly posted) documents that claimed the same thing. You might believe that statement if you read what they claimed they wanted and didn't read the legal documents they posted immediately following.