Opinion time! Planetary Annihilation was close to being a good game but was held back by its ambition to be a novel engine. The one that got my nerves on edge was they have a zoom mechanic where the strategic map was a weird shape - there were multiple worlds and each world was spherical rather than a 2d grid. It did terrible things to the gameplay because suddenly orienting the map was a challenge. It was really well implemented and impressive visually; but unfortunately it made it remarkably easy to get lost. It was a great case study for why so many wargames go with the unimaginative "rectangular table" setup.
Things like that coloured my view of PA. They have an interesting engine but the consensus back when it was released seemed to be that they didn't manage an engaging game. I got the impression the engine was consuming too much of their attention.
Things like that coloured my view of PA. They have an interesting engine but the consensus back when it was released seemed to be that they didn't manage an engaging game. I got the impression the engine was consuming too much of their attention.