Contruary to popular belief (Planetarion (PC))

Member Name: AnImA999

Product:	Planetarion (PC)
Date:	23/10/03 (68 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Community, Tactics, Aesthetics

Disadvantages: Community!, Slow, Server down time

After getting the internet at home over a year ago now, if ound it possibel to take part in many things i couldn't do at home. Planetarion was one of them!
After consulting many sites on the most popular online games to play, Planetarion came out trumps. So i signed up and payed (which i dont like) and gamed away.
I soon found that this game wasn't to be taken light heartedly. There was a serious community that surounded this game, but i chose to soldier on anyway!

GAME PLAY:
The game is based around hour ticks. This means that anything that you do in the game will take one hout to take effect...ie if a ship factory akes 10ticks to build then in 10hours time it will be ready! Now this to me presents a problem. Suppose for minute that you can log in several times a day. After logging once you will soon find out you have run out of things you can do for that day as they all take a minimum of a couple of hours (sometimes longer than a day!)
I also found that the game interface was very confusing. You had two menus that you could access; game menu and alliance menu. I found that the alliance menu wasn;t particularily well explained. It took me a couple of weeks to work out how it worked even after joining an alliance.
Another downfall of the game is that you are unabel to view the alliance tags of each player. This means that you may find yourself attacking your own alliance if you are not carefull. I found this very problematic as before i could attack i had to ask my alliance HC if i could. Also other limiting factors such as parallel alliances cluster alliances...etc made it harder to really get into any type of actul playing!

INFORMATION
The documentation that is available for the game isn't very good untill you hand over your money. A key factor in deciding your success in the game is your race. which you choose at the beginning. Now suppose you went with the race that is reccomended for new players. You pay yo
ur money and you find that for the rest of the game your particular race doesn't suit your style of game play...i felt a bit conned!
The supporting wev sites that are available on the net are endless. The only information that really helped came from these web sites made by fans which again dissapointed me since i had payed!

COMMUNITY
The community surrounding Planetarion is second to none. For many it becomes a way of life. Alliances are so well organised that i heard of people sleeping between ticks!
But you will find the community does somewhat limit your attack possibilties! It is the done thing to ally with everyone in your galaxy (25 people) and everyone parallel to your galaxy (around 50 clusters so 50*25=1250 people) and aso to ally with everyone in your cluster (9 galaxies in a cluster[from what i can remember] so 8*25= 200) this to me meansthat you arent allowed to attack 1475 people plus all you alliance players.which isnt a problem in its's self untill you have to find a target, but i can get over that. What suprised me no end was that i wasnt allowed to attack the gals which contained my allaince mates. Now this as you can imagine in an allaince size of say 50 people and everyone ibn different gals some what limits my attack possibilties. Shame but i think that the community although being the best on the net has also killed the game!

OVERVIEW
As the title of this says...i do not think this game is as good as it is made out to be. Unless you are prepared to organise your life around this game you will not have much fun! It will take atleast two rounds to get fully into this game and that is along time and you have to pay!
It is also very slow(1 hout ticks) plagued by server down time, and lag!
Again i think unless you are a hardcore gamer stay away from this game try something like www.galactic-quest.com (1 minute ticks) and doesnt have such a restricting community surrunding it!


P.S. this
is my first review(ever) so please go easy on the scathing comments.

Summary: