This game was my childhood and I had it on a copied disks. All the ideas the game used in 1999 is insane. That's why it is only a 9 because I don't know how to change the keybindings and some of them don't work like on the original and it may have an issue to play with friends just like back then. I spent countless of hours trying the story faction on the hardest difficulty.

I admit, I'm a little biased towards this game. There aren't many good Hungarian developed games out there, especially not this good. IG2 was originally released before 2000, and boy, it looked years before it's time! The graphics aren't bad, even today, and the gameplay mechanics are just great! Of course, it has some problems, what game isn't, but despite those, i actually still play this, even after 17 years. In this game, you can win in a number of ways. Military conquest is of course an option, and while most battles seem rather straightforward (1. have more guys then the enemy 2. shoot until they run out of guys 3. profit ), they can surprise you, and you can surprise them, by utilizing some advanced tactics, and customizing your units. Designing your own army is pretty easy, and fun, and while most of the it's best to rely on the default plans, sometimes you can create some truly unique, and useful units. The other way to victory is diplomacy. Unfortunately, in this version, the AI seems to hate your guts. The will insult you from day one, and attack you if they see the slightest chance to obliterate you. But, if you appear too strong, you can actually get them, to be your allies, and if you do it with everyone, boom....you only have to defeat the Kra'hen on the battlefield, which is a tough fight...very tough.... The third way is espionage. And it's my favorite! Your agents can really wreak havoc in your neighbors empire! From recon to sabotage they can do every nasty thing you can think of. They can steal tech, steal money, blow up buildings and ships, cause riots, and even kill the leader of the enemy. If you do it right, you can defeat most nations without ever declaring war on them. This new version has it's problems unfortunately. Pro tip, middle mouse button switches the cursor from move to attack. I really wish the game told you that. Apart from that, the AI seems to be way more aggressive than it used to be. Other than that, still a pretty nice and welcoming game. If you're new to the 4x genre, you should start here. It won't get easier then this.

Imperium Galactica 2 is a real time strategy game that combines the management of different planets and agents with space and ground battles. Space battles start out with small ships and grow to involving larger capital ships, the mid game seems to offer the most tactical options with how you deploy and maneuver your ships before the end game just has you shooting at each other while stationary. Ground battles, as seems to be the case with most games like this, appear to be more of an afterthought when it comes to strategy, relying more on numbers than giving you options. Graphics were good at launch, as was the UI, but there have obviously been improvements since then. There are eight different races with three of them having their own campaigns, and while they give you different objectives you don't learn that much about any of the races and your options for things like diplomacy is fairly limited and the same between each race. Decent game if you want to play an older space RTS but it has been improved upon by other titles, even other older games did better in certain areas.