Empire Interactive, in bringing us Stars!, has done for interplanetary travel what Microprose did for history in Civilization.
   Yes, Stars! is good. Very, very good. And there is nothing like haveing a bunch of universes to conquor, govern, conduct business in and RULE!
   You're not going to play Stars! in a couple of days. Like Civilization, it can take days and days to play and you'll be able to play it over and over again. It is crammed with planets, technology upgrades, weapons and other goodies. There are opportunities to trade, play diplomacy, manage production, set up colonies and a host of other things. Doing all of this at once means lends itself very well to the type of game Stars! is – turn-based – one which I happen to prefer over games that have time passing in some fashion or another or shoot-'em-ups.
   In fact, the combat in Stars! (there has to be combat, after all) is done automatically. But don't think you have no control: you can set battle orders for any situation. Additionally, there is an instant replay of the battles, so you can see what happens.
   Stars! uses a messaging system to tell you what is going on. In any given turn, you can have oodles of messages. I, personally, liked this because it let me know what was happening. Its enough to try to deal with grand strategy without trying to remember what's going on in every nook and corner of the galaxy. Unique to this program is a message filtering system that lets you hide borning message repeats which inform you of things you don't need up-to-the-minute information about. You can turn this filtering off and on, so it is a real boon.
   You, of course, begin the game on one planet and strike out to see what you can find. There are bad guys out there too, of course, and some good ones as well. This is in the solo game: Stars! can be played by 16 persons via modem, Email or across a local area network (there goes productivity for about a month).
   You can customize the galaxy and the races which inhabit it. The manual is extremely comprehensive and there is an absolutely excellent tutorial to get you up and running with a sample game. The package also includes a technical reference to all the stuff you can build.
   This is a great, comprehensive, encompassing game with enough eye candy to make anyone happy. It has an easy-to-use interface which lets you concentrate (and you better) on the game rather than how it works.
   Five stars to Stars!

   Link to the Empire Interactive web site.