Galactic Ruler Enlightenment Reviews

Really enjoying this game even though it still needs some work from the developers. I am enjoying the game play style and the depth. There is quite a steep learning curve and lots of "hidden" detail to master but it is worth the effort. Plenty of help available on the forums and Discord.

Been a fan of Battlegoat since the beginning. Enjoying this iteration so far. Keep up the good work guys.

Always have wanted a game that modeled space and planet warfare level stuff happening simultaneous. This goes into the amount of detail that I like. It can be a bit daunting due to the complexity but is worth it when you figure out how to perform basic functions and then watch how everything unfolds. It greatly helps that you can pause or slow the game down to your liking. Saving at any point is also a good thing. The developers are very good at interacting with the community. They are always respectful and many times have implemented features/changes from the player base that enhance gameplay in several of their titles. Wishing you fellers the best of luck.

Gui scaling does not work on 4k. The wording is so tiny I could not play the game. I tried setting the resolution the same as my old computer which it worked fine on and now I can not access any of the menus to change it back. Now the game is completely unplayable. Tried reinstall and other things. No luck. Both versions of the game have had problems from the beginning. I can pull my old computer out of storage to play this one game...probably not:).

I found the UI for this game to be not only unintuitive but difficult to access. It was as if many of the interaction buttons were sized for ants.

Playing the Enlightened campaign, I am enjoying having all of the new events so far. There is also a second campaign faction you can play as, so you can at least try the campaign from a different perspective. Its good to see these 2 new factions have different capabilities and require different things so that they do feel different. The game also still has the ability to generate random galaxies, and selectable factions. This includes the older factions in the game.

The concept of space and actual land warfare set this apart. User interface is difficult and needs some work. Recommended to only hard-core 4X players who are happy with basic graphics. Advanced concepts with trade, diplomacy, and facility construction. Uses randomly generated systems and planets unless you choose the "story mode" ("Enlightment" part of the title). You don't have to and can have a good old randomly generated universe. Warning online video documentation is likely needed to learn the game at this time.

I love this game as much as I love Galactic Ruler, which is a lot. It's hands down my favorite space 4X game. It has its quirks and the interface does take getting used to, but it approaches the genre so differently from every other game in the space. It focuses on the surfaces of planets. There is "in space" gameplay but the real action is on the ground, where taking planets requires planning, logistics and tactical skill beyond the usual space 4X. And once you've gained control, you can build out your colonies as you see fit, with roads, rails and a bunch of different structures and factories. For those who have Galactic Ruler, GRE is priced like DLC, and it adds enough to make the cost worthwhile. For those who don't have Galactic Ruler, this is the game to have. It's essentially a standalone expansion that includes everything in the "base game."

84 minutes played .... And refunding. Here's a list of reasons why I feel strongly enough to post such a negative critical review after such a short time played: • Devs openly admit Galactic Ruler Enlightenemnt [GRE] is a re-release (same game as GR with Enlightenment added to the name) to garner more attention, avoid old negative reviews and join the latest Steam festival sale. • I bought the game yesterday in the latest Steam sale excited to play a promising 'new' space 4x only to find out today it is a re-issue and the devs announced just 7 days ago (and about the start of the Steam sale) that 'all development has now shifted to their next game : Supreme Ruler 2030 and that GRE will only be receiving ongoing fixes'. - Well I guess I fell victim to that marketing trick - it makes me feel completely scammed. They re-release the same game with an updated name solely to get into the latest Steam sale knowing they had already effectively abandoned improving the game in favour of the next project. I also found Galactic Ruler [GR] didn't get a free 'upgrade' to GRE but were expected to pay for their marketing trick - so I'm just the latest in a line of people that have been scammed by these devs. It is a completely shady unethical practice. It wouldn't be so bad if it were a fun and unique feature complete game but: • GRE also has issues related to using shared code from Supreme Ruler that talk about resources that don't even exist in GRE like 'oil' for example. - This suggests GRE is a reskin or uses shared code that has been adapted poorly for this 'new' game. Then I read some of team of 14 were 'college students' to keep costs down rather than professional experienced developers (Source: Dev posts again on the forum). This explains a lot. • The AI is a total joke : For example the very first survey probe I sent out to a neighbouring pirate planet and its moons scanned the near object outside the pirate radius, but then trying to automate it to continue scanning it got stuck trying to scan the next object because it could not even path around the pirate controlled area of hexes to reach the moon directly on the other side. What is worse I then saw this issue seems months old: Source: Konglomerat's stream... (youtube link removed, but episode 8) 28 mins in he mentions the exact same basic AI pathing issue from the previous GR version.... I was looking at his vids for tutorials, but found basic AI bugs from the 'old version' still outstanding. • The only independent streams available are months old (relating to GR) like Konglomerat that highlight a lot of issues in GR that still exist in GRE. The devs 'lets play' within 5 minutes watching I spotted several Ai issues like units repeatedly acting like lemmings moving to spots within enemy range, taking fire without returning fire, only to either die or run home to auto-repair before continuing the cycle. So in summary: GRE is largely abandoned by players and now the devs too (announced 7 days ago) - it is a fundamentally flawed game with poor AI, poor UI and has been re-packaged just to get into the latest Steam sale even though they knew the project was being abandoned except for fixes (shady stuff IMHO). I strongly do NOT recommend this game, and will not be buying anything from BattleGoat Studios for being such shady scammers.

Galactic Ruler is a really good game, but you do need to work with it a fair bit to get to the gameplay. I've not played any of Battlegoats other games very thoroughly so I came at this one as a 4X gamer and not from Supreme Ruler (which comes highly recommended by people who do play it). There's really no other pauesable real-time space 4X that does what Galactic Ruler does: all the usual space 4X stuff but with incredibly detailed and engaging planetary invasions on top of it. The resource management is rather simple but incredibly important, and the wonderful map generator does not evenly distribute the four resources available, which is the main drive for diplomacy, trade and conflict in the galaxy. I wish more space 4X dared to do this, instead of the dreadfully boring, made for multiplayer "balanced" resource generation we tend to get in the genre. A word of warning: the game is not easy to learn, requiring both a thorough read of the manual and a lot of asking around to figure out how to play. The tutorial is pretty good at tying together the info in the manual into actual gameplay experience, but I failed my first invasion of even the local pirate world (which is very weakly defended) over and over again as I learned, step by painful step, to bring various units along with me. The control system is very confusing at first and the UI is of an older style that I really love, but I suspect will be generally disliked by "the modern audience" who seem to just want that same old Amplitude/Civ UI xeroxed from game to game. But once you do learn the UI, it presents information pretty well and is easy to use. If you can get past the steep learning curve, the atypical control system and old (but very nice IMO) style of user-interface, there's a really fun and engaging space 4X underneath. I still struggle at the ground combat, and since this is where much of the meat of the game lies, make sure you're going to enjoy that part of the game, as it is complex and time-consuming. However, it's a lot of fun too. I've not really looked too hard at the campaigns yet, which are the big new feature in this version of the game, but they look fun and like they're still approachable in a very varied, sandbox like way, which I approve of since I generally hate campaign-like features in 4X, and anything that helps tie you to the game-world here is gonna be a big help I think. This game will be difficult to recommend to all but the most hardcore of simulation-heavy 4X players and grand strategy gamers, but if you are in that small niche, Galactic Ruler is a good fun game, and I strongly recommend you pick it up and give it a whirl. Just know what you're getting yourself in for.