Ascendancy

The Good
Simple to get a game started, many choices in races, each with many different abilities, some with research, some builders, some travelers, some invaders. Chamachies and Nimbuloids are my favorites, but telepaths are good too. The starmap and tech tree have excellent graphics. Each technology has a function, it can be fun trying it. The ruins on some planets can give you an edge in research, just helps keep one jump ahead of the others. I like to set most planets to auto, and concentrate on 1 or 2 for heavy industry.

Patchnote: I recommend it. The game gets a real boost with it, enemies do things they never did before, they play MUCH more aggressive (I got my butt kicked first time). Moby has a link to find it. You can still play the original, or use the patch. Cheat codes available, too, but I haven't tried them.

The Bad
After several games, you develop a method, and the lustre wears thin. OK, the AI is weak, see Patchnote above.

The Bottom Line
A fun game that can entertain you for hours.

The Good
There are lots of space conquest sims on the market, but "Ascendancy" is the most different of the bunch.

It's not much different from most space conquest sims except that this game offers REALLY different races; as opposed to just "this race gets a slight defense bonus, this race gets a slight ground combat bonus," Ascendancy races play very differently and, (the coolest thing about the game), have victory conditions for each race that don't involve conquest. For one race, you win if you can convince everyone to be at peace with everyone else!

The Bad
Planet management is very, very repetitive and boring. It's good stuff but there's just too much repetition.

The game's major drawback, though, is the astoundingly bad AI. Enemies are mind-bogglingly dumb and overly easy to defeat.

The Bottom Line
I know it's bad English, but this is the most unique take on the genre I've ever seen. Worth playing.

The Good
Graphically beautiful, with a nice tech tree and plenty of interesting structures to build on and around your planets. The galaxy is modeled in three dimensions, which (as far as this reviewer knows) was a first in this genre. There are a lot of races to choose from, and the game itself can be customized extensively, so in theory you could play it forever.

The Bad
Politics and diplomacy are minimal, and ship design and combat are extremely lacking -- basically, the bigger the ship the better, so there aren't really any interesting tradeoffs to make. The three dimensional galaxy helps cover up the weak AI opponent, since the jumpgate system forces you to move through bottlenecks and generally limits you to frontal assaults. The races are many, but they just don't have a whole lot of personality when compared to those in Master of Orion.

The Bottom Line
There are good things about Ascendancy, but too many bad things along with them. I recommend that you resist the temptation to pick up this game, and stick to MOO and MOO2 instead.