I had great expectations for Sins, and at the moment I am quite disapointed I have to say.

To give some background, I love RTS'es and Space op. I come from the Warcraft series, Command&Conquer, Homeworld, HW2, and on a more tactical level I just loved The Jupiter Incident.

Also a big fan of games like Imperium Galactica, and GC.

So, with those great reviews, and great (so it seemed) word of mouth, why am I disapointed?

First, what I thought was going to be the big strong point of Sins: Graphics. Granted not everything is on max on my rig, but most settings are on Med to high, and things are very blocky and look very average. I wasn't expecting something like Jupiter (which is on a much smaller scale), but HW2, heck, even HW1 level. Not quite so, except for some backgrounds. Ship design goes from good to very meh, but it's not too bad.

Then, The tutorials/manual. Wow, what a letdown for such (seemingly) a deep game. Incomplete, half done job on documentation. The GUI seems very powerful, it'll take many trials and errors to dig into it unfortunately.

The lack of Campaign: Not too much of a letdown in itself actually, I knew that Stardock had rushed the game out (after advertising the game for more than a -year- in PCGamer) and did what they could with their finances. It's ok, even though I hope a Single Player campaign will be added in a -FREE- bonus pack, that would be the least they could do. Why? Simply because in a year or 2 from now, when the online portion of Sins will have died out (if not earlier), what will be left for buyers of the game? Sandbox  play, and mods. No great storyline, which is a shame for such a rich background and story (so it seems, from what I've read around).

Game Begins, on Map "Small" (9 planets): I apply proved recipes, build, protectect, expand, keep up on research, etc.

The randomly generated "Small" Map put my first world right next to my opponent, but gives me two planets nearby and 5 to him, this opponent it seems had also magically developped far more ships than I could in much less time when I discover his planet. And then ... Pirate raids start. Every 10 Fracking minutes. With growing and growing forces, requiring me to spend larger and larger amounts of resources in keeping a force that can repel their assaults, and eventually I face a huge pirate assault along with an ennemy one, with a force depleted to 1 capital ship and 1 frigate and funds to almost 0. Which is when I decided to quit for the night.

And that's on "Normal" difficulty, with patch 1.05 applied (supposedly less pirate raids? I would hate to think of how it was before). I'm not giving up on Sins (I paid $40 after all), but this is a very sad first experience I have to say.