Looking forward to your review RoyalRook. Meanwhile, more by RoyalRook on Galactrix at the official forum:

http://forums.infinite-interactive.com/showthread.php?t=4651

And a general initial feedback thread for the release version on the official forums:

http://forums.infinite-interactive.com/showthread.php?t=4629

It would appear that RoyalRook is not the only unhappy camper.

It would be so much more helpful for reviews to just have in depth descriptions of the elements of the game and any absolute pros and cons without an overall score. Personal opinions and preferences by the reviewer taint any type of scoring.

Read up on all the unbiased info you can and try a demo. Unless it's an SD game(Which I preorder most of), if they don't have a demo 99% of the time then they don't get a sale. Of course all that is subject to change if the price is right and the game is proven .

Wait guy please, I beg you, please don't buy this game, I am begging you.  My birth day parties went out of hand during the weekend, but please don't buy this game.  I know it's sounds bad, but I call for the power of bit torrent right now for you guys, because they deserve it. The PC version is a port from the DS version, and that's not a joke.  It's only prettier because of the voice over and art works, but the "game" is the DS built.  This is what we call a Russian Mafia game, a game to swindle as much money as it could before the world knows about it.  

Check this thread out as well:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=942612&topic=48332580

II does not have very good folks.  If they are they wouldn't have released this sorry excuse of a game to the market.  On top of that, this game is a hoax and this is something most people don't understand: Challenge of the Warlords was in fact, developed by Vicious Cycle Software, but somehow among all the confusions of D3 buyout storm between the Japanese software giants Square Enix and Bandai Namco, II got some credit as the co-developer, which is pretty much BS.  So as you were fooled and dreaming about playing the next puzzle quest, the game was developed by a group of 20 something college kids that is supposed to be part of Infinite Interactive.   

How could you fix the game when every items in the game is over powered?  How could you fix the online portion when the game doesn't even have chat and random match support?  How could you fix the game when it's only a puzzle game but routinely crashes on high end computers randomly?  And why should people have the patient for the fix, when they know the core "puzzle" portion of the game is entirely broken?  I have matches, when I had 1 hp left and my opponent had full shell, hull, and energy, but one super nova and bola mines (or any useful offensive item)later (super lucky huge combo that has nothing to do with your skill), I end up as the victor.  The sad truth is that, they can't fix the game.  If they had the integrity to man up their game, they wouldn't have released it in the first place.

What's even scary is that when you go to their webpage, and pay attention to the posters like I did that you will find out that they began to delete portions of their negative forum posts yesterday, especially in the "how's galactrix" thread.

Just check out how angry some of the customers get: Garbage Product

And check out the company's integrity: Wrong game video to fool customers

I know what you are thinking: no that's just an honest mistake.  I would believe that if the other game wasn't supior in every single aspect than D3's lastest outing.

I am still putting the new pieces togather to un-earth the dark secrets behind the developement of this unbelievable failure of a game.  There are things that I could be wrong but will be fixed as I can get more truth.  So stay with me, but stay away from this developer's games.

I know I know, but it's kinda cool once you dive it a bit deeper.  What I do know is that this is not the same team that developed Challenge of the Warlords, I can say that with confidence, the difference between the two games are night and day.  Something is not right, because there is no point for the developer to tank their ONLY recognizable franchise.  As far as I concern it's never just a game if you are playing it, lol, but I know, let me have my fun while it still serves some purposes.

This game is messed up

An impression about the DS version, but not much different from the PC version.  I felt the same way.

I'm going to break a lance in favor of the II guys and Steven Fawkner. Warlords is one of the games I have enjoyed the most in the past (specially Warlords 1 and 3) so even if they screwed with Galactrix I hope they'll keep doing good games in the future (to be honest after Warlords Battlecry 3 and Warlords 4 I thought they would die but hey, they were able to surprise me with PQ).

I think you had enough time with the game now to weight in again.  I wonder how do you think about the game now after all of these time.  You could at least enjoy the beginning of the game, so I presume you got the PC version.

Royal, you need to keep your rants accurate.  You sorta look like a lunatic now that I read them.

Having been a tester, you're way out of line saying II didn't develop the original Puzzle Quest.  I dinked around with them in the early beta stages when it barely resembled the final product's quality.  Unfortunately I hate puzzle games, so my pain tolerance was outdone before they finished, although I went ahead and bought it anyway just because I like the guys...  Good thing I have a sister with no taste in games.

Even while raging at them, the IP behind the game should tell you that, it's directly from Fawkner's Warlords universe.  Perhaps you aren't interested in looking at what they've done previously and just hadn't noticed?  It's their game from the ground up, a PC original, it was practically finished a year before they finally got the thing out.  The "pirates are evil and steal all our money" nonsense is the only reason it was delayed for several months before coming out on the PC, it was likely finished before the year started considering the condition I played it in late summer the year before.  Vicious handled some of the ports, but it was not their game.

I know several people from the group that tested for them that stayed all the way down the line, if you're really convinced they didn't make it, I'm sure one of them still has some early versions from mid 2006 sitting around on their computers.

I'm going to ignore all the rants, you seem unstable, but then I haven't played it and don't really give a rats ass to begin with, so my opinion is baseless and will remain so indefinitely.  Maybe you're right and Galactrix is the worst thing since sliced bread, maybe you just don't know how to change settings in the options.  Either way, stay out of paranoid conspiracy theory land, they really were the developers.

I tested the original Puzzle Quest, hence my being able to assure you that they were indeed the developers of it.  Read more slowly perhaps?

As a small, largely impotent developer studio, they have very little control, if any, as to the quality and time of the release.  They may share your views, but it wouldn't be unusual for them to be contractually obligated to keep their mouths shut and release it anyway without warning their fans.  It's no small thing to go into breech, it would be the end of their careers with how little pull they have.

I can say they've released patches on their own dime for previous products when the publishers refused to fix them.  D3 is an icon in the mass production of crap department.  Their website isn't even fully functional or up to date, support doesn't seem to be a concept they've heard of.

You seem pretty angry that the game doesn't have online mode, but there are other people (like me) who couldn't care less about that. What I don't have any clue is if their fan base demands multiplayer or not in general...

For one the menus for interacting with stellar bodies are all small. The buttons in the menus are about the same size as the tip of the stylus. Which would be livable if the game never misinterpreted where you touched, but as it stands you can end up trying several times to interact with something. A problem that makes this worse is that the if you touch (or the game thinks you touched) outside the interaction menu it will immediately close the menu and fly your ship to where you touched (or it thinks you touched). A large amount of frustration would be avoided by having one the first touch close the menu and only flying your ship somewhere if you touched the location when no menus were open.

The worst part is it feels like it simply has not been play tested, as these things should have been picked up on and fixed if it was.

Your mileage will vary with the hexagonal gravity defying version Bejeweled they used. I personally think it's much better than the square downward falling version. The items are designed to take the place of the spells from Warlords, so they're more or less as overpowered as the spells were. There doesn't seem to be a replacement for Warlords style items.

Overall I'd say it's decent, but the DS version's not really worth the cost