For many role-play strategy fans, the pinnacle of the genre still remains the truly classic Master of Orion II, which to be honest is a tad upsetting, bearing in mind that it's 10 years old. However, that could change soon, because it finally looks like a successor has arrived. Stardock announced that it has finished work on Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords, the follow-up to 2003's original. The first Galactic Civilizations was a true slice of gaming quality; excellent artificial intelligence and deep gameplay, but sadly many would say that it was not quite full featured enough to be called the true heir to the throne occupied by Master of Orion. Stardock took note of the fans gripes and went back to the drawing board. Finally, Galactic Civilizations II now looks to be the true heir to Master of Orion that everyone has been waiting for.

So the question is, what makes Galactic Civilizations II such a promising game? Well, basically, it takes all the good ideas in Master of Orion II and expands on them to deliver a mother load. In this turn-based strategy game you play as one of the galaxy's nine primary races, or you can even create your own custom race, and then you attempt to expand from a single star system to conquer the galaxy peacefully, or if they don't do as you ask, militarily. It's not easy, though; in fact it will be bloody hard, because there's a whole lot that can happen between the start and the finish of a game.

Galactic Civilizations II takes the technology tree to a whole new level. To put it bluntly, it's huge! As a result, you must take a path and follow it, developing everything in that branch until you get what you want. For example, it's so big that you can focus in on one field (such as laser technology) but at the price of not researching the many other fields as deeply. Or you can spread your research out so that you research everything, but risk seeing your opponents racing ahead in a specific field. These are the trade-offs you will have to make. If you move ahead in a specific field, you'll be in trouble if another race develops the technology to counter yours. I researched the most powerful lasers available and sent in my fleet. However, high-powered lasers are no good if the enemy has researched equally powerful shields. Then again, if you research more evenly, you risk seeing one race get ahead on a key technology. Either way, this kind of depth makes for a superb range of options in how you want to approach and play the game.

GCII is filled with all sorts of strategic choices. You'll have to try to figure out a way to best develop the limited amount of space on each planet, balancing budget priorities and figuring out the best design for a starship, while also being limited by weight restrictions and so much more. The budget in particular can be a big factor, because Galactic Civilizations II lets you get into debt very quickly by offering credit. For example, if you're in a hurry and you need to build a ship immediately, you can buy it in a single turn for a huge price, instead of waiting an umpteen amount of turns for the construction process. But, of course, that cash price is going to be huge. However, you'll also be offered different payment plans that let you pay a smaller down payment, but with a varying number of credits per turn for a variable number of turns. And since you often need to build more than one ship quickly, especially if you're at war, you can suddenly find most of your revenue going to service your debt load, of which the game gleefully informs you when you do.

There's loads of stuff you can't control in the game. Like Master of Orion II, Galactic Civilizations II is filled with all sorts of random events that can suddenly change the whole dynamics of a game. For example, our human faction was lagging behind in the military race when our archaeologists suddenly discovered an ancient abandoned starship on a planet. Suddenly, we had the most powerful warship in the galaxy and belligerent neighbours quickly backed off on all their extortion demands. Alternatively, at least, they did until they built up their militaries to match mine, by which time all I could do was hope. In another case, mysterious wormholes appeared and bathed the galaxy in a strange type of radiation, which doubled the reproduction rates for all races. However, there's more to it than these kinds of instant random events. You'll also encounter ethical problems, in which the solution that you choose will have benefits and costs. For instance, a distant colony might accidentally activate a hidden cache of precursor defender droids and they begin killing off your population. You can do the good thing and spend a lot of money to have the droids destroyed, or you can do the bad thing and let the droids continue to kill so that you can study the technology. In that case, you'll lose a chunk of population but you'll get a boost in technology research.

When you have developed enough to start building warships, the fun can truly begin. At first, let's face it, your ships truly suck. They can't move very far, don't have much in the way of defence or attack, and for what you get are expensive. However, the more you research, the better the ships available to you become. By the time the first war breaks out you generally find yourself outgunned and so have to rely on numbers to prevail in engagements. The battles are fought over one turn, i.e. one week of the game. As a result, there is always a winner and a devastated loser. The battles between single ships aren't the most exciting; all you see are the lasers or missiles fly towards each other, then someone's ship explodes in a ball of fiery death. Fleet on fleet battles are much, much more exciting. Instead of watching the battle on the main universe screen, you're transported to the middle of the battle. Along the bottom of the screen is a battle log that tells you who hit who, how much HP was lost and what weaponry was used. Sadly though you can't intervene in the combat, but you can speed it up if you get bored of watching your ships explode.

The user interface is one thing that I personally didn't like too much about Galactic Civilizations II; although well laid out, it's pretty hard to get to grips with, even after reading the instruction guide and watching the tutorials. For example, working out how to construct your own ships is pretty complicated if you want to do it properly and not create some mutated creature that will die at the first sign of trouble. Also, leaning how to properly utilise the tech tree can be complicated, not because it is difficult to use, but because of its sheer size. With over 500 available things to research, it's really, really hard to keep up with what you are doing and it's easy to allow yourself to accidentally spend 80 weeks creating a "Zero Gravity Stadium", which is useful to boost a planet's moral but not much cop when the enemies knocking on your door. So far though, and this will be a bonus to a lot of you, I have not uncovered any buttons, or menus that have faults and make your machine crash. All the menus seem to work quickly and without complication, so you don't have to worry throughout the game.

Galactic Civilizations II boasts great AI. If the enemy is set to be super intelligent, they will anticipate most of your moves and destroy you. Also, if you surround an allied planet you will get a message saying that they know you're about to attack them and they will fight to protect themselves unless you move on. Don't think you can secretly build up your military either, at least not without someone noticing and blowing the whistle on you. The closer you get to the enemy's home system, the heavier the fighting. Your enemy, sensing the end is near, will ask for help from its allies and even offer technology, planets, or ships to bring others into the war. Beware if you're used to a Red Alert style enemy; you will have to learn fast in this game.

If I was to select one thing that I wasn't impressed with in Galactic Cavitations II, (and one isn't bad, right?) it would be the sound. There's just not much of it. All there is when you're playing is some rather depressing classical music. Although this music changes now and then, it all sounds the same. It's just so boring and if you play a gigantic map you will almost certainly turn the speakers off and turn on your stereo. Also, there are no voiceovers to break up the game, just blocks of text that appear in your reports. Don't get me wrong though, the sound in this style of game is not important; there's no need to have loads of thrash metal blasting out. All you have to do is sit back and think about your next move and for that you need calmness.

Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords is a truly great game. However, it's not for everybody. Let me warn you, I've been playing this game now for about a week, watched all the tutorials and I am yet to come close to winning a game, it's that hard. Also, as the tutorials say, if you select a game on a gigantic map you could theoretically be playing for days, weeks, or even months! As a fan of Football Manager 2006 I know what it takes for a game to be addictive, and GCII has it. It will take up so much time, yet you'll find yourself yearning for more. While you're out, you'll be thinking about how to take a certain planet without leaving yourself exposed, or who to make an alliance with next. Truly a must buy for role-play and strategy fans everywhere.

Reviewed by Chris Brooks for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).