I completely agree! It's been a while since I played a game that truly felt finished and ready for release. Lately there's been a lot of games that had major issues or obvious problems. I don't see that with Sins, so it's definitely a welcome change. I also like how I see people involved with the development process checking out what people are saying.
Last game I bought that felt finished out of the box was World in Conflict from several months ago. Everything between that game and Sins has had major problems. I'm really glad to see that there are still companies out there that care about quality, and I have no hesitations about supporting their products. Very nice job Ironclad and Stardock.
Honestly, I was expecting to see a lot of problems. I've gotten used to UT3 forgetting my cd-key every day while also throwing me completely random C++ runtime errors just because it hates me and reading about how the developer still hasn't implemented some critical things yet 3 months after release, Gears deleting my save games and crashing at the exact same spot in a map in act 3 essentially preventing me from progressing in the game all while nobody is working on fixing it, Crysis having NPC's get stuck on physics objects and preventing you from finishing a mission plus people in multiplayer rampantly cheating, and developers like Epic kicking people off their forums for offering feedback, then chasing them down on other fan-sites to harass them. I can't name a single show-stopping problem with Sins. Sure, there are things that are a matter of opinion or some potential areas for refinement or expansion, but everything just works and is very enjoyable and addicting. It's completely different (in a good way) from what's been getting shoveled out lately, and I appreciate that. There is such a thing as brand loyalty so I will be keeping my eye on future products from Ironclad and Stardock.
I haven't had this much fun with a strategy game since Rise of Nations.
