I think Hertston is talking about game play more than graphics.
So we're back to the gameplay vs graphics argument, which has been discussed a million times on pretty much every game forum in the universe.
I like both Sins and GalCiv 2. Both will hold my attention too long if I'm not careful. Graphically, the only thing they are missing are more shaders. Specular shaders and bump mapping have been standard features in games for years. Today's games will heap on dozens of shaders if they detect the card can handle it. Sorta makes these games feel like they're trying to be great graphical games, but are oddly missing something that holds them back.
In any case, from the demo it looks like I'm gonna buy Sins eventually, perhaps even before I buy the new expansion for GalCiv 2. The gameplay needs a bit of tweaking, but it's very fun! Unfortunately, I have higher priority items I want to get from Stardock, such as Object Desktop.
[joke]Stardock, you're killing me selling all of this awesome stuff
.[/joke]
Yeah, I'd like to see some tweaking. Hard to say a lot from just a demo, but it looks like the planets require a lot of babysitting to make sure they build all of the stuff they need. Most 4X games have a system where you can hand over the building to the AI for less important cities/planets so you can concentrate on the more important ones.
The whole pirate system seemed rather pointless. Maybe I need to buy the game and play a full sized map, but it appears they're wiped out pretty quickly and never really have any power.
I hope the full game has more detail in the tutorials. The tutorials that came with the demo were pretty weak. Just basic gameplay, and I was kinda left clueless as to where to go with my tech tree and my planetary improvements.
