Astra Exodus

This game is getting dragged in reviews, and I don't understand why. It's a unique entry in the 4X Space Genre with M002 turn-based campaign map and a 2-D RTS combat layer in space and ground battles. I've produced and hour long video with more thoughts. I also have a few gripes and lots of tutorial-like details. If you give it a watch, but still give it a pass you'll have given the game more thought than any of these negative reviewers did. Seriously...posting a review for others to see without even an hour of play time before posting. Ridiculous.

I am very troubled by this game. I absolutely don't want to hurt an indie developer's pocket book, especially when they have good ideas and are still working on the game. At the same time the game is six months after launch. I've played it a good deal more than my Steam account shows due to a friend who can't return his copy.
The Good:
--A very MOO2 feel, with touches of MOO1.
--The races are distinct.
--Custom race making allows for a lot of options and potential replayability.
--3/4 of the game has really good ideas, making improvements on MOO, such as the transport system, a little more depth in resources, fresher combat, albeit needing some work still, etc.
--The game is stable (have crashed once before inside the first 200 turns).
--The Dev is friendly and responsive.
--The Dev has kept working on the game.
The Bad:
--About 1/4 of the game needs some serious QoL upgrades. UI will not win awards (some parts are ok but others just aren't), some tool tips and descriptions give no meaningful info (example, galactic events take place with no clear indication they are having any impact), research speed needs tweaking (can finish all the research easily before you are even allowed to win), sometimes your current research will be suddenly completed when you are trading for other researches, combat works but the timing is "off," etc.
--There are several memory leaks, acute and chronic. Acutely, occasionally switching screens and other things will suddenly cause the game to respond at a snail's pace until the app is restarted. I'm sure it will crash if you don't. Chronically the game slows down more the longer you are in one session until you restart the app.
--The auto save works but the limit on how many auto saves the game will keep is broken. It never gets rid of any so your save file will really build up. That appears to add to the game slow down. It responds faster again if you get rid of most of the saves.
The Ugly
--The game is half a year past official launch and still feels like an EA game.
The Hope
The Dev has kept working at the game and often fixes problems that are brought to their attention quickly. For as long as that continues the game will improve, perhaps remarkably.
The Bottom Line
If it ever reaches it's full potential it will be worth the money and better than any MOO type out there but it's still currently in an EA state. It's worth supporting if you want a chance to see the game finished but like all EA's, it's not there til it's there.

With thousands of hours invested in Stellaris, I can honestly state that this game is both a fun and a refreshing take on the space 4X genre. Does it have some grammar issues? Sure. But, one should be willing to overlook something like this especially when you consider that the game is the product of a single Uruguayan developer/programmer.
Of course, you'll need to spend more than 20 minutes to begin to properly experience what this title has to offer, so I would challenge you to do so.
Thanks for the cool game, Dev.

Reading the first reviews, i must say i was very much on my fence. I am an avid 4x gamer since Master of Orion in 1993 and my first interest is space 4x. When the latest patch was about to be released, i decided to give the game a go. I must say, i am not a fan of the artwork on galaxy level, it is subpar to similar games like Stars in Shadow. However, the more and more i play the game, the more i enjoy it. I think it's a decent 4x game with some nice new ideas. The game covers all the aspects one expect in such a game: space battles (also with a battle arena coming with the next patch), spying missions, diplomacy etc. ).
The game has a few unique features:
Ressource management: you cannot accumulate minerals, metals, organics and rares. This means that you have to make sure to produce enough materials when you want to produce a ship or a facility but not too much either.
Population management: instead of the 3 working fields in Master of Orion 2, you have 5 type of jobs: Farmers, Miners, Workers, Traders and Scientists. This gives some good work to do at the planet level and you can really focus on the planets special features (see below).
Planets: these are very different, some with lots of metals, some with lots of food etc. A lot of "specials" will have a big impact on the planets production: metallic oceans (more metal), native populations (more food), ancient robots (more workers) etc.
Another special feature is reseach. It is randomised every time. For each of the nine tech trees, you can always choose only one tech out of three. This means that you have to find another race with a technology you want and exchange it. If you are at war with everyone, you may well fall behind.
All in all, this is an interesting game and an impressive one considering it was done by just one guy. I have to say though that the beta testing was lacking and the game still suffers from some problematic bugs.

I was a beta tester for this although I came into the testing in the later phase (Super4est on Slitherine, Nandus). Sorry I'm just now getting my review here but as another posted, it came on a busy weekend for me and I wanted to get in some games of the actual steam version before reviewing.
Gaming background - mostly wargamer (board and PC), also like many video game genres such as 4x with MoO being one of my all time favs. I've enjoyed 4x since playing its early board game origins - Avalon Hill's versions of Stellar Conquest, Civilization, etc.
So I enjoyed the 4 games I got in since it came on Steam, 2 sandbox and 2 campaign. I'm getting the type of gameplay I enjoy from MoO with some content and variations I've found interesting. To me it's like playing another FPS game (even if like me you've already done a lot of them all the way back to Wolfenstein 3D, lol) because it's another take on it to play if you like that kind of game play. One way I play due to lack of time is set it at Tiny galaxy size, advanced beginning settings (where you start with more ships, colonies, techs, etc) and with one of the particular factions that favors faster games (with Ancient or other qualities that can speed play for you). With this however you typically see only one other opponent, so when I have more time I'll go for a full on one with mostly average settings. I've found the variety of ways to play here pretty good - you can set most things how you want to play it - campaign or sandbox, combat speed so it's more like RTS or as slow as really more like turn-based, etc. And you can mod a lot of things although I think this is one area for further improvement for the game.
It has a land combat that has potential for good war gaming like experience, although I think and hope that can further be improved. Of course I'd like to see something like Field of Glory / Order of Battle, so that might be hard to fit into the game, lol.
From my beta-testing vantage point, I saw the developer address a very major problem with it (a lagging issue) working at it right up close to the release date, and get it fixed - did not experience this problem at all during these 4 games! From discussions in that beta forum he seems serious about continuing to improve it, so I think there will continue to be fixes and features coming. And I see some further good suggestions in the forums here since release.
A problem with a lot of games I see on Steam is fixing a firm release date. I think it sets an expectation for prospective buyers that a fully fixed game will appear on that date. I think this is especially difficult for a solo developer, but regardless it results in the problem of bugs not found til late in the testing probably not being fixed in time. If given a little more time I think a lot of the problems mentioned in the forums could have been ironed out or improved on before release. It may still not be perfect by that point but could start out with a lot better reception from players.
Pricing - yes, seems a bit high, but although Slitherine has several of my favorite games, they always go high on pricing.. So with that and seeing in some game dev discussions online that experienced developers recommend charging higher (apparently so the game doesn't appear too cheap or worth less to buyers), I somewhat expected it. I can understand though why others are saying the price seems high.
But as mentioned I'm still enjoying the play of the game and think there's a lot of potential with further updates. I would recommend it to fans of 4x MoO and Stars in Shadow type of game play.
Thanks,
Forest

I really did not enjoy the game but the developer is so good at finding and crushing bugs that I don't have the heart to down vote it. I disagree with some design decisions like not being able to research everything and the a.i. players get mad and it seems to turn into a blood feud forever and it costs too much to build ships and then you have to choose between defending or going on the offense. You don't have enough ships to do both and it is frustrating. But the developer and some players may find these same things that i dislike "challenging" so it is a matter of taste.

A charming, yet flawed indie 4x game that at the end of the day is a mixed bag.
The Good:
It has a feel and look of a 1990s 4X game. It clearly draws heavily from Master of Orion 2
The Bad:
it has a feel and look of a 1990s 4X game. It clearly draws heavily from Master of Orion 2.
I really don't like the term "MOO2 Clone" because it's often used as a pejorative, but I do think it's an appropriate comparison in this case.
The art style, tech tree, custom race creation, planetary management, and ship design are incredibly similar to MOO2 with some very slight deviations. If you enjoy these aspects of MOO2, as I do, you'll feel right at home here. If you do not, well...
Combat, unlike MOO2, is real time. I'm really not a fan of real time combat in 4X games as it very rarely works. A well done tactical combat system would have been preferable but I would have settled for a turn-based strategic combat system as in GalCiv 3. Combat in 4X games is typically bad, worse, or worst, as very few games pull it off well, and it unfortunately doesn't excel here. An ever-so-slightly better version of the combat in Pax Imperia: Imminent Domain is the best way to describe the combat here.
The developer has put in a TON of hard work with bug fixes and QOL improvements, but there are some visual design decisions that still remain puzzling. I find myself fighting the UI constantly (very true to form of a 90s 4X game), and there's a need for more tooltips, especially when certain icons are not intuitive. The UI lacks a lot of things that 11-year old me could have shrugged off in 1996, but 35 year old me in 2020 has come to expect.
So yeah, if you're looking for innovation and a 4X game that is going to move the genre forward, then look elsewhere. If you're looking for a charming love letter to classic 4X gaming and you enjoy the gameplay of games like MOO2 and Pax Imperia, then you'll likely enjoy it.