Strategy game set in space
The original created a nice enough 4X experience, a strategy game that allowed you to tackle the economic, the politic and the tactical and strategic elements of conflict and expansion in space. However, what the original didn't manage, to polish and to clean up the bugs, this game does in a fairly good manner. It also introduced a couple more options among which a multiplayer hot seat mode, so you can challenge your friends from the same computer. The question is, would you want to try it out when X3 for instance offers such a better, more graphically optimized game? The answer is of course to be answered by each gamer for themselves. What I can say is that Armada 2525: Deluxe Edition remains a pretty stiff and technically challenging game, the kind of challenging that you don't really want. You will basically know at times what you want to do, but won't know how to do it, as the controls are scattered through a couple of screens that could have been designed more compactly to ease the delivery of information to you, the player. So, deluxe or not, this game is a bit of a hard nut to crack – it can be played, if you want to sink lots of hours into it, with the aid of a walkthrough/strategy guide, but the multitude of better options won't really justify the effort. So, my honest opinion is that you'd be better off without this particular game.
