I've played it,and it's okay but I'd wait for it to be released because there's a few niggling problems.
1) There's next to NO automation at all, which is just horrendous in my opinion. At least throw in an auto-survey or something.
2) The different routes that other civilizations make ONLY travel DIRECTLY from one capital to another, and it makes the map look really ugly by the late game. Sol is a nexus of lines running across the universe.
3) Setting up a decent internal economy is easy, but why should I build up trade facilities versus manufacturing versus agriculture? There's no economy tab, so there's no way to tell if your civilization has a surplus or deficit in an economic sector (trade/tourism/manufacturing/agriculture).
4) Ship customization sucks butt. There's only a handful of designs (I think four per class with 4 classes), and they all have the same limits on equipment and these limits are hardcoded and in place from the beginning to the end of the game with technology having no effect.
5) Research is terrible. 6 (or 8, can't remember) fields of research, with each field having a number of different technologies. Each technology has "levels" which improve the technology slightly as you level them up. The kicker is, you unlock new technologies by leveling up different technologies, and there's no way to know what research a technology needs to unlock because there's no tree. I didn't even know there were technologies to unlock until I discovered gravity generators near the tail end of my last game.
I suggest you play Moo3 or Distant Worlds for your 4x fix and wait for this game to get polished up.