So far, I like Spore. I'm a bit sad they left out the aquatic bits and the 'realistic' procedural walking, though. Here's a jumbled mess of my thoughts, split into paragraphs so you can keep them apart.
I always understood that the Evolution bit in Spore was just the storyline, in a way. The story is about a creature and it's species evolving all the way into space. What the creature looks like is the bit that's up to you.
Even E.V.O. was a story about evolution, but never actually had any evolving going on. in fact the whole thing was almost identical to Creature stage, except with a story.
You can't actually have evolution and creativity at the same time. Creativity is about purpose. Spore is about Creativity in a biology setting.
Evolution is about stuff happening, and the stuff that doesn't stop happening happening some more so you happen to end up with stuff that's better at happening. No real purpose in that.
The Creator is fun, but limited in how it actually affects gameplay. The only aspects you can change are sight, speed, jumping, sneaking, flight, attacks and social interaction. All the rest is just looks. This gets even worse with the Vehicle and Building Creators, where stats barely matter at all.
Still, if position and size and joints and all those things actually mattered, wouldn't it be terribly difficult to make a nice creature? I bet very few of all those popular Zerg(s?), dragons and spiderpigs would actually function. Not to mention aircrafts. Every planet would be filled with crippled creatures flailing about because they're 'unbalanced'.
Tribal and Civ are fun, but short and simple. I wish all 3 vehicle types could be built at the same city. Or perhaps just multiple vehicles with the same stats. I really like taming wildlife in Tribal stage.
The Civ stage should have a tech tree to unlock building parts that increase productivity and look more advanced. Tribal should have a building designer, or at the very least a building decorator.
Space stage suffers under the high rate at which "disasters" appear. I'm also dissappointed that the zooming out into the galaxy isn't as seamless as I thought it would be. I remember a vid zooming all the way out from the surface to the galaxy. My lappy always pauses a bit when I try that. Terraforming is fun. Shame planet size doesn't matter. Moons should only be able to support light atmospheres. They're not even real moons, just tiny planets following big ones.
Clothing needs more options. And shouldn't be symmetrical. It doesn't need any fancy animation or retexturing like the Creatures, so I don't see why it can't be assymetrically(sp?) applied the the Creature's frame.
I don't feel like I was promised more than I got. The game does have a lot of flaws and bugs, but so do all the latest games and it's still a lot of fun for me. The fact that each stage is so short makes it easier for me to create a new Creature and play some more. Legless, stealth-flying birds that eat eggs are fun to play.
What I really, really would like to see are:
Space constructions like dyson spheres, wormhole gates and space stations.
Underwater environment for all stages.
Better zoom and resolutions in later stages.
Ability to 'seed' a planet with a meteorite or creature and begin a new game in the appropriate stage on that planet.
Rivers.
Space monsters.
Plant editor. (can't anyone just hack that in?)
Different fruits.
Ability to 'upgrade' parts so they look the same but function like their better version.