This is a game ideally suited for space exploration enthusiasts. The management, scarcity of resources, and first stages of colonization are really inmersive at the beginning of the game, when you only control automated drones and machines. It really feels like taking your first steps on the red planet. Being able to not to depend on Earth's supplies feels important, and there's some fun in getting there.

After that, there's an important stage when you are ready to accept colonists, and they must survive (there's a defeat condition if they die, but only for your first batch of colonists) It's the only event that always happens in every game, and fortunately it's rather short. Some people don't like having a game over condition that seems very easy to trigger.

Then your proceed to the middle game, where you can bring more and more colonists, and create a complicated base trying to include all the buildings, services, etc... The vanilla game has problems getting your colonists to automatically pick the most adequate job, or move to a dome that has enough living space for them instead of living in the streets. I recommend to patch it with an appropiated mod that you can download from Steam Workshop. It feels necessary to me.

Then, there are many different ending events, and all of them being very saucy. Some of them test your ability to mass produce and react to random events. And this is where the vanilla game without DLCs ends. These ending events are rather long, so no complain from me here

Sadly, once they are done, the game stales quite a bit. You can challenge yourself to build more and more domes, but there's little motivation to do so. The Green Planet DLC gives you something to do at this stage to keep your interest in the game, but I felt it wasn't as satisfying as I thought. Even if you complete the terraformation of Mars, there are still many areas in which the grass wouldn't grow until you have played the game for many hours AFTER you have done everything you can do. It's like staining Mars with splotches of green grass.

Lastly, not a complain, but once you have colonists, the game starts to look similar to Cities Skylines, although you have to manage where you want them to work. So instead of managing a big city, you are micromanaging a smaller one, whilst keeping in check many subsystems so your population doesn't die

The in-game radio is great, although it gets repetitive after many hours of playing