Comment by ryandrake
Yea, it's entirely possible that I'm simply expecting a different game and just don't find the current one's endgame fun or satisfying. I played it a few times, chugged along building a nice colony, and then suddenly the big full-screen "Haha you lose, your opponent bought you out on the stock market (which you can't prevent)".
I'm trying to think of any games that try to include an in-game stock market, where the gameplay doesn't eventually utterly hinge on playing the in-game stock market instead of whatever else the game was about. Looks like we've discovered a rule: "Take any game about anything, in any genre, and if you add a stock market, the game eventually becomes a stock market simulator instead."
That was one of my initial fears with Shadow Empire, but it somehow doesn't manage to devolve to only that... I guess because there's a variety of brakes applied on trading like trading houses' limited stocks (including in credits), the way how price discovery is gradual between trading regions and not instant cross-planet, and the way they rip off the major factions by taking large trading margins ?