my favourite game of all time. However without the "plot" and the voice acting I wouldn't rate it anywhere near as highly.
The "meat" of the plot was the audio snippets that would pop up whenever you researched a tech, built a facility for the first time or finished a secret project. Most of them were quite fascinating and had a haunting beauty to them [0]. The way that Chairman Yang half-laughs when discussing the genejack, how adament Morgan is about the right of present generations exploiting fossil fuels, Lal's horror at the outcomes of Mind/Machine interface.
This game was the first time I had encountered the art of telling stories through crumbs, instead of one fixed and full narrative like most stories.
I agree with the article in that the mechanics of the game weren't ideal. Personally as someone that LOVES 4x and has spent _way_ too much time playing them, I think the format is fundamentally flawed and cannot be saved (e.g. expanding is too overpowered, games become too dull to close out - given the win was effectively gained hundreds of turns ago, AI being too costly to implement and difficult to balance). IMHO the best 4x game that will come out at some point in the future won't actually follow the 4x format.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hou-Iwv1GvM&list=PL3DDD41A3E...
Particularly good ones:
1-22 fac : 9:13 - Chairman Yang - Genejacks.
23-38 fac : 3:22 - Project PYRRHO
0-24 techs : 1:16 - Nwabudike Morgan - The Ethics of Greed.
0-24 techs : 8:06 - Sister Miram - We must dissent
25-49 techs: 2:17 - Chairman Yang - Looking god in the eye
25-49 techs : 4:26 - Prokhor Zakharov - For I have tasted the fruit
25-49 techs : 6:03 - Commissioner Lal - Mind Machine Interface