I haven't played it recently so I can't really say what state it's in, but the reason for the low review scores is that it was broken on launch. Literally unfinished. Buttons that crashed the game, buttons that didn't do anything, components that affected elements that weren't implemented yet, etc. etc. etc. And the stuff that did work was clunky and unintuitive.
I bought it because I like making pretty ships, which is what I did in SotS.