Any input on Vindication?

I was wandering through the FLGS the other day and came across a very large box with the title "Vindication". I'd never heard of it, so I went to BGG to see what it was and watched Vasel's review. Despite regular assertions here that he raves about everything, I've never found that to be true. He tends to mention weak and strong points in the stuff he looks at. But he RAVES about this game, despite commenting on the fact that, for all of the elaborate storylines and artwork, it's basically a cube-pushing Euro.

I came here, hoping to see that Charlie had chimed in on the forum with his opinion and found nothing from him or any of the other regular insiders with access to review copies. Apparently this was released late last year?

Anyway, just wondering if anyone has had some hands-on experience with it.

I thought I mentioned it on here at one point but search doesn't bring up anything. I played a single session a few months back. My thoughts (which are in my comment on BGG):

"Cluttered modern Euro focused on resource conversion. It has a veneer of setting but most everything is relatively samey and just different scoring vectors that don't feel different. Certainly not a terrible game by any stretch, but the core system is overcomplicated for the central loop at the heart of the design.

It also lacks drama or oomph and there's no single mechanism or element that really produces a wow factor."

Putting the "soulless" back in the old acronym that dare not speak its name.

Thanks, Charlie. That was kind of my impression from everything that I'd read or even that Tom Vasel described. I was mystified as to how he found this so fascinating, since he's normally a fan of stuff that's far more visceral than that (for lack of a better term.) One of his all-time favorites is Cry Havoc, for example.