I had a legitimate copy of spore back in the day but I never got to play it since I didn't have an internet connection and the DRM required it :/
It was cute and all, but you played through a 'flow' like cell phase, a simple tribal phase, a slightly more complex civilisation phase and then went space and ... meh.
I wanted to love it, and I did play it through a few times, but from the hype you'd have thought it was the game of a generation where ultimately it was unsatisfying and played out more or less the same each time.