Galactic Civ II Review

From www.videolamer.com

4x Space Strategy fans, your prayers have been answered. Although Gal Civ 2 isn’t quite what Master of Orion 3 should’ve been, it has a wonderful balance of the detail fun fans of the genre crave without the tedium that can be overwhelming. After that teaser trailer, how couldn’t you want to read on?

First off, let me say I never played Galactic Civ 1. So from that standpoint, I was a neophyte to the series, which greatly contributed to my learning curve issues. One of my biggest frustrations is it took me a solid five or so hours to figure out what the hell was going on in the game, but eventually it all gelled together. The manual was only of so much help, but after some trial and error, I was able to run my empire the way I wanted.

Since I am a player for gameplay, and not other stuff, I’ll get the graphics and sound over with up front. The graphics are great. The universe is displayed in a fantastic manner, with planets and star systems separate (you can colonize multiple planets in a solar system). Ships look cool, with base style and colors user selectable, on top of which is a huge ship customization system (more on that later). There are some neat cut scenes when you do things for the first time (colonize a planet, etc), that are fun to watch, and the planet screen is crisp and functional. The music and sound are great. The music for the general game is very Lord of the Rings-esque and classical, but as a geek, I find absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Boom. I'm rick james, bitch!

Ok, let’s get on to gameplay, and I don’t even know where to start. First off, the game does an EXCELLENT job of balancing detail with tedium. First off, planets are customizable in that depending on the quality of the planet, you get so many "slots" to stick buildings in. Slots can also have bonuses to them ( hot springs for approval, artifacts for research, etc). You can expand these slots via terraforming technologies, for later expansion. But for the standard slots, your choices are pretty basic: You have a set of basic improvements to different resources (such as production, food, money, etc). As you advance in technology, you get upgraded equivalents of each building—but, best of all, your planet automatically upgrades. So if I currently have "basic factories" and research the tech for "factories", all my planets automatically queue upgrades, reducing micromanagement and making life much easier.

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Very cool! Thanks for the link!

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That has to have one of the most ridiculous contradictions on the multiplayer issue I have ever read.

He complains about the lack of multiplayer. Then, he mentions FrogBoy's explaination of why and agrees with him entirely! Then, he says, "Still. No multiplayer? Come on."

That's just nonsense.

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