May 20th, 2012 | 
Author: Space Empires V Pc @ Amazon.com
| Most helpful customer reviews 1573 of 1661 people found the following review helpful. I mean, I couldn’t get enough. Doubly so with Civ 2. The things you could do with that game. It had…personality. I remember little stuff, like the different architectural styles, that gave the game such an immersive quality. I remember how every time I played, the world had its own story, and how things would seem to take on a life of their own. The endless war with the Mongols, my alliance with the Germans, butting heads with Caesar. I learned more about history there than I ever did in school. It was fantastic. I didn’t even play to win most of the time. I was a fifteen year-old kid in a sandbox. I got older, and Civ grew with me. I spend endless hours on 3 and 4, balancing game commitments and my real life. When Civ 5 was announced, I didn’t hesitate. I bought it immediately. In short, it didn’t take me long before I realized that this new Civ was nothing like the Civ of old. I’ve never played Revolutions, but I’ve heard there is a lot of overlap. I don’t know. What I do know is that this game is boring. Really, really boring. Never have I clicked the “next turn” button like I have here. Maybe it’s because it takes forever to build anything…so long, in fact, that it’s easier just to hoard gold and buy things. Maybe it’s because expansion and/or conquest isn’t really encouraged. The seemingly massive happiness hit just makes it unreasonable. So I sit there, just watching the world slowly go by. And how slow it is…the loading screen between turns has become my nemesis. I’ve turned the “superb” graphics down to their lowest setting, just to speed things up, and to keep things from jumping from one side of the world to the other every time I scroll my mouse. Just to be clear, I have a computer that can run all the latest shooters, yet cannot run a turn-based strategy game aimed at a mass audience. The AI is dumb and unfinished. If my dog had fingers, he could win on prince at least. I don’t consider myself the smartest strategist, but I have never lost a war in Civ 5. Ever. I started on warlord, then prince, then king. Onward and upward I went, until I quickly realized that the AI wasn’t getting smarter. It was just cheating. This was acceptable 15 years ago, not now. Why is Gandhi determined to kill me? After 2000 years of good relations, he wants to kill me. Not a biggie, mind you, because all he does is park archers next to my swordsmen, where I can promptly slaughter them. After I defeat his army (without taking any cities), he offers me all of his resources, all of his gold, and all of his cities (except for his capital, of course). He just gives up. I take him up on his offer, because I am obviously smarter than him. But that means my happiness tanks, my production stops, and my steady income stream is now in the red. Whatever. I still have 3 swordsmen and 2 archers. I can conquer the world with that. Screw culture. Did I mention the music? Man, it’s boring. No more period specific soundtrack, tribal or classical. Just the turn-based equivalent of elevator music. I’m sure the graphics are the bees-knees, but with me playing on the lowest graphics setting, I will never know. City-states, which were made out to be a big deal, are not. They ask for stuff, you give it to them (or not). They give you stuff (or not). That is the extent of the city-state strategy. Boring. Actually, the city-state thing reminds me of a problem I have that extends beyond the poor quality of this game. Professional reviews. Why did every professional game review outlet give Civ 5 high marks. 9/10. A+. Really? Every review I’ve seen has been the same. “It has hexes!” “It has city-states!” “One unit per tile!” “Ranged combat!” “Beautiful graphics!” I even saw reviews gushing over how cool the opening sequence was (you know, the one you can’t skip). For one, I am tired of seeing the old man in the hut every time I load up. I find it oddly fishy that no “professional” reviewer has brought up the bugginess; the fact that you need an internet connection; the fact that you need Steam; the fact that the AI stinks; etc, etc, etc. Just hexes and city-states. Either they were told to write a good review by the “powers that be,” or they spent a total of 3 hours playing before writing their reviews. Either way, I will never trust a professional review source ever again. I gave this game 2 stars, because I believe it still has the potential to be good. After a few expansions, some mods, a Rhys and Fall, a Fall From Heaven. Yeah, it could be good. I’ve played around 60 hours, and still see a spark of genius here. But it will take an awful lot of work. Right now, it’s like watching paint dry. 630 of 676 people found the following review helpful. There are certain things I really like about this game. City states were a great addition and make the game a lot more interesting. Being able to purchase land is awesome and realistic. Easier rushbuying is a lot of fun and doesn’t unbalance the game. The new combat system is pretty goofy (for example, archers are a ranged unit but riflemen are not). It’s a bit more fun than the old “stacks of doom,” but I see reviewers praising the new combat system as “more streamlined” when it is definitely not. Moving an old stack of doom required 2 clicks (click on SOD, click on destination). Now you need to do the same thing 5-10 times as much to move an army. The new Civic talent tree offers more customization of specific traits, which is fun to plan around. However you can’t swap civics to match a change in strategy in-game (eg. teching up at the beginning of the game and then turning to a warlike theocracy once you realize you’re likely to lose the space race). This is disappointing. Overall, when Civ5′s civics are compared to Civ4 its a wash. In-between-turn load times suck. On a normal size map in the modern age, I was sitting and watching the hourglass for an average of 15 seconds in between each turn–even when I wasn’t watching animations of enemy moves. I’d blame my computer but it runs pretty much every other game at high settings without a hint of a problem. Music is poor, particularly the asian themed music which sounds like a bad parody of its genre. It’s hard to believe they wasted time animating leaders and making them talk in their own languages. It doesn’t add anything to the game and some of their voices (Queen Elizabeth) actually detract from it by being annoying. The lack of science/gold/culture sliders takes away a lot of customization potential that was fun to tinker with in previous Civ games. This became painfully apparent when going for a cultural victory. A cultural victory doesn’t require the last 25% of the tech tree, but you can’t stop researching until you run out of money. And in the meantime, because you’re still researching new tech, your puppet states are building more and more new buildings and costing you more money. And when you run out of money you can’t do a LOT of things, like rush-build or more importantly buy luxury resources and establish good relations with city states that provide culture. Basically you lose the ability to do the things that make the game fun. This is especially frustrating when it have been so easily solved with the old-school sliders, which were never that difficult to manage in the first place. Civ5 reminds me of Civ3, in that it attempts to add a couple of new game concepts and surprisingly flops at aspects in which its predecessor excelled. Overall, it’s an interesting but ultimately flawed game that doesn’t hold a candle to its predecessor and will most likely be remembered as one of the weaker chapters of a great series. 490 of 562 people found the following review helpful. Second – this game is utterly unbalanced. There are a million flaws in the game that were never playtested. For example, producing wealth is irrelevant because you get far more gold from producing a unit and then deleting it. Certain civilizations are far more powerful than others, or can exploit certain tech/policy combinations to easily defeat other civilizations. The worst elements are things that were fine in Civ 4 and made worse in Civ 5, like exploiting Great Scientists. The Wonders of the World are mostly useless now, or not worth the hammers. Third – So much content has been actually removed or downgraded, like Civics -> Social Policies, or the number of leaders and civilizations. Finally – This game is just such a total betrayal of Civ 4, abandoning everything interesting and good. I’m really sad that they trusted a totally new Lead Designer for such an important game. Shame on you Firaxis for not getting Brian Reynolds from SMAC to do this game. Shame on you 2k Games for publishing this before it was playtested and balanced. Utter garbage. Has some shiny and entertaining bits, I suppose, much like a console game. But like a console game, the gameplay itself is bad. |
Like watching paint dry…
One step forward, two steps back
Betrayal of the Civilization Series
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