Customer Reviews

Civilization 2: Test of Time

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

What is this, then? It's a rip-off of a wonderful game; the technology trees make no sense, the graphics are horrible, and it adds nearly nothing to Civilization II in terms of gameplay. In many superficial aspects, the designers tried to make a complete break from Civilization II; however, they tried to do so while making as few changes to the underlying engine as possible. The result is a somewhat muddled mess.

Graphics first. The graphics engine, in fact the entire game engine, is virtually the same as that for Civilization II. This is an engine that was made in 1996; made, essentially, for 640x480 resolution, and it suffers greatly. This isn't helped by the poor quality of the graphics.

The learning curve can be difficult, to say the least. Many of the games have multiple worlds, each with their own separate terrain types, none of whose effects can be easily learned. In Civilization II, the task of remembering which terrain type does what is reasonably simple, since terrain types correspond to terrain in real life: there are mountains, hills, grasslands, plains, rivers, swamps, tundra, deserts, and glaciers. Imagine trying to remember that many terrain types for each of four different worlds, without being able to refer to real life. What sort of effects do you think metallic hydrogen would produce? Without the terrain chart and the technology tree poster, things rapidly become ridiculous.

This was a game made without Sid Meier or Brian Reynolds, and it shows; though there is some promise to the concept, the execution seems to have consisted of taking the buildings, units, and technology of Civ II and scrambling it all up; it's Civilization II with new names for everything. Not even that much; in scrambling everything around, it loses the excellent game-design of Civilization II, and punishes prior knowledge of Civilization; if you've played Civilization, you know that all of the buildings and wonders are simply renamed versions of the old ones, and to know that, and to know that you'll have to relearn the names of the scrambled buildings, is a depressing thought.

If you truly want a follow-up to Civilization II, buy Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, or wait for Civilization III, both from Firaxis and both done with Sid Meier. If you like the idea of a fantasy game, or like the idea of multiple parallel worlds, the concept was done much better in Master of Magic, a game, that, though five years older than Test of Time, looks and plays much better. It's simply too bad that the sequel was never completed.

I love Civilization. I bought the original a week after it was out. I spent entire vacations playing it only. I upgraded to Civ 2 and played it even more. I am absolutely adicted to this game.

Then I bought Test of Time.

And I was severely disappointed.

The graphics make the game next to impossible to play. Plains look like deserts, forests are indisinguishable, units are blurry, and so on. The familiar flashing unit it replaced by four yellow lines around the base of a unit, so it takes several moments simply to distinguish which unit you are using. The city interface is more difficult to use, plain and simple. The layout and interface are confusing. The whole game is simply a dark indisinguishable mess, a far cry from the brightly colored, easily distinguished graphics of civilization and civ 2.

This game really does have so much promise conceptually. Its a shame its next to impossible toplay. For those of you who really want the next generation of Civ games, get Activision's Civilization- Call to Power, a game that blows this piece of @#$%^ out of the water any day.

I loved Civ and Civ II but Test of Time is a Waste of Time. The new graphics make piece movement difficult for it is difficult, first to figure out which piece you're moving, then it's hard to figure out what kind of piece you're moving.

The city interface is clumsy and difficult to figure out if you're used to Civ and Civ II. I recommend you buy a copy of Civ II instead.

The graphics are poor at best, they are slightly better than the original Civ. Microprose have tried to improve them and failed. Game play on my very fast system is slow, and not really a lot of improvements to the game. The move from Civ to CivII was great. However this version lets down the gaming series.

After a while you will get use to the poor graphics and play it, but you'll be thinking about Civ II.

Poor resolution. 800x600 is probably maximum. Does not scale to larger screen. I cannot easily tell one unit from another

Hello. My name is Alex, and I'm a Civ addict.

Ever since the late, great Microprose released Sid Meier's Civilization, I have turned on my PC, plopped myself down on my chair and played countless hours...nay, eons....with at least three versions of this very popular and highly addictive "god game."

We all know this game by heart, otherwise we would not be attending CivAnon today. However, I'd like to make a few comments about this Hasbro Interactive version's virtues and vices.

What I like:
1. The new animated graphics. Sure, the old icons were good for their time, but I love watching and hearing my units fight in Animated mode.
2. Multiplayer capabilities were first introduced in one of the two versions I haven't owned (CivNet), and when playing against the computer gets boring, a human adversary is most welcome. The "hot seat" option is the way I've played it, since I am rarely online to play in the MSN Game Zone.

What I hate:
1. I'm not keen on the Fantasy or SF scenarios. Sure, they may be attractive to serious players who like those genres, but I am more fond of the 1996 Microprose version of Civ II and its historical scenarios.
2. Save/Load. This option DOESN'T work. Maybe I got unlucky and got stuck with a bad disc, but whenever I want to save a game and load it for a more time-efficient method of playing, all I get is really lousy graphics...like a corrupted version of the final Civ II release by Microprose but worse. There are lines of code on my screen and everything looks like a beta testing screen. Yuck. So if I play this game, it takes several hours (at best) and in one sitting. This makes everyone -- my girlfriend included -- very, very unhappy.

I still don't own Civ III, so this version will have to be in my library of games till the price comes down.

I found this a great follow up to Civ II! It's Hot seat mode and multi-Map capabilities made it a lot of fun and makes for hours of play! The graphics are not as good as in the original Civ II and you don't get the movies for Wonders of the World or from your advisors. But it makes up for this by introducing a scientific and fantasy realm to play in as well as Multi-Map game playing. I would not recomend this for first time Civ players, but for those who love Civ and want a new challenge!

Blasphemy! They took the Civ2 engine and put some graphics on top of the old graphics. After about 20seconds the new graphics start to disentigrate and you see the old Civ2 underneath. Buy Civ2-Multiplayer Gold,it is the same game and it doesn't crash every 2 minutes.

Test of Time uses the same game engine as Civ II, the differences are more complex graphics and extended game possibilities: the game doesnt stop with the colonists reaching the planet, you can continue to colonize it and get in contact with alien civilization who can establish colonies on Earth. The only real difference to CIV II is that the game is longer and played on two maps, but the essence stays strictly the same... Its the same for the different environments offered (science-fiction, fantasy).

All in all as good as CIV II, with some more possibilities, making you sit even longer in front of the computer...

Even though it was a nice intention to beef up the graphics, I do think that this version of CIV is less easy to play, the units less easy to recognize... Its simply confusing. If you want to play your game fast, CIV II does a better job.

Civ-2 Multiplayer Gold added multiplayer to Civ-2 - that was a needed improvement. This iteration uses the Microsoft Direct-X Libraries to slow gameplay to a crawl, while adding little of significance to game play. Buy the (now) much cheaper Civ-2:MPG.