Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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228 of 236 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best turn-based space game since MOO2!, February 23, 2006
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
If you've ever played and loved Master Of Orion 2, your prayers have been answered. I downloaded the game from GalCiv's site (although you can save $6 by purchasing it from Amazon, but I couldn't wait), and it is a wonderful game. At the time of writing this review, I still haven't slept since downloading it. I haven't done that with a game in years.
Where does this succeed where Master Of Orion 3 and Imperium Galactica failed?
1) The GUI - The interface to the game is very streamlined, simple, and uncluttered. MOO2's greatest feature was how fast you could navigate all of the options. This interface reminds you of the great MOO2 interface with big buttons, a solid feel, and a nice heavy "click" on the buttons. You can control ships with mouse or keypad, and a double-click will access almost anything in the game. Gone are the overly-complex right-click menus and 5-10 layer deep menus of MOO3.
2) The Music - Not overly complex or overdominating. It sets the mood and then stays out of the way.
3) The graphics - You can crank the resolution way up to 1600x1200 if you want to heat up your graphics card, but this is the rare game that looks almost exactly as good at 1024x768. You could have a four year old GeForce2 card and run the game as fast as someone with a brand new 7800. The main reason is that the game uses 3D when necessary to add depth, but otherwise relies on beautifully drawn 2D environments.
4) The mechanics of the gameplay - The game plays fast, but of course, being a turn-based game, you can move as fast or as slow as you like, which is why it is so elegant. A beginner can take his time and enjoy, but as a game goes on and you build a huge empire, you can fly through the screens to manage your empire. The ship design and combat system is truly fun, while maintaining its simplicity.
5) Many ways to win...really! - Most games like this are won through combat or combat+"some minor element that really doesn't matter". In my first game, I cranked up the difficulty and built myself a massive fleet and set out to conquer the universe. Then I noticed my enemies were not fighting each other as much and focusing on me. I had neglected the diplomacy, and I quickly lost the game via diplomacy. You really can win, and get beat, through diplomacy, economy, and many methods other than war. Very cool...
My hats off to the designers of this game. They definitely set out to make an homage to MOO2, and they've succeeded. This little indie publisher really showed up the big guys.
Who knows, maybe in a few years we'll be begging companies to make another GC2:DL!
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170 of 177 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Spiritual Successor to MOO2, February 23, 2006
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
Master of Orion 2 was probably the last really good game that has been released in this catagory. MOO3 was a bit of a flop -- it was far too automated with far too many "false choices"...ways you could design a spaceship that simply were not as efficient as hitting the button that let the computer design the whole thing for you, instantly.
GalCiv2 brings back everything that was good about MOO2, with modern graphics and appealing decisions to make with just enough automation options to keep the endgame from becoming tedious without ever "playing the game for you".
The main thing I want to talk about, though, is the AI.
Historically, games like this have the computer opponet cheat. You have 1 colony ship, they have 3. How? Because the computer cheats. The developers couldn't come up with a good way to make a smart computer opponet so they compensated by having it cheat instead.
GalCiv2 doesn't do this (unless you want it to, which I don't advise).
The AI is pretty fantastic. Set computer opponets to an "intelligent" level of difficulty and they will fight you with all the same restrictions you have. They have to scout, just like you. Their ships cost just as much as yours. Their factories produce just as quickly as yours. The only advantage they have is one of efficient micromanagement.
It's not completely infallible, it sometimes does silly things, but it's good enough and smart enough to trounce you most days without any need to cheat.
I find this to be much more appealing. I like a level playing field.
Beyond this, the game has all the usual componets. You research technologies you want from a large and diverse tree. You colonize planets and build factories and research facilities and so forth. You design starships with your latest technology including a fairly optional ability to customize the "look" of your ships. There's diplomacy and war and espionage and random events and all that.
The only thing really missing is tactical combat, although whether we really miss it is arguable.
In the MOO series of games, lots of time was spent on tactical combat -- how your fleet is going to attack the enemy fleet. You move the ships around on the screen and tell them who to attack, etc.
In GalCiv2, this is all handled automatically, similar to the Civilization games. They do take it one step further by providing you with a nice "tactical battle" view, though, which takes you through a full 3-D enactment of the battle but it's just a viewer. You aren't ordering your ships to do anything in this mode, you're just watching it unfold like an episode of Babylon 5.
The bright side of this, I suppose, is that it doesn't take you all year to complete a game. Like Civilization, your focus is on research, developing your worlds and playing a strategy game. You won't be spending hours of your time stuck in a tactical battle between ships.
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47 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the best 4X designs in game history, April 18, 2006
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
[edited 5/29/2006]
Early versions of this review stated that the 5 stars for 'Overall' was a mistake. No longer. With the release of the 1.2 beta and the innovative direction that Stardock Games is taking with GalCiv2, this game clearly deserves the 5-star rating. Go to galciv2.com to see what I'm talking about.
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I was an early fan of the original Galactic Civilizations, which I enjoyed when it first came out, and which I've continued to re-install and play over the years. When GalCiv II came out, I downloaded and installed it, started playing--and immediately got frustrated. That's because I kept expecting the user interface and game design to play like the original. I finally stopped playing, went through all the video tutorials, read the manual a little, and started again--and everything was fine.
More than fine, actually. GalCiv II is that rare modern game that gives as much or more thought to game design as it does to eye candy. The result is a game that makes you think about what you're doing, while letting you have fun doing it.
GalCiv II is an outstanding example of the 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) genre that includes classics such as Stars!, Masters of Orion II, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri/Alien Crossfire, the entire Civilization line, and so on. It provides a variety of options (map size, star density/quality, racial attributes, selection of competing races, etc.) to allow you to customize the game play to your liking. Likewise, you have the standard set of victory conditions available (political, technological, cultural, military), as well as the usual technology tree, structures and enhancement, trade routes, and so on. All well and good, but all pretty much common to other 4X games, though GalCiv II carries it off as well or better than most.
Where GalCiv II really shines, in my opinion, is in the ship design capability. Now, designing and/or customizing spaceships is nothing new--heck, I co-authored a computer game over 20 years ago that let you customize your spaceship--but in GalCiv II, it's both fun and critically important. _That_ is a rare combination for any aspect of a game's design; usually, the fun parts and the critically important parts are distinct and separate.
Much of my technological research (and financial allocation to that research) is steered by the type of ship(s) that I think I'm going to need soon. And while I have a handful of custom designs that I use in each game (yes, you can save designs from one game to the next, though they won't become available until you've researched all the required techs), I am constantly trying out new designs and combinations.
You also have the ability to obsolete any design (including the preexisting "core" designs), delete user designs, upgrade user designs, and upgrade existing ships--either individually or (if you've got the bucks) as an entire group. That last feature (upgrading ships) can be very valuable, whether it's to speed up a colony ship or scout that's chugging along or to upgrade the weapons systems in all your ships.
Beyond that, GalCiv II has a truly innovative mechanism for tricking out your ships--dozens of (cost-free) structures that do not add any functionality or capability but which can radically transform how your ship looks.
Ship combat is based on a straightforward beam/missile/railgun v. shield/point defense/armor calculation, with the ability to build fleets of a certain size (based on your current logistics technology rating). Fleet-to-fleet combat can be watched in a 3-D display, and combat itself tends to resolve in accordance with the "fuzzy wuzzy" rule (i.e., a small number of ships of a certain power and defense ratings can often be defeated by a larger number of weaker ships--because they can usually get off far more shots each round).
The game's UI--once you get used to it, if you're a GalCiv I player--is outstanding. It scrolls smoothly, zooms and rotates smoothly, and lets you accomplish what you need to with a minimal of fuss. You also have possibly the best set of management UI screens that I've ever seen in a 4X game.
What is even more impressive is that Stardock Games actively solicting feedback from the users for improvements to the game--and then releasing them in a matter of _weeks_. The latest release [5/29/06] is the 1.2 beta (soon to go gold) and the list of feature improvements/enhancements is truly impressive. Combine that with the Stardock copy protection policy (there is none, but you need a registered copy to get the updates), and I think that Stardock is going to put a lot of pressure on other game companies.
Finally, Stardock continues to expand the moddability of Galciv2, including the ability to modify the user interface and other key aspects. Stardock envisions a time when players can, in effect, create their own 4x game with the 'GalCiv' core engines.
What are the weaknesses (at least, pre-1.2)? The software itself has an annoying habit of getting ahead of you--for example, while you're in the middle of doing something (such as selecting a ship to build), the game may suddenly pop up a new alert box to let you know that another ship arrived at its own destination.
Also, the various AIs just don't come across as having much personality; dealing with them becomes pretty rote and automatic after a while. (The gold standard in this remains the original Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri--the factions and their leaders felt more like real characters than any other 4X game I've played.) However, as others have noted, this doesn't mean that the AIs are dumb; they're not. They're smart, tough, and adaptive.
Next, the worlds and systems themselves are a bit boring. The star map is 2-D, the systems are largely plain vanilla, and the inhabitable worlds all tend to look the same after a while. Planetary geography (beyond the number of developable tiles) doesn't really matter.
The game also has occasional stability problems, which I've handled simply by upping the autosave feature to every 4 games.
I do have one major UI complaint, which I think the original GalCiv actually did better: when browsing through world information (full screen view), there appears to be no easy way to see where that world is located on the map--nothing equivalent to the old "Tactical" view in GalCiv. I find this a major annoyance. On a related note, the minimap view is much harder to read, scale, and scroll than the original GalCiv minimap. These are two areas where GalCiv II went backwards from GalCiv.
Finally, note that this is a turn-based 4X game. This means a lot of resource management, particularly if (like me) you play with very large maps (I've had games with nearly 200 planets under my control). This also means that you can reach a point in a game where it's clear that you're going to win (via, say, technology or influence), but you have to play several hours more to actually gain the victory.
My sons and sons-in-law, all in their mid- to late 20s, all play computer games, but they go for first-person shooter (FPS) and/or real-time strategy (RTS) games; they look at the 4X games I play and shake their heads.
All those issues aside, I have found GalCiv II to be addictive nearly on the same level as Civ IV. I find myself trying out different settings, different approaches, and different ship designs and combinations. And the innovative updating system (via Stardock/TotalGaming.net) means that many aspects of the game will shift and improve over time. I expect to be playing GalCiv II for many years to come.
Your mileage may vary. ..bruce..
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NOTE: for players of the original GalCiv, here are some key differences that will affect your gameplay and strategy:
-- You can play any race, not just human.
-- Free-standing (non-resource-based) starbases are now specialized into military, economic, or influence, though all starbases (resource and non-resource) can have both attack and defense modules.
-- Resource-based starbases have no economic, influence, or military-assistance capabilities.
-- The influence starbases are not nearly as powerful as the influence attributes of starbases were in the original GalCiv, making a cultural conquest much harder and slower to accomplish.
-- Planets are uninhabitable (class 0) or inhabitable (class 4 or greater); you don't have marginal worlds (e.g., classes 12-14) that you can terraform up into habitability as you did in the original GalCiv.
-- You can't build every improvement on a given planet; instead, a planet has a number of tiles proportional to its class level, and that limits how many buildings and projects you can create on that world, though you can upgrade, replace, or decommision existing developments.
-- You do have the ability to terraform some additional tiles on certain worlds as you gain the technology to do so.
-- Specific tiles on a planet may have bonuses in manufacturing, research, food production, influence, entertainment, and so on. These bonuses can be 100% (all), 300% (food, research and manufacturing only), or 700% (manufacturing only, as far as I can tell). Note that these can be _very_ powerful; building a manufacturing unit on a 700% bonus tile is the same as having 8 manufacturing units on that planet.
-- Different races can colonize different inhabitable worlds in the same star system. Again, this has a _big_ impact on attempting a cultural victory.
-- As noted above, you can design and customize your own ships, and...
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