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There's still wonder out there

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: August 09, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I've been playing computer strategy games for a long time, and by now my attitude could be better. I wanted something new, but had drifted away from playing games and nothing seemed to impress anymore. I longed for the days of X Com: UFO Defense and the like, but nothing out there seemed to measure up, including the present day supposed greats. Then Galactic Civilizations II came along and made me stay up till dawn twice in a week and till 3 a.m. twice too. When I begin saying, "This has got to stop!", I know I've found something special.

GalCiv2 is loaded with personality and, unlike some of the best-regarded competition, does not substitute complexity for depth. The decisions you make feel like they are really impacting your results rather than just wasting your time on not just endless but, worse, ultimately nearly pointless micromanagement. This turns continuously learning ever more about the game so you can play it just that little bit better into something fun rather than a burden. That's quite a design accomplishment, and one of the things that gives this game a very long potential life span.

Players expand their empires and conquer the universe in about as many ways as they can dream up. The game is very customizable. You can play on random maps from tiny to immense, creating games that last a few hours to weeks or months, against almost no opponents or quite a few. You can even make up custom races of your own, and, within limitations, balance their strengths and weaknesses yourself. You can go for victories via war, diplomacy, alliance, influence, research superiority, and more. You can be a bully or a peacenik or a shrewd financier. You can fight less or more, with premade ship styles or ones you design yourself. But all the while, an AI widely recognized in the gaming world as of superior quality is making plans of its own for you, and you had better be ready. If you're not, well ... you can dial its capabilities up or down next time! Or go find a saved game and see if you can figure out or avoid your mistakes.

There are campaigns, but the game really opens up in "sandbox" mode, the design and playing of your own size, pace, and style of game. The game is a wonderful puzzle to figure out. And once you think you have, you can do it again by playing a different alien race and learning from the ground up.

This is all the more mesmerizing with the next expansion, Twilight of the Arnor, which requires this package to run. TOA makes the research trees of each alien race markedly different, which lends the races a distinctness that improves replay value even more.

If you have any love for single-player strategy games, GalCiv2 is not a gamble. It's definitely the prize among its peers, and the best game I've played in many years.

Galactic Civilizations II Gold

Good, but not Great

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: July 23, 2008
Author: Amazon User

The Good: Hours of addictive empire building
The Bad: Weak AI and no multiplayer makes for little challenge beyond building the perfect empire

Let me start by giving you some context - I'm a Noble level player on Civ 4. I've been playing Civ-style games since the old Empire game on Macs and the original Civilization on PC, and I won't make any claim to have ever reached the upper difficulty levels. I get plenty of enjoyment out of the bottom half of the difficulty tree.

So when I start my review by passing along that I have yet to find a level of AI in this game that is a significant challenge, that should tell you something.

I purchased GC2 with all the expansions, including the recently released Twilight of the Arnor expansion. Overall, I have spent many hours playing the game, and thoroughly enjoyed building up empires and conquering the galaxy. It's good, classic, Civ-style fun.

That said, it has all the weaknesses of classic civ. An "infinite-city-sprawl" strategy still wins every time - grab more planets than the other civs and it's hard to lose. The AI doesn't seem to "think smarter" at higher levels, it just gets to cheat; e.g., you just get more penalties and they get more bonuses. The problem is, the AI is so poor that the cheats aren't really sufficient to overcome its weaknesses.

You can tell the designers were concerned about the lack of challenge from the AI because they have added "mega events," which tend to be game-breaking, random events. Having experienced most of them, I turned them off. The whole point the mega events appears to be to give you the human player something else to worry about besides the AI - whether it be ridiculously numerous fleets of super-teched pirates, the return of the super-advanced precursor race, or economy-crippling viruses... (In one case, one of the AI discovered a lost pre-cursor warship that was so advanced that the combined fleets of every race in the game probably could not have destroyed it. Completely at a loss as to what I could do, I offered the AI all of my techs in trade for his ship. Amazingly, he gave it to me. Needless to say, my invincible armada quickly wrapped up the game.) The problem with these events is that the AI is even *less* capable of dealing with them than you are. So the human player must spend endless turns returning things to the status quo, just so he or she can get back to conquering the now-even-more-pathetic AI civs.

These flaws are very disappointing, especially considering the advances that have been made in the genre in the last 17 years.

That said, there are things about the game to like.

If you like customization, it's here in spades. Not only can you customize the design and look of your ships, but you can name *everything* in the game; ships, planets, stars, starbases, etc. You can design your own civilization, including looks, names, and abilities.

The combat system is straightforward, with a good rock-paper-scissors feel. And there are plenty of ways to win that don't require planet-to-planet conquest.

There are plenty of avenues for empire building. Whether it's getting your planets up and running, crafting that perfect fleet, or cobbling together a network of starbases to enhance your economy or spread your cultural influence, you'll find lots to keep you wanting to take one more turn.

In the end, I've returned to playing on the tiny map - its makes for a faster paced, more challenging game, as there are less planets for you to gobble up to get an "ICS" advantage over the AI.

If you're looking for a decent civ-style game to keep you busy while you wait for the next offering from the genre, I'd recommend this game. Just don't expect the depth and challenge you get from a game like Civilization 4.

Finally, Vista Users - I don't know what the other reviewer's issues were, but I'm running the game on Vista and it works beautifully.

Good strategy game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: May 23, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Strategy game is improvement over original, but graphics are harder to use and less clear than original.

Good, but not great

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: May 02, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Ok, this is a decent game. I love strategy and even turn-based stuff. I play it all the time. That said, I cringe to say this too: this game can become quite boring. Don't get me wrong: it's not boring all the time, but it lacks a certain spark. the tech tree is quite bland, and it lacks any useful info about WHAT the tech does. It is also a little TOO straightforward...for instance you research Torpedos I, then Torpedos II, and so on...with that being the only listed improvement.

All in all, its a fair game, but I am going back to some older turn based space strategies.

Galactice civ

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: April 28, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Its a really fun game but would be better with multilayer. Id get the original game but i would not get the expansion like dark avatar and gold edition just not worth it with out online play.

Good, not as good as Master of Orion II, but mods can make it even better

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: April 20, 2008
Author: Amazon User

My own love of the game Master of Orion II may have prejudiced my review here but I stand by it. MOO II when it was released was considered the best 4X sci fi game ever made, & retained that title for several years, despite that several other games attempted to take it. For years I haven't seen a better game, & was disappointed with the attempts to top MOO II.
So I finally see ads that GCII is the only real 4x sci fi game that can take the "spiritual" sequel from MOO II. (MOO III got harsh reviews. I loved that game at first, even wrote a rave review of it, but several serious flaws in the game became apparent only after several days of playing it).
Is it good? Yes? Does it have the MOO feel? Yes, but its still not as good as MOO II.
However with the available mods on the internet, especially the Star Trek mod, this game is better than MOO II--again only with the mods.
Since almost everyone here has written a rave review, I'm going to focus on the things I didn't like about it (& remember I enjoyed the game overall)
-combat system lacks some of the dynamics of MOO-no Trek like transporters-your troops can't beam onto enemy vessels & take them over.
-No capturing of enemy vessels possible
-no retro-engineering of captured technology is possible
-the diplomatic relations in the Dread Lords version is pretty flat. The Dark Avatar expansions has improvements over Dread Lords, making it better than MOO II but I expected more & better given that MOOII is years old!)
-several of the technologies don't have a cool factor: e.g. in MOOII, mass drivers had a bunch of cool things like armor piericng ability, rapid fire etc. In this game most of the weapons improvements only have a few points of extra damage, that's it. No other special features.
-a non-serious approach throughout the entire game: this can at times be funny, but nothing in the game seems serious. E.g. in MOO when you got a new tech, the scientists explains how the tech worked. I thought that was kinda cool. In this game the scientists makes some sarcastic comment like "lasers II are better than lasers I because I say so!"
-NO SPECIAL CHARACTERS!: MOOII allows you to assign special talented governors & officers in charge of ships & colonies. Wish this game had that. It would've been great to have been able to add in modded characters.

The game though is good overall, just not at good as MOOII. Here are some of the improvements over MOOII
-better graphics
-ability to MOD this game--allows you to make your own ship designs, & empires! MOO SHOULD'VE HAD THIS FEATURE!
-Thanks to the internet community, several have made excellent mods allowing one to play in several of the popular sci fi universes such as Trek or B5. The Trek mod in incredible & if I were rating this game based on the Trek mod I would've given this game 5 out of 5 stars.
-use of influence in being able to take over enemies instead of only being able to conquer them through might
-ability to win the game from technological understanding alone

Overall a good game & worth playing, just not as good as MOOII. With the available mods-this game really takes off.

Fun, but slow

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: April 11, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This game is pretty fun, but it is SLOW compared the games that I usually play. There are so many technologies to research that it's pretty difficult to figure out which technology enables you to do what, so that's a negative. I would also say that the game isn't that intuitive, either. There is little hope of starting the game up and figuring things out as you go along with clues that the game provides along the way. Plan on reading the overly wordy instructions. Having said that, who doesn't like space ships? The game has lots of prefabricated space ships and space ships that you can make yourself. Pretty fun stuff!

Galactic Civilizations II Gold

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: March 25, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Previously described by other reviewers as "Civ 4 in space."
Yeah - an extremely slow version of seriously micromanaged Civ 4.

The economics and planetary build-ups are also not terribly realistic.
I did play it, however, and continue to do so - but I liked Civ 4 much more.

I would not say that it was a waste of money - I just expected something different.

From MOO2 to GalCiv2

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: March 25, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Wow, this thing is really like MOO2. It's a worthy effort with some cool twists, but over all I feel like it lacks the real punch that could've pushed it over the top. I've played 3 games so far and feel that the race relations haven't really evolved since the MOO2 and would've had a profound impact to the game.

Overall I find it fun to play, just lacks the WOW! factor. Maybe a GalCiv3?

Galactic Civ 2

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: February 22, 2008
Author: Amazon User

It starts out slow and you dont really know what to do but after your get over the first few hours of exploration you really get into it. You can easily learn the basics of the game but once you start learning the detials like espionage and trade, the game really takes off. One of the best features of this game is the ship designing. You research parts for your ship then use them to create your own ship and use it in the game. This game is a must buy for those who like space and civ type games.

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