Galactic Civilizations II Review [PC]

[net7runner]

Gamespot appears to have fallen head-over-heels in love (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/galacticcivilizations2/review.html?sid=6145309) with Stardock's sequel to their strategy game of galactic conquest:

Great games are always more than the sum of their feature sets, and Galactic Civilizations II is a great game. Galactic Civilizations II does indeed boast a very impressive list of cool features, but it also has that extra "something" that separates pretty good games from Hall of Fame material. From installation to end game, it is clear that this is not only one of the best turn-based strategy games to grace a PC, but one in which the player is treated like royalty.The game earned a score of 9.0 and an Editor's Choice award.

[Vandenh]

I got it yesterday.. haven't played it yet but just checked out the ship designer. That thing alone is a work of art.

[baz]

It's a well satisfying game, I find it quite a lot more fun than the first one.

[IIArchonII]

I went to Ebgames but they didn't have it, i'll have to look around again after break

[BlindSwordsman]

This game rocks - no question. Taking a lot of my free time right now.

[earthworm48]

It is available via digital distribution too.

[swiftdraw]

Supposedly I recieve the game today around noon 'o clock, can't wait! I want something tangble in my hands, so I kinda skipped the download and decided to wait for it. Silly old fashion me.

[Ajguy]

I hope they release a demo soon. 4x TBS games are hit or miss with me, but the ship builder sounds like an interesting feature.

[Paendragon]

I have been playing for a few days now(yay digital distribution), and I am having a blast so far. On the other hand, the computer is a brutal opponent and has kicked my butt in ways I didn't know it could be kicked, and that was just on the normal setting. Either way, still good fun.

[sinclair122]

This game is amazing; I lose hours at a time playing this game. You should get it via download (they will ship a hardcopy of the game as well, you have to pay S&H). The shipe builder is very cool. The last time I spent hours into a game at a time was Guild Wars, and more recently Heroes of Might and Magic 3. I'm still playing on beginner mode, because normal kicks my ass as well. I've read over on the galciv2 forums and there are people saying how the AI on "intelligent" is too easy....sigh

[Achilles]

I’ve put about 15 hours into it at this point and I must say, it’s no MOO2.
The fact that nobody has just been able to rip off and improve MOO2 yet is perplexing. The game wasn’t that complicated.

GalCiv2’s got many problems, but the ones that bother me most is that the game cheats on Normal. Foreign ships are always drifting through your territory, so when a race randomly declares war on you it’s hard to tell just what’s attacking you. There’s no control over space combat at all. The UI is too damn intrusive. Basic ship and invasion techs are too difficult to research. And there’s no solid way to defend your planets without gimping their production (no ability to put space stations in orbit).

On the positive side they took out some of the tedious stuff by having your planets auto-build upgrades, I like their logistics system which limits the number of ships you can have in a fleet, on Beginner their diplomacy is pretty good but has a lot of bugs, I liked how they did the rock-paper scissors thing with the weapon techs. The good/evil choices were cute, but had hardly any penalty or advantage, +5bc isn’t enough to get me to do anything really, good or evil, so I found myself picking neutral a lot.

I’d give it a 7.8 right now, and I enjoyed the original Gal Civ more. But I'm going to try it on a larger galaxy to see if the experience is improved.

[lockwoodx]

It was worth every penny. I just wish it didn't crash as often as it does.

[Librum]

I had no luck finding it for sale in any local retail outlet, so I just sprung for the digital download and have been enjoying it. Could use a little ironing out here and there, but it's the best game of its kind to come out since MOO2.

[Ronberk]

It is not that great and I regret plonking down cash for it. Maybe my Civ4 binge last year burnt out all appreciation of 4x games for me ...

[Steve_Erhardt]

The only thing that grinds me about MOO2 is the ship combat... you can either automate it and have the outcome in seconds, or you can micromanage it to the point where you're bored and just want the damn fight over with. But you can't switch gears and have to do every battle the same way. You can't just jump in and do the "fun" battles yourself unless you are willing to run EVERY battle yourself, or vice-versa. That was/is just a big pain the ass. Why NOT let me command the fleet when I want, and then let the PC take of the battles I'm not interested in. IIRC, MOO worked that way and I loved it. Ah well... aside from that, MOO2 still rocks.

[Mason]

Maybe I'm just horrible at it, but in the campaign I kick ass against standard opponents, but then I'll get a Dread Lord mission and they'll be sending out 60+ attack ships within a dozen rounds or so. I've played smart with military stations and all, but it's just so many years of research before you can actually deal with that stuff. So I end up taking the alternate mission and being disappointed with its ease. What gives?

The game is fun as hell, but still has major problems, both technical and gameplay. Some of the UI stuff, like no diagonal edge scrolling, is really painful. It's not like they never noticed that their game didn't have diagonal scrolling (or multiplayer, or a couple fewer UI quirks), but rather it seems like they'd rather come up with elaborate arguments in favor of excluding these common-sense features than just implement them.

[Mephistopheles]

I had the game preloaded at release and jumped straight in. There are plenty of things I like about it, a fair number of things I dislike, but overall when I finish a game it feels like I've played through a five series arc of a sci-fi show and had a good time doing it.

It's got its fair share of problems but Stardock seem dedicated to providing regular updates to the game to iron out the kinks and bring new features and content to the game.

One other thing that endears me to the game, although it doesn't have to do with the game directly, is Stardock's approach to how they treat the people who pay money for their work. I don't have to jump through copy protection hoops, I don't have stealth software installed on my computer when I install the game, and it doesn't tell me to uninstall certain software before it will deem my computer fit to run on. It's almost like they treat you like a...a...I don't know, a customer. Imagine that.

Disclaimer: I am not a shill. I'm just a guy who likes 4X games that are well supported and appreciates not being treated like a pirate after I purchase the software. Stardock want to deliver all that so I'll praise them for it.