|
Friday 8 February, 2008
GAMEPLAY
Continuing to play Gal Civ 2 I'm gaining an appreciation for some of the options it offers the player above and beyond the typical 4x strategy game. For one I particularly like the ability to coerce other colonies to join your race with out using direct force.
Visually the game is quite pleasant to look at, graphics aren't spectacular by any means but get the job done and add to the over all vibe of the game.
I still enjoy the light hearted humor that comes through in various parts of the game (for example when researching a new type of engine, you are told that space is 'really really really really big').
Economic side of the game also interesting as trade with other races can make up a significant portion of your races income, and when you go to war, you lose that income, making the decision to go to war or not considerably more complicated.
My favorite part of the game was designing my space fleet. In addition to visually customizing your ships, you choose their weapon load outs as well. This isn't merely eye candy as how you load out your ship affects how well it fights others.
On a negative side, the time commitment for this game, even after you learn the basics, is quite considerable. This is not a game that is well suited to playing 15 minutes here and there as there is simply too much going on at any given point during the game. This can be alleviated to a limited degree by choosing easier difficulties and smaller maps, but ultimately is still an issue.
I also was initially excited by the diplomacy model as it seemed to offer a lot more options than the typical diplomatic system found in 4x games like civilization and master of orion. But after a while it seemed really superficial and really didn't have too much an influence besides trading technology and declaring wars, much like any other game in the genre.
DESIGN
First some points that I feel give the game a leg up over the typical strategy game of this genre:
Nice variety of options in how you go about taking over the galaxy, do you go for brute force conquering? Or for a more subtle political or cultural victory by coercing other races into joining your dominion.
Full customization of ships is fun and integral to game play, and gives the player more of a sense that this really is “their” race that they are playing.
Economics add extra flavor and dimension to war declaring. Used to just be a choice of “Can I beat their fleets” this adds the worry of “Can I afford it long term?”
And now some Negatives:
Steep learning curve and large time commitment. Not possible to really have a quick game, and is frustrating to learn initially due to a lack of a good tutorial in game. Lots of trial and error, and generally getting the crap kicked out of me in early games.
Buggy, I had a few random crashes here and there.
Diplomatic system could use work, all those choices on the screen really don't amount to much in the long term.
Interface is slightly clunky on big maps, hard to see whats going when zoomed out, and constantly panning around the map when zoomed in.
|
