First Impressions

[Thormodr]

I fired up the demo. Then I fired the demo.

Not impressed at all. It's as I suspected. It's essentially Civilization 5 with a pasted on sci-fi theme.

Same combat animation bugs carried over from Civilization 5 as someone else mentioned. 1UPT still stinks. UI and AI are pretty poor, to put it kindly. Dull and tedious gameplay.

To be fair, there are a few little things that are kind of cool. The orbital layer thing is neat. The quests are alright. The Aliens are more interesting than Civilization 5's weak, emasculated barbarians, I suppose.

Overall, it's not good at all. Pity.

 

[LDiCesare]

I tried the demo.

Positive:
+ Setting could be fun.
+ Aliens more interesting than civ barbarians
+ Tech web looks nice

Negative:
- Queuing orders in city, please...
- Can't see miasma on the map well enough when zoomed out. I have to read the tooltip for every hex...
- You can order units to heal in miasma where they take as much damage as they heal, so they just remain there doing nothing, with no warning... Don't propose the heal icon in this case?
- Game shouldn't propose Settle icon when you can't settle in a location
- Assigning citizens in the city screen is a pain because the yields are hidden by the huge choice icon
- No Strategic View! And the default view is so blurred that everything looks the same from afar so you can't really zoom out.
- civopedia is bad. No explanation that explorers should go back to refill their modules for instance, or it's hidden too far to be useful.
- same issue for affinities: There should be a clear explanation, immediately like, when you have to make your first choice, or something, that explains the backstory behind each. The names are weird, they don't tell anything, so I basically don't understand the meaning of these.
- related to above: the 'story' is poor. It's hard to understand why a neighboring civ says I'm interested in aliens when all I do is killing them. Do they mean I like the aliens? OR I like to dissect them? Or what? I don't understand what the ai tells me...

Overall: No buy.

 

[Tinker]

Not very good, especially for fifty euros. It feels like a big mod, something ~20ish euros, not a full priced game.

The tech web is cool, as are the unit upgrades, and it has lots of potential, but there's so much that feels like a significant step back or a convolution of BNW mechanics that it doesn't quite work. I'm disappointed in myself that I was roped into buying another Civ game at launch, even though the previous ones got good only after expansion packs. Should've known better.

 

[Lord Tirian]

All in all? Fairly good. I like it, it feels like a fun variant of Civ and I think I'm going to have lots of fun with it. Technically and balance-wise, it feels like is more polished than Civ5 (apart from the UI) but less than Civ4 on launch.

There are niggles (mostly UI related), but I hope they will go away eventually with patches.

Strangely enough, though, the game feels on some level like its own biggest enemy: after digging into the pedia, there's a lot of interesting info buried there, there really is. There's a lot of material for a self-crafted narrative a la XCOM, but it's... buried. The fairly clean presentation feels too clinical and belies its own depth, making it feel more superficial than it is.

For example, I really wish they had different voice actors for the tech quotes and made them a little bit longer, more extensive, that alone would've given the leaders a lot more flavour (and the write-ups show there is that flavour, but don't bury it!).

On the positive side: It's addictive. And I'm not sure why, but 1UPT feels less awkward this time round. Pathing seems to be a bit better, bit snapper, not sure.

 

[Mudrac]

My biggest problem with the game is its art style and interface. The mini-map is really bad. The art style is bad. And interface can feel a little bit clunky. But it will hopefully get fixed in the future. Overall a pretty good game, but not as fantastic as Civ 5. Some of the mechanics of the game are already in-game so the game has some meat it doesn't feel bare bone. But it lacks some other things for some reason, such as Demographics and Strategic view. On the other hand the Espionage system is what it should have been the whole time in Civ 5 and is generally the only improvement over Civ 5. But, games like this just like Paradox's and other strategies get better over time, through patches ans expansions. But, even in this state the game is still relatively fun and enjoyable.

 

[Tinker]

Strangely enough, though, the game feels on some level like its own biggest enemy: after digging into the pedia, there's a lot of interesting info buried there, there really is. There's a lot of material for a self-crafted narrative a la XCOM, but it's... buried. The fairly clean presentation feels too clinical and belies its own depth, making it feel more superficial than it is.

This is absolutely a problem. There's interesting lore and philosophical quandaries that exist here, and they're fun in the Civilopedia - but they don't ever show up as such in game at all, making that part of the game feel pretty inert.

 

[Deon]

I tried the demo.
- No Strategic View! And the default view is so blurred that everything looks the same from afar so you can't really zoom out.

Overall: No buy.

I agree. The game can become fun after a lot of work, but right now it's much more difficult to enjoy. I say it not to blame Firaxis but to warn people who like older Civ games like me.

1) I hoped they would rework and improve strategic view. Instead it got cut out. With really difficult to distinguish on first sight terrain features that's a bad idea.
2) The overall interface is very bad. You need to spend additional time just to find out what did your city build. You cannot see end-game screen. You don't see a log of actions which will tell you what happened during the turn.

All in all, let them fix it. I think they released it too early, in the end it may be a good game.

Just please for the love of god make your AI understand your own tech tree!

 

[Memoryjar]

A little bit disappointing, maybe because it's easier than Civ V.

Good thing :
- Health make more sense than happiness. Despite I had 150 turns unhealthy initial penalty (-10 culture and production) allow to progress.

- City placement are less production dependent. You can settle on a good spot with few or no hammer and rise a good city. On the other side, you can settle on a no food place and have too a good city.

- Specialist slots. It seems to have a good mechanic on this improvements. I didn't really explore how tall generate science but I think there's something to do.

- Decision quests : help to custom your empire.

- Virtues : some ways to explore.

Less good things :
- UI : is someone have bc1's mail to send it to Firaxis. What the hell they thought to not make some shortcuts to commercial hub? Also, there still is on pop-up when a city grow after 5 pop.

- Emancipation victory is boring as hell. You'll need to send you units to Earth, one by one, one unit per turn. You'll need to send 1 000 points of unit, I think based on power (not sure because I send a 52 power unit and it increases 100 points, not every time). After gate is up, it's something like 20 turns of move unit then send to earth then click next turn, repeat.

- Manage trade route are also boring. Specially when you are involve in Emancipation victory. Where can I see how many trade routes a city can run ? I had some trade routes plundered but impossible to see its home city. And it's hard to find previous trade routes, no focus, no underline or bold characters.

- 6 tall cities (pop 20+) on standard map and you'll probably win around T250 peaceful, whatever you choose as victory conditions.

- There's no pop-up when you accidentally go in a nest and you have blue aliens. 50 turns wasted (average time to have friendly aliens)

- Wonders. Is it really a wonder something which give me less energy or food than a trade route ?

- Tech web : tiny actually.

Now the game are in my kids' hands, another first impressions later.

 

[Lord Tirian]

This is absolutely a problem. There's interesting lore and philosophical quandaries that exist here, and they're fun in the Civilopedia - but they don't ever show up as such in game at all, making that part of the game feel pretty inert.

Another thing I just realised is: There are no tech pop-ups. Up to Civ 5, you got a pop-up whenever you discovered a technology. In Civ 5, it became a notification.

The pop-ups presented a lot of info. Making it a notification in Civ5 worked, because we all know what Pottery is. What a Printing Press is. And so forth.

Here, that streamlined approach completely destroys your immersion and reduces the techs to random words you click in the tech tree.

As much as I usually like less cluttered, more usable UIs, here I wish it was a bit... clunkier so you can't just "click through" the whole thing.

 

[Natura]

This is absolutely a problem. There's interesting lore and philosophical quandaries that exist here, and they're fun in the Civilopedia - but they don't ever show up as such in game at all, making that part of the game feel pretty inert.

The one bit of good news with this is that it should be straightforward enough to mod in. It's a real shame though that it's so well hidden.

Because the game really lacks character. Leaders feel like bland, unimaginative nobodies, and yet the pre-release fact sheets on them were full of juicy lore and information. Why couldn't there be pre-set pop-up interlude screens like in SMAC, with the story of your colony from your leader's perspective, with changes relating to which affinity and victory condition you were following. That's just text; few man hours to produce, but it would contribute so much to making you feel as if you were interacting with a story. Civ V and for that matter, other Civs before it didn't really need to do that because you were living the story of history, but for future games like BE the lack of this narrative element really hurts the game.

Case in point? Endless Space doesn't do much more to introduce you to your faction than a short video when you start a game with them. And you know what? You feel way more connected to them, their motives, their history and their playstyle than any of the BE leaders.

 

[Androrc the Orc]

50 euros. Seriously? Seriously?!

 

[Deon]

50 euros. Seriously? Seriously?!

Yes, they spent a lot of money to market this and hire all the 3d artists and conecept makers. Now they need these money to keep making DLCs to make the game more playable and fun. It's a problem of many big corporations: they consume and lose to bureuraucracy more than they produce (in net worth).

 

[Zorro 695]

Well I hope the Devs are taking note of what we, the Players, the End-users, are saying!

On the other hand, of course it's weird, alien, and puzzling! You've just been transported 500 years into the future and need to make sense of a totally alien environment using technologies that make your head swim!

I recall the utter frustration of switching from Civ II to Alpha Centauri/Alien Crossfire. You couldn't move for all the Xenofungus and you were constantly attacked by the local indigenous lifeforms. Terraformers (Workers) seemed to take eons to do anything!

But once you got the hang of it, it became just as addictive as any other Civ game (fans of SMAC/SMAX will know what I mean!)

Devs (and Modders) write their own games. Games that seem good to them. I know. I Mod too. But what I like isn't necessarily what everyone else likes. And you can't please everyone.

 

[Dale]

- Queuing orders in city, please...

You can. There's a button in the city screen to add to queue.

 

[Memoryjar]

I have tech pop-ups in my games. And infos when I mouse over buildings / wonders / improvements.

 

[JosEPh_II]

The one bit of good news with this is that it should be straightforward enough to mod in. It's a real shame though that it's so well hidden.

Because the game really lacks character. Leaders feel like bland, unimaginative nobodies, and yet the pre-release fact sheets on them were full of juicy lore and information. Why couldn't there be pre-set pop-up interlude screens like in SMAC, with the story of your colony from your leader's perspective, with changes relating to which affinity and victory condition you were following. That's just text; few man hours to produce, but it would contribute so much to making you feel as if you were interacting with a story. Civ V and for that matter, other Civs before it didn't really need to do that because you were living the story of history, but for future games like BE the lack of this narrative element really hurts the game.

Case in point? Endless Space doesn't do much more to introduce you to your faction than a short video when you start a game with them. And you know what? You feel way more connected to them, their motives, their history and their playstyle than any of the BE leaders.

I had the same impression with my 1st game last night.

JosEPh

 

[Greasy Dave]

I've only had time to play 2 different starts up to 100 turns. I'm enjoying what I've experienced of the game play.

But I'm hating the UI and that's really affecting my experience. Why can't I filter search for Wonders or military units in the tech tree?
Why didn't they use levels of colour saturation or tone to give a little more structure tot eh graphics of the tech tree?
The tech tree is 5 percent too big to fit onto my two monitors - but I can't zoom out???! All I need to do is shrink it a tiny bit -but I can't???! Incredible.
When I want to move around the tech tree, instead of moving the mouse to the edge of the screen and it scrolling automatically, I have to click and drag?
The city screen - the graphics are all over the place. The buily building list is HUGE...the scale of everything else is small and fiddly
Gaah.
I think I actually like the game and might be able to have fun with it - but these graphic awfulness just makes me want to yell at the monitor

 

[HannibalBarca]

Good:
-Art direction and "lore" are interesting
-Combat animations (for those that left them on) look cool, when they aren't bugging out
-Tech web is interesting and will probably present tons of meaningful, interesting choices and strategies once the game matures
-Quests were a good idea and the framework of an interesting mechanic is there
-Affinity system is nice
-Covert Ops good in theory
-I like virtues, though I'm not sure how useful most of them are

Mixed:
-Aliens, which you can either completely ignore, or will have to suffer through forever depending on your spawn. If you spawn in a cramped or inland area, alien swarms can be nightmares. Some games I've been able to ignore them entirely.

Bad:
-Diplomacy quite literally copy-pasted from Civ V, annoying "You and X are friends, let's be friends too" messages and all, but without the distinctiveness of the Civ V leader screens.
-Obligatory complaint about trade routes being tedious, overpowered, etc. Creates a balance issue because most of the early and mid-game buildings are underpowered compared to trade routes
-Related point, but we're back to Civ V vanilla in terms of the insane imbalance between gold and production. Hammers are useful only for wonders; just spam gold for everything else.
-Speaking of which, most wonders do not feel distinctive or powerful enough
-Lots of vital information is either hidden or non-existent. I can't figure out how many of my, for example, floatstone resources are going to what. The city menu is a joke that seems to have been designed with the philosophy of putting as much information as possible out of the player's sight. Miasma is hard to see.
-Quest system is neat, but it will no doubt get tedious seeing the same ones every game. Some more variety and more context-sensitive quests will do the game a world of good. Also some of them are bugged right now. The building quests are almost always either pointless or heavily imbalanced in favor of one, clearly superior choice.
-I either do not understand convert ops, or do not understand how on earth you'll ever string together enough successful ops to ever get enough intrigue for a high-level mission, given the time and failure rate. No reason to do anything but set all your spies to steal beakers anyway.
-Affinity system could use some more branches and choice involved.
-The orbital layer was a complete afterthought for me and I was able to finish the game easily without ever thinking about it, for the most part.

 

[rkade8583]

ANGRY! I'm angry! They lemon'd it. They might be able to salvage it like they did with Civ 5 but isn't it just sickening that it has to come to that? It's got such good ideas! That's the worst part of this. I want to play BE but I physically can't because they've barred me with their "artistic direction" (see link)

 

[TheHanzou]

Im pretty disappointed to be honest.

The voice acting and writing is really bad compared to Alpha Centauri, or even Civ5. It feels so cheap.

To me 90% of the buildings felt useless, and 95% of the wonders. The only thing that matters are traderoutes and that sucks. I cannot see any kind of balance at all in this game so far.

the factions have no profile, the whole time i played it felt like nothing happened. Interaction and diplomacy feels like completely disconnected and useless. The Aliens have no mystery or cool thing about them at all.

After 1 day i already want to play Civ5 again, cant get myself to care for this game at all.

Everything in the game feels unfinished and unbalanced. Miasma is hardly even visible on the map, i cant even see what a wonders does when i go in the tech tree because 1.) the effects are hardly any better than normal buildings and 2.) there is no indicator what even IS a wonder, its barely distinquishable.