Galactic Civilizations 3. How is it ?

[GoodSarmatian]

It's one of those games that interest me, but I'm not really hyped. Most reviews are solid, but there's a worrisome 1,5 gap between metascore and userscore on metacritic. Is it a good 4X game, or is it something I should forget aout until the first expansion ?

 

[Maniacal]

I honestly have not heard anything about it since it released, although I've also not watched any streams of it either.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

Not gonna lie, I have it but haven't played it yet because it requires a 64 bit operating system and I've been too lazy to rebuild my PC.

 

[BvBPL]

I have it.

Have you played GC II? Did you like it? If so then you will like this.

I got it when it was released. Initially I had a lot of stability issues but those have been cleared up.

 

[thomas.berubeg]

To me, it's just a prettier version of 2. If you liked 2, this is essentially the same game.

 

[Rubin]

I guess I'm a late arrival, casual GalCiv player. If you are in no hurry to get your hands on the game, I suggest you wait a few months (or more). I don't quite know why I bought it this early, but I actually don't regret it.

My impression so far (85 hours played) suggest that we'll get more options, more features, and a serious balance overhaul in the future. I skimmed the negative reviews at Metacritic and on Steam, and they seem fair and surprisingly spot on.

There's some great attention to detail that I honestly didn't expect--e.g. you get a generic flavor text when designing custom factions instead of just blanks, and the quickstart button remembers ALL of your custom options.

Yeah, a prettier and smoother version of GalCiv2 in late beta

 

[GoodSarmatian]

I have GC 2 will all expansions. Is there any good reason to get 3 instead of just playing the ultimate edition of 2 ?
Is the new ideology sytem a worthy addition (and balanced) ?

 

[BvBPL]

Yeah, the new ideology thing is great as are the location bonuses for the buildings.

 

[ddd123]

How is it... well its not ready

Ok its not much changed from gal civ 2, but this isnt that important to me, the few changes are nice, and the overall behaviour too...

The problem is that its totally unbalanced, with pretty much a lot of obligatory choices, that in a strategy game is absurd, at least to me.

Also AI is very bad, but ok, not much you can do about that, but its more like the game pace is too much scripted, i have played several game and they are all the same, there is not much room for cahnge, if you want to do the right thing.

 

[ddd123]

I have GC 2 will all expansions. Is there any good reason to get 3 instead of just playing the ultimate edition of 2 ?
Is the new ideology sytem a worthy addition (and balanced) ?

Yes, in theory, in practice its totally unbalanced.

But not at a "pro" level, it just makes pretty much no sense, there are super good early bonus that are in the end tree and you can take them only when the game is over lol, there are super late ones you are forced to get early to get those good overall etc etc.

And most of all the feeling is really bad, you dont get so many of them AND you are forced to get super crap ones, it feels awful "ehy i have to take this useless ideolgy so maybe in another 500 turns i can take the other good one, YAY!".

TBH I can balance them in like 15 minutes i think, the job they did is really bad, even if the base idea was good.

 

[BvBPL]

I've played a lot of this game since it came out. I enjoy it a great deal.

It is very similar to GC 2. The major changes were the graphical upgrade (it is now very pretty) and the morality system. In addition, the change in making positional bonuses for buildings is there.

However, it is flawed.

The UI is awkward. Generally it is okay, but occasional tasks (like moving a building item to the top of the queue) can be annoying to perform. The ship designer is great, but it is annoying to have to find and edit my own custom ships every time there's an upgrade to the latest laser blaster.

There are a few missing pieces, like blank spots in the tech trees. I have only noticed this on faction-specific tech trees and only on some branches so it is quite possible that you (as I did) will play many games before you notice these dead spaces.

Overall this is a very enjoyable game that requires more polish. Stardock is generally very good about continuing to support and improve its games so I hope these problems will improve.

Regarding stability, I had a lot of stability problems in the first few days of having the game. However, recent usage has had no stability problems for me. I think the few patches they've already rolled out have improved this significantly.

All in all, if you are desperately itching for a new space 4X then this will do the job just fine. You will have a lot of fun. However, if you don't need one right now then I would wait until Stardock polishes the game up a bit.