How satisfied are you with Civ5?

[ohioastronomy]

I just did a comparison of Amazon ratings of Civ 4 (GOTY) and Civ 5; it is revealing.

Civ 4:
5 star - 121
4 star - 62
3 star - 54
2 star - 43
1 star - 108

Civ 5:
5 star - 45
4 star - 32
3 star - 21
2 star - 47
1 star - 121

There is a cadre of people who always put in very negative reviews, of course. Most of the Civ 4 1 stars appear to be "doesn't work", just as most Civ 5 1 stars are "steam is the devil". But what stands out is how few people really like Civ 5 - and how many people really did like Civ 4. It isn't just noise on the forums.

And Beyond the Sword got an average of 4.5 stars with 93 reviews, which is a large sample.

 

[Thormodr]

Nearly 45% of voters here found it mediocre or worse. That's not a good sign but there is a good reason for that. Hopefully Firaxis and 2K Games gets the message.

 

[dexters]

A lot of how I feel will depend on how they handle patching this game.

 

[nebux]

i'm not really satisfied with this new game. for the next game i know what to do!

 

[evrett37]

I voted underwelmed. Its got a lot of rough edges and yet a lot of potential. But if we want to move forward we need to change more than the game. We need to be proactive not reactive and inorder to accomplish that we need to change the organization of this community and the communication system between devs and customers. If you want change, not more of the same, consider these proposed ideas.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=389148

 

[ackblom12]

I know this is going to be taken wrong, but you do have to keep in mind with those Star ratings that Civ IV has been out for several years, with several of those ratings being much more recent with all of the patching and expansions included.

The fact is both games had a rough as hell release and it will take some time to find out where the community stands on it. Sitting around throwing insults at each other about how obviously superior one's opinion is is just stupid. This is especially true when you're using data in a fairly manipulative manner.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

DX9 is 8 years old now...just read that again...8.years.old. Is your Windows a cracked copy or something? Don't you ever do Windows Updates?

On doing a bit more digging it looks like Civ4 requires DX9 - and since I'd been running Civ 4quite happily (even a couple of days before I installed Civ5), that suggests I did have DX9, but presumably in some form that Civ5 couldn't cope with, and which got fixed when I reinstalled DX9. But more seriously, why do you assume that anyone installing Civ5 must already have DX9 if it's not a cracked Windows? Not everyone is a dedicated gamer you know. For my part Civ4 is the ONLY other game I've had installed. If I hadn't installed Civ4, then maybe there would be no reason for me to have DX installed at all (unless there's a version that ships with Windows?)

But really that's all beside the point. Whatever the set up on my machine happened to be last week (I've now no way of checking that), it's apparent that Civ5 ships with the ability to crash to desktop immediately it runs, without displaying any message to indicate the reason. That shows incompetence by the developers. It is almost trivially easy on Windows to have a program check for errors during start up and display a dialog box if anything goes wrong so the user stands a chance of knowing what the problem is. The consequences of not doing that are - basically - an unplayable game. Yet the Civ5 team failed to take that simple step of ensuring all startup errors are caught.

 

[zonk]

On doing a bit more digging it looks like Civ4 requires DX9 - and since I'd been running Civ 4quite happily (even a couple of days before I installed Civ5), that suggests I did have DX9, but presumably in some form that Civ5 couldn't cope with, and which got fixed when I reinstalled DX9. But more seriously, why do you assume that anyone installing Civ5 must already have DX9 if it's not a cracked Windows? Not everyone is a dedicated gamer you know. For my part Civ4 is the ONLY other game I've had installed. If I hadn't installed Civ4, then maybe there would be no reason for me to have DX installed at all (unless there's a version that ships with Windows?)

But really that's all beside the point. Whatever the set up on my machine happened to be last week (I've now no way of checking that), it's apparent that Civ5 ships with the ability to crash to desktop immediately it runs, without displaying any message to indicate the reason. That shows incompetence by the developers. It is almost trivially easy on Windows to have a program check for errors during start up and display a dialog box if anything goes wrong so the user stands a chance of knowing what the problem is. The consequences of not doing that are - basically - an unplayable game. Yet the Civ5 team failed to take that simple step of ensuring all startup errors are caught.

Since DX is basically a Microsoft API, I'm fairly certain it ships directly with Windows, just like the rest of their crap (OK, that's not quite fair.... DirectX actually isn't a bad thing).

While I really hate to get into these silly fights since there are probably only 3-4 people in this whole world that care, I do want to say that the upthread ranter about "DX9 is so old, get with the times!" is wrong, I think....

DX9 was the "final" DirectX for XP -- I don't think 10/11 is compatible with XP.

 

[YoHo]

That is correct. XP does not support 10 or 11.

 

[lordqarlyn]

It's a diamond in the rough. I like many of the new changes, and the graphics are just beautiful.

 

[Ayt]

How can a Civ game be a diamond in the rough?

 

[chaunceymo]

Underwhelmed.

I actually like all the major changes (including 1 unit per tile and social policies), it's just the general lack of polish, all the stuff that got removed (esp. religion and spying), the terrible performance (3-4 mins wait time per turn with 4gb of RAM? Really?), the drawings in place of wonder movies, the random mystery diplomacy, the epic list of bugs and most of all the the weak cheating AI.

Was going to post something very similar. I think Civ V is a victory of design for the most part, but a colossal failure of implementation.

 

[delra]

They forgot to betatest it.

 

[HannibalBarca]

Completely disappointed. I was hoping for a great game that would be fun in both SP and MP but it just sent me scurrying back to Starcraft II. The fact that I can say that I think that Starcraft is a bit deeper and more strategic than Civ V is pretty damning, considering that Civ is and should be the more complex series over all.

 

[Mentalor]

...<snip>...

I had written another reply, but rather than add kindling by posting it, I've got better things to do (like enjoy playing the game).

 

[Mentalor]

...I do want to say that the upthread ranter about "DX9 is so old, get with the times!" is wrong...

And I would agree...but my point was that DX8 is so old...not DX9. DX9 is what I said should have been being used. (Which apparently it was, though was possibly corrupted).

 

[SidMeierGroupy]

I'm pretty disappointed. The UI is horrible, the game design choices are mostly bad, and the game is buggy as hell. I will never buy another Civ game or game released by Firaxis/2K until well after release.

I've also lost whatever trust I had in several game reviewers.

QFT. Firaxis/2k are suspect from now on. Gamespot's reviews are about as trustworthy as a creepy old man in an overcoat offering candy.

I wonder what Meier is thinking about this, since it completely savaged his original game idea, perspectives and talent for creating play addiction and wonder. Is he too busy as a businessman now to care about his intellectual property being turned into garbage?

 

[MajKira]

Im getting diappointed now since first campaign went so well with only 1 crash now on second campaign it gets hanging and save data seems get corrupted by it also

 

[LegioCorvus]

QFT. Firaxis/2k are suspect from now on. Gamespot's reviews are about as trustworthy as a creepy old man in an overcoat offering candy.

I wonder what Meier is thinking about this, since it completely savaged his original game idea, perspectives and talent for creating play addiction and wonder. Is he too busy as a businessman now to care about his intellectual property being turned into garbage?

Tom Chick touched on this, and I think it's a good observation:

http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?pager.offset=0&cId=3181540&p=

He called it "Chick's Parabola," where the game is amazing for the first 100 or so hours that you play it. It's the newness factor. Once you get several games under your belt, the newness factor goes away, and you start to notice all the little details. It's definitely what happened to me. Anyway, the likely reason that so many review sites reviewed the game so high are probably a combination of only 1-2 weeks of play while the game is still new & exciting, and also a little bit of the reviewers not really being hardcore Civ fans like most of us. (Honestly, I think casual Civ players are enjoying Civ5 just fine).

I mean, Gamespot's not perfect, but you can bet that 4.0 they just gave Final Fantasy XIV is going to cost them some love from Squeenix in the future.

 

[MadRat]

I mean, Gamespot's not perfect, but you can bet that 4.0 they just gave Final Fantasy XIV is going to cost them some love from Squeenix in the future.

To be fair Civ5 is no where near as bad as FFXIV - the latter is an atrocity to gaming. Civ 5's problems can be fixed with decent AI patch and a few bug squashes/unit balances. FFXIV needs a complete overhaul. Pulling your own teeth is more fun that FFXIV. Even a few FF fabois/gals I know are tossing around words like cr*p, s***y, boring, bland shovelware and everyone's favourite "overpriced tech demo."

Rat