Is it worth buying yet?

[Heathcliff]

Hi,
I have not bought or played this game yet.
Because of some bad reviews at launch such as Tom Chick's review at Quarter to Three.

But now with an expansion, has the game improved enough?
Like civ 5 which I thought was avarage at release but with the two expansions it has becomed the best strategygame there is.

 

[Gort]

Try the demo.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Well, everyone will have different opinions to give you.

The expansion does add a lot of cool stuff to the base game. So in terms of content, I would say the expansion definitely makes Beyond Earth much much better. On the flip side, there are a lot of bugs in the expansion which hopefully will get fixed in future patches (Firaxis has already released a hotfix for one bug).

I guess it depends on what you want to get out of the game. If you are just looking for an immersive and fun game experience, then yes, RT is worth it. If you are a competitive civ player, you will most likely be disappointed.

 

[Greasy Dave]

Supremacy's assessment seems fair.

The people on the forum who seem to be disappointed are the one's who play regularly at the hardest level and understand the mechanics inside out. There's some fairly unbalanced stuff, and if you know what you're doing, then it appears to be easy to exploit.

On the other hand, people like myself who play Soyuz seem happy - at least I know I am. I'm not so knowledgeable of the various synergies to be able spot exploits and leverage them - so I don't find the game too easy.

There's a stack of new stuff that really deepens the game experience and opens it up - hybrid units and affinity levelling. It's a civ game - but has moved solidly away from Civ V.

On the down side there are bugs and the AI is too passive.

I would not have reccomended CivBE to anyone. I'd recommend BERT though. Don't know if you will like it - but when it comes on sale - give it a try.

 

[kipwheeler]

I'd say, "It was worth buying for me, but I don't know about you."

The game still has kinks, but I lost nearly the entire weekend playing it, and I'm now sleep-deprived Monday at work. I'm enjoying it, but I never know if my reaction is typical or atypical of the general population.

 

[Gorbles]

I'd say, "It was worth buying for me, but I don't know about you."

The game still has kinks, but I lost nearly the entire weekend playing it, and I'm now sleep-deprived Monday at work. I'm enjoying it, but I never know if my reaction is typical or atypical of the general population.

I feel your Monday, sir. Work events didn't help either

 

[Acken]

I doubt Tom Chick's would like it based on his review mostly criticizing the inconsequence of choices.

 

[Galgus]

I'd say that it has improved, but that it is still needs to have some systems fleshed out better and that it needs a balance pass on the artifacts.

With the new systems added there could be some impressive mods in the future, which ought to make it feel more polished and complete.

So it's good and probably will get much better from community support, but it has its issues as well.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

It feels better (from an immersion standpoint), but plays worse (from a balance standpoint).

If you liked BE *a lot*, it might be worth getting now. Otherwise just wait for the inevitable christmas sale. You won't miss too much.

 

[Aedn]

As a player who bought the game when it was released, and has checked in on it over time, after playing the demo, i can say your best bet is just wait until its on sale on a steam sale for 75% off.

Civ BE has to many major flaws that have not been fixed even with the expansion. Its not a bad game by any means, but as a civ game it really does not present a challenge unless you the player handicap yourself by ignoring optimization in tech path, along with other things. In the demo, after relearning the game to some extent, i was winning hands down every time i played. Sadly, the game feels to much like your just not interacting with the world around you, and the AI is completely inept, even on apollo level.

while CIV 5 had many of the same issues at release for me, G&K, and BNW fixed most of the issues, and kept the game challenging and fun to play.

 

[Miravlix]

Too buggy, they should have pushed it back to feb and released Xcom now instead.

At the moment the AI make 3 cities and then sit around doing nothing, basically breaking the competitive single player game, there is a ton of things that needs balancing, so even multiplayer is going to be annoying if someone "wins" by the balance issues.

Seems like a much better game than BE alone, so I would buy it later when they release some patches.

 

[Illauna]

I don't think there is any game breaking bugs. I've been pretty engaged. The diplo system is night and day different. I'd like a few more improvements such as the AI not dropping their diplo policies every other turn. Also, the Diplo advisor seems to ignore the No Advice setting.

 

[ptoss1]

Too buggy, they should have pushed it back to feb and released Xcom now instead.

At the moment the AI make 3 cities and then sit around doing nothing, basically breaking the competitive single player game, there is a ton of things that needs balancing, so even multiplayer is going to be annoying if someone "wins" by the balance issues.

Seems like a much better game than BE alone, so I would buy it later when they release some patches.

XCOM 2 is going to end up an overpriced piece of crap. Who the hell pays $80 for a game?

 

[Polycrates]

XCOM 2 is going to end up an overpriced piece of crap. Who the hell pays $80 for a game?

Australians.

There's heaps of cool new stuff, and it's fun exploring what it has to offer. It definitely feels much more fleshed-out as a whole game rather than a Civ V mod now. But there's a fair few bugs, and some of the balance is just way off. I'd maybe hold off at least until the diplomacy bugs are fixed up. Hopefully there will be some balancing patches/mods before too long as well, but those wheels can turn slowly.

 

[Leathaface]

As someone who was deeply disappointed with BE vanilla, IMO BERT has improved upon the base game substantially. I played 28 hours in total with BE vanilla, so far with BERT i've played 28 hours!! In the first 4 days of release i've put in 7 hours per day.

Everything just seems better, there is a lot of interesting new things to do. The world feels more alive, trying to navigate your colonist and marine around a pack of aliens gives you the jitters but it shows you how well aliens are done, how their purpose is served. They are part of the world but won't attack you if you don't attack, but they are dangerous and they have their place there.

I can remember founding an outpost close to the capital of the Kavithan Protectorate, their leader Kavitha Thakur warned me that the outpost wouldn't survive and would be ground into dust. The feeling of the outpost growing bit by bit while I moved troops into the areas in case of an attack. I couldn't move air units in until the outpost became a city so that make the tension even more powerful. It really did feel like I was creating and building a city bit by bit, not just pressing the "settle button."

Plus unlike in previous Civilization games I just didn't get a single generic message of "don't settle new cities near us." Kavitha Thakur already had an opinion of me, the respect and fear modifiers were in place plus the different relationship statuses. (she had me on "sanctioned" which is below neutral but above "war".) I really did get the feeling that I was infringing upon the space of another civilization and that my outpost mightn't have made it to a city. When I was rushing troops around the outpost, I was vulnerable at that time. But many troops later I felt stronger. My outpost did become a city in the end. *sniff*

 

[Greasy Dave]

OK. I just got into my first war - I'd like to change my post from -try it, to wait for a patch...

My first playthrough was peaceful and I went supermacy so the end game was shortish (not short, but shorter than others) -and I really enjoyed it, for all of the reasons posters have mentioned above. Only drawback is that victories are still boring clock counts.

Second playthrough I went harmony and had to start a war to hold back INtgr and PAc from completing their beacons...and all I can say is that everything you can read on these forms about the stupidity that is War diplomacy is true. PLus they've made the mind flower countdown even longer -so what was a seriously dull end turn mindless AI stomp has become a 60 turn mindless AI war grind - 25 to build the mindflower, 35 for the countdown (Even though I've got 8 cities with mindstems and xeno thingies).

Early to mid game is really fun. But War diplomacy is broken. And the end games are joyless . So definitely wait till they patch. OR play only peaceful games and finish with a fast victory like Supremacy or purity

 

[Callonia]

Its definitely better than beyond earth. The game has some kind of content now. Although I just got a turn 197 domination victory on Gemini but that one really couldn't be helped, I had alot of dreadnoughts and Cannonades just cruising around and blowing everything up. Only the inland cities was safe for time being until my land troops caught up that is.

Alot of AI cities were vulnerable to being rushed by my large navy fleet. I made good on that.

 

[Lord Tirian]

I'd say: Civ:BERT is the game we kind of expected Civ:BE to be. For a Civ game with an full expansion under its belt already, it feels a bit unfinished, especially the endgame and some balance spots here and there.

If you see it as their "Civ:BE 2.0", then it's fantastic, it resolves almost all niggles from the base game in terms of look and feel and variety and feels a lot like a solid Civ release that's still missing an expansion to figure out the endgame (though with Civ4 and Civ5, it was the second expansion that overhauled the endgame, too).

 

[Joch]

try the Demo

 

[Gorbles]

I'd say: Civ:BERT is the game we kind of expected Civ:BE to be. For a Civ game with an full expansion under its belt already, it feels a bit unfinished, especially the endgame and some balance spots here and there.

Gonna be honest, G&K felt less finished than this did. Whatever iterative model Firaxis have chosen, or have to, follow, it seems to be improving per generation.