Metacritic - average player's rating. Civ4, COL, Civ5, BNW, BE

[DCParry]

Will this game sell enough to justify Firaxis putting the resources in to massive expansions that fix all the minor issues, and some of the major ones? Very unlikely. SMAC was a brilliant game with few competitors and it didn't sell well. This is a crap game, with no personality, user friendliness and the elephant that is Civ 5 BNW in the room. It wont sell and won't get the support Civ 5 did.

Except from most indications, the game IS selling well, sticking at the top of the Steam list.

Instead of proposing dubious comparisons to back up my personal opinions, I am going to provide my opinion as merely my opinion. I think the changing character of the gaming community has as much to say about the apparent discrepancy in Metacritic scores as the quality of the games.

 

[Eji1700]

Meh. I feel split.

On the one hand. Civ V was a whole new system, while BE is built on an old system, so civ V gets some slack there.

On the other hand, Civ V got a lot more dev time/resources than BE, so Be gets some slack there.

On the third hand, neither one is really ok as a launch title in my eyes. I will just flat out say I left the series at civ V launch, and only came back after a friend said "oh yeah the expansions made it better". I was PISSED at the terrible launch followed by these single nation DLCS, and only came back after we started getting real expansions again, which fixed both gameplay issues and expanded the game space.

All that said, they did build back some trust with just how well they managed to polish Civ up to BNW. It's a great game now, and i'm glad I own it. I fully admit I jumped into BE knowing 1. that it would not live up to even low expectations 2. have serious balance issues.

I still bought it though because this will be one of the very few occasions I trust a company to continue to support the game after it's release(and not just in paid DLC) to polish it into something good. If they do not do this I will just drop the series again, as i'm basically saying "yes, i think the games going to be crap on launch (less focus, huge system changes, rushed launch), but i'm giving you money and sales so that you do well enough to justify continuing to support it and not just drop it". If they betray that trust...i'm done.

 

[lamaros]

Except from most indications, the game IS selling well, sticking at the top of the Steam list.

Instead of proposing dubious comparisons to back up my personal opinions, I am going to provide my opinion as merely my opinion. I think the changing character of the gaming community has as much to say about the apparent discrepancy in Metacritic scores as the quality of the games.

That's an almost meaningless measurement. What it is competing against and how long it stays there are much more significant. Pretty much every (high profile) game tops steam for a bit when it comes out.

 

[DCParry]

That's an almost meaningless measurement. What it is competing against and how long it stays there are much more significant. Pretty much every (high profile) game tops steam for a bit when it comes out.

I guess the question in how "almost" do you mean? While they are significantly different games, BE is above both Shadow of Mordor and Alien Isolation (which have been getting a solid positive reception in general). You are right BE has the shiny new advantage, I doubt it would be there if it was as bollucks as some people claim.

 

[Eji1700]

That's an almost meaningless measurement. What it is competing against and how long it stays there are much more significant. Pretty much every (high profile) game tops steam for a bit when it comes out.

Yes they do. And do you know how much money those high profile games make while they top steam? The people who decided to make the game sure as hell do. High profile games know they will usually make "at least X" if they launch at the right time with little competition(likely why this was rushed out when it was, just ahead of the REAL xmas rush). This is why some companies decided to just make crap, and hype the hell out of it, because if they don't spend too much developing they'll still make money on initial sales alone, because topping the steam charts is a metric ton of cash.

So with that in mind, yeah it's probably exactly what they were shooting for. As much as we all hve issues with the game, casuals are eating it up(it's THE game to be streaming on twitch right now) and while that won't last, that's exactly what they wanted. I'd be surprised if this wasn't a financial success(or at least didn't hit target/expected sales). I'm just hoping they don't say "yep, we made it cheap and quick, got the money, and now we split". They don't seem to do that, but it's always a possibility with this sort of release style.

 

[AgentDib]

Game journalism isn't really a thing for games like this. Longtime Civ fanatics can figure out what is going on in a play-through or two, but you can't just have a random reviewer spend a few hours with this type of game and then come to any solid conclusions other than how much fun it is for the first few hours.

Anyone who can beat BE on Apollo was certainly capable of beating Civ 5 on Deity at certain builds. Even domination - you could conquer the entire modern day world with Keshik's at one point, or just buy it all with Austria.

The only thing that keeps Apollo difficulty from being a complete face-roll is the change to alliances; I suspect the people who have had trouble with it have been ganged up on. Try playing a duel against an Apollo opponent and you will win pretty much no matter what as long as you keep building cities and trade routes.

Except from most indications, the game IS selling well, sticking at the top of the Steam list.

I have recommended this game to a bunch of my friends who have never played a Civ title before but like the theme, it's a fun casual 4X game. How many Civ 5 Diety players are going to switch over to BE permanently though? Most of the disappointment seems to be from the more experienced crowd.

 

[Rathelm]

That's... interesting, actually. While I personally really enjoy the game (mostly because differing opinions regarding lack of flavor and atmosphere - to each their own), I find it surprising that BNW was regarded as Worse than Vanilla. The expansions kept fixing issues... so why was BNW given a lower score?

Don't listen to the critic score. Look at the user score and it's clear the BNW scored higher than CiV classic.

 

[Thormodr]

The big media reviews aren't worth much these days, sadly. Still, an average of 81 is pretty low for a supposed AAA game company. Endless Legends, which is far from perfect, is sitting at 82 right now and they aren't even a AAA company.

The user reviews show quite a bit of discontent with Civilization 5: Beyond Earth and deservedly so. Even from long time Civilization 5 fans. 5.9 is a pretty low score.

If we want a quality Civ VI we need to articulate to Firaxis that they need to get their game/act together.

 

[InfinityV]

Too many people are comparing Civ: BE to Civ 4 Complete / Civ 5 Complete rather than vanilla Civ 5, which was boring to play and had atrocious bugs and multiplayer support at launch.

I'm actually have lots of fun with BE and have been playing multiplayer non-stop (so yes I've been dodging some of these AI issues I guess).

 

[Potenzo]

The main problems of CivBE are not at all different from the main problems of CivV, bad AI, bad diplomacy, all the rest is something that can be fixed easily changing a few variables and if the devs won't do that, the mod community will.

Moreover I remember well the first day of Civ V release, the forum was flooded by negative comments as much if not more than it is now for Civ BE.

This.

I don't think Firaxis gets nearly enough love for their commitment to mod support. Modding makes moves these important-but-easily-fixed balance problems from "something we desperately hope the devs will do, preferably real soon" to "something the community is pretty much certain to do within the next few weeks, if Firaxis don't get there first".

Reading these forums, there seems to be a strong consensus that internal trade routes are massively OP. It's also pretty much agreed that at least some of the quest choices offer a "good" and a "bad" option i.e. no choice at all - just an opportunity for the AI to gimp itself. There also seems to be a fairly strong consensus that many of the wonders are too weak and need buffing (even if that means nerfing the +7 culture virtue). Less certain, but looking fairly convincing, is the sense that penalties for negative health are too weak, and late game bonuses to health are too strong (likely thanks to biowell spam). All of these balance issues are very easily fixed with simple modding.

On that basis, how can you say it's a bad game? At worst, it's a game with a poor launch. Honestly, I see this as just teething troubles. When I think back to Civ5 vanilla launch, that looked seriously shaky. Many people, myself among them, were highly sceptical that 1UPT could be made to work at all. I played Civ5 for a month at launch, and went back playing Civ4 for a year; I only returned to Civ5 when a friend pinky-promised that recent patches had improved the game massively. By comparison, the balance problems with BE that I describe above are trivial to fix.

Now, you may be disappointed with the flavour text and lack of art assets (movies, voice-overs etc). Moreover, we're all disappointed that Take Two didn't pony up to buy back the Alpha Centauri IP (and nothing will convince me that the Firaxis devs aren't just as disappointed, even if they need to kid themselves otherwise), but that was a commercial decision. Ultimately, the community can write its own fiction if it makes the effort. In theory the art is be moddable too, at least in part, but the Civ modding community just doesn't seem to attract the same calibre of artistic fans that, say, the Skyrim community does.

The level of polish may be a bit disappointing, but I think we all knew Firaxis wasn't investing in this like it did in Civ5 and will in Civ6 - the release schedule told us that much. But when all is said and done, this is just that: polish. The underlying game is the same game regardless.

That leaves the quality of the AI, and diplomacy. Well, we all know Civ has its limits, and BE is no exception. But if you think "The AI is so broken that it makes this a bad game", I respectfully wonder what you are doing on CivFanatics? The Civ AI is good enough to make a fun game, however much we hanker after more.

Unless you think the BE AI is a major step back from BNW?

Personally, I think a major overhaul of diplomacy, and of the AI to support it, should be the "one big idea" for Civ6. But that'll be another thread...

 

[Andoo]

really not trying to be an a-hole, but does nobody know the waybackmachine/archive.org anymoe?
no more speculation needed - THIS is what you are looking for - the metacritics page as it appeared on oct 1st 2010 (civ5 having been release on sept 20th.)
if you want to check ratings for other times, just go here
bonus fun fact - works for other websites too

Very interesting! Didn't know such site existed. I guess my memory was a bit off. But still, certainly 6.7 was not an amazing score especially compared to press review score of 9.0.

 

[rastak]

That's awesome - take a step back in time - oh noes, let's run in circles waving our arms and scream and shout.....

 

[Gliese 581]

In my opinion the main problem with Civ:BE and difference to release Civ5 is balance. While there are often overpowered strategies in newly released complex strategy games that needs to be adjusted with patches, sometimes it's just so bad you can't see how it will ever be mended. It was the same for Civ4: Colonization. I found out how completely broken it was after playing it for a day or two and just knew there was little hope for it.

Civ:BE is reminiscent in many ways; immediately playing at highest difficulty level and destroying the AI while lolling about doing whatever you please, then finding out tons of different ways to break the game balance completely in short order.

It could be fixed with years of work but Civ Col which is the closest game I can think of in scope was never touched so I don't think there's much hope for Civ:BE unfortunately.

 

[Rakshasa72]

Just like to throw in SMACs Metacritic rating is 92.

 

[Thormodr]

Just like to throw in SMACs Metacritic rating is 92.

Deservedly so. Awesome game.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Civ V vanilla has such a high reviewer metacritic because the initial glut of 5-star reviews seemed to have been done by hacks who only played the game for about 100 turns. (Insert a replay of me crying about the demise of the gaming mags and videogame journalism)

Well, I played Civ 5 for the first 100 turns (the demo) and it convinced that it "needs work" and I shouldn't buy it beore it has had at least three proper patches.
Beyond Earth is far more perfidious. There are fewer bugs, the technology works better and it is really great game for the first 100 turns. It's only in the mid-game after you have a couple of cities that all the balance issues really come into play and suck the fun out of it.

I think the main thing with reviews in a series as venerable as Civilization is that a new entry gets people excited and obvious issues are overlooked and forgiven out of an irrational sense of respect. Beyond Earth, being just a spin-off instead of a proper sequel, is put under much more scrutiny. It certainly isn't as good as it could have been, but it's not the mess that Civ IV and V were upon release.

Then there's the comparison to SMAC. I get it. We've waited for a SMAC sequel for over a decade, and Beyond Earth has been a magnet for high expectations and scepticism at the same time since the day it was announced.
SMAC has a special place in my heart, but I know that part of it is nostalgia. Eighteen year old me had generally lower standards and a higher capacity for immersion in a game than 33 year old me. And that game had and has obvious flaws and bad balancing too:

Spoiler :

For those who haven't played SMAC: However broken internal trade routes are, this damn thing is arguably worse.

 

[Pyramid Head]

It's also worth mentioning that Civ:BE has an angry red "Mixed" user review score on Steam. Made especially impressive because only people who own the game can rate a game on Steam, unlike something like Metacritic.

 

[Drowsy Emperor]

Not really. A single chopper will take down a horde of them while all you can do is watch in horror. Building many supply crawlers is a time consuming and risky thing, much more so than in Civ BE, where everyone will pick up trade routes at the beginning of the game by default, and maxing them out is trivial.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Not really. A single chopper will take down a horde of them while all you can do is watch in horror. Building many supply crawlers is a time consuming and risky thing, much more so than in Civ BE, where everyone will pick up trade routes at the beginning of the game by default, and maxing them out is trivial.

Defending supply crawlers from AC is no better than defending the current trade routes.

 

[Algeroth]

Defending supply crawlers from AC is no better than defending the current trade routes.

I disagree. Defending supply crawlers is worse.