Okay so a couple of days ago I wrote this four-page review that included a lot of initial impressions about Civilization V. I wanted to follow that up with a more truncated, focussed and maybe even more positive piece so that my stance on the game reflects what I'm actually feeling about it currently.
While I still stand by everything stated in my initial review, I have now had the benefit of nearly 24 hours of actual logged playtime which has given me a little more perspective on the 'big picture' aspects of the game and how it all fits together. When I wrote my initial review, I was sort of 'on the fence' about, not whether or not I liked the game, but whether or not it had that same staying power and fun / awe factor that the previous titles manged to create for years.
Have no doubt, fellow skeptical fanatics, that the "one more turn" syndrome has set in and is unlikely to go away any time soon. Now that I understand a lot more about the game and now that I've seen how the systems work together over a longer timeframe I have to say the overall experience is absolutely enjoyable. Honestly, the more I play, the more I want to play. For whatever bugs or problems the game still has (and there are many) I have to admit that it if you really give it a chance it will create that feeling of barely restrained megalomania that the previous titles encouraged to a far greater extent than even Civilization IV ever could.
In other words, I'm now a complete convert. No more skeptic. Civilization V is the best in the series without question, even with its problems and lack of expansion content or patches. It owns. It's like playing through the first half of a Western Civ II textbook. The history nerd inside me is doing mental backflips at the diplomatic interplay and the machinations between the great powers, the little dashed lines of minor states starting all sorts of trouble they can't handle and the lines of infantry standing before an artillery line that actually moves in formation for a reason.
If you haven't bought this thing because of something I've said or someone else has said you're doing yourself a disservice. You're missing out. I don't mean to enter fanboi territory. It's just truth. This game has a lot of work to be done on it still yet (oh that tactical AI... oh my). What's also true is that you want to be playing the game while that work is being done. Technical stuff aside, the design vision and gameplay implementation in this product are absolutely amazing, fresh and just really fun to experience.
Civ IV is dead. Long live Civ V!
While I still stand by everything stated in my initial review, I have now had the benefit of nearly 24 hours of actual logged playtime which has given me a little more perspective on the 'big picture' aspects of the game and how it all fits together. When I wrote my initial review, I was sort of 'on the fence' about, not whether or not I liked the game, but whether or not it had that same staying power and fun / awe factor that the previous titles manged to create for years.
Have no doubt, fellow skeptical fanatics, that the "one more turn" syndrome has set in and is unlikely to go away any time soon. Now that I understand a lot more about the game and now that I've seen how the systems work together over a longer timeframe I have to say the overall experience is absolutely enjoyable. Honestly, the more I play, the more I want to play. For whatever bugs or problems the game still has (and there are many) I have to admit that it if you really give it a chance it will create that feeling of barely restrained megalomania that the previous titles encouraged to a far greater extent than even Civilization IV ever could.
In other words, I'm now a complete convert. No more skeptic. Civilization V is the best in the series without question, even with its problems and lack of expansion content or patches. It owns. It's like playing through the first half of a Western Civ II textbook. The history nerd inside me is doing mental backflips at the diplomatic interplay and the machinations between the great powers, the little dashed lines of minor states starting all sorts of trouble they can't handle and the lines of infantry standing before an artillery line that actually moves in formation for a reason.
If you haven't bought this thing because of something I've said or someone else has said you're doing yourself a disservice. You're missing out. I don't mean to enter fanboi territory. It's just truth. This game has a lot of work to be done on it still yet (oh that tactical AI... oh my). What's also true is that you want to be playing the game while that work is being done. Technical stuff aside, the design vision and gameplay implementation in this product are absolutely amazing, fresh and just really fun to experience.
Civ IV is dead. Long live Civ V!