I really don't have time to play around, but I bought it anyway. Oh well.
I'll make this short and concise. But bear in mind that in so doing, I am glossing over the positives - which are understood - in favor of the negatives, which are unexpected.
1) It seems like a good game. And though irrelevant to gameplay, the ship builder is just AWESOME. I spent more time in there than in the actual game last night. Unfortunately, 99% of it is cosmetic rather than functional, but I expect to be able to change that in a mod. Don't equate "cosmetic" with "irrelevant" - it's truly awesome.
2) If you like strategy games other than SEIV, I preliminarily recommend buying it. But see the proviso in #3...
3) I do NOT recommend playing it right now, even if you buy it (ergo, there's no point in buying now). The release was decent, and much cleaner than Civ IV a month AFTER release. However, it is not finished. There are some aspects that are just broken, as well as scores of small bugs. But these problems are almost universally easy to fix (5 to 200 minutes each) rather than fundamental; they are typically issues of "specific implementation" (easily mutable) rather than "missing functionality" (requiring massive work). Perhaps 20% of them were fixed in the first patch, a record 4 days after release; I anticipate another 25% in the next patch, due Thursday. At that rate, 90%+ should be resolved in two to four weeks - and bear in mind that most games do not reach the 90% mark, ever. Actually, most published games never reach the 40% mark, but here I'm using the word "game" to refer to something to which a reader may have been exposed.
3a) GalCiv2 is playable and fun now, but I'm a perfectionist. The issues that annoy me will annoy other perfectionists. Why settle for less when you can demand and receive more? If you like turn-based (aka "real") strategy games and don't care about minor details, go buy GCII and play it now - but in that case, you wouldn't be active in the SEIV forums anyway, so you'll never see this.
3b) On the other hand, cautious perfectionists and non-perfectionists alike should neither buy nor play GC2 before visiting the official website (
www.GalCiv2.com) and reading the
Official Bug List and
Other Official Bug List and
Unofficial Bug List.
4) There are numerous issues that I have with design decisions, such as population growth rate (currently ~10% per week), technological development, ship parameters, weapon balance, overly coarse granularity in some areas (like ship HP), and so forth. These will not be fixed as they are not 'broken'. However, mod support will be included in Thursday's patch. From examining the XML files (I can post them here if anyone is interested), most (but specifically NOT all) of the numbers I'd need to change are already XML'd rather than hard-coded, so (assuming that a relatively small number of additional things migrate over to XML) I expect to be able to change the game to the way *I* want it by Thursday.
5) Bear in mind that unlike SEIV and Dominions II, GC2 is strictly single-player; thus AI deficiencies are ?X (read: some number of times) more meaningful, and no imbalance can be remedied by "mutual agreement".
I will let you know when
I feel that the game is ready for prime time. God knows why people release things before they're ready, as they only hurt themselves. GC2 has been getting 90-95% reviews according to GameRankings.com, but who ever knows what filthy crack reviewers are smoking? They're the same people that gave Final Fantasy 7 100% and Xenogears 80%, and the same people that convinced me to buy Star Control III with 85%+ reviews... when it was a pile of stinking feces. Not to mention that they unanimously gave Civ IV 90%+ reviews *at release*, when it 1) was unplayable on non-Nvidia cards, 2) regularly crashed after at most 2 hours, 3) gradually slowed to below 1FPS after playing for "too long", and 4) allowed you to get any city from any AI at any time through an easy diplomacy exploit (I found that bug *after* their 1-month patch). I no longer trust any published reviews. And even though I use the keyword "they" to denote "the enemy of all that is good", I'm obligated to note that I have received financial compensation for writing the game reviews of a periodical with circulation over 500,000.
In the meantime, I know there are others here who have bought and played GC2. So come out of the closet; it's nothing of which to be ashamed! Post your impressions too.
Galactic Civilizations II impressions
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