Some new reviews of Galactic Civilizations II have come out this week. The first one comes from Gaming Horizon.
Their verdict:
Galactic Civilizations II is the first sleeper hit of 2006. The AI is the best seen thus far in any strategy title and the complexity and depth of the game will keep gamers coming back for just one more turn. With a random galaxy generated every game, coupled with AI that is unpredictable and incredibly intelligent, the game is sure to never play out the same way twice. Gamers looking for a good turn based strategy title will find a lot to like in Galactic Civilizations and the reduced MSRP of $39.99 also makes this game one of the best PC buys of the year.
You can read the full-review here.
The second new review comes from GameShark.com. As the AI developer on GalCiv II, I particularly liked their comments on the computer AI:
Getting back to the AI – this is really what makes GalCiv II stand out from the crowd. This game has some of the best enemy AI around. It's clever, doesn't cheat, makes mistakes, anticipates, and is generally wonderful. Each of the game's ten races behaves as separate entities and will treat you differently depending on the race you are playing. Still, what makes the AI so brilliant isn't that it's hard to beat, but rather that it acts more like a human than any other turn based strategy game around. It's programmed to guess what a human may do – and it'll flat out tell you that it knows what you're up to. It's borderline creepy. On the harder levels of difficulty if you leave the AI an opening it rushes through it, make a blunder and it jumps all over you, try to make a crazy tech trade and it'll laugh at you and tell you why, but it's also prone to making "human" mistakes. It's not perfect nor should it be. It's simply a brilliant AI game model and it ensures that no two games of GalCiv II will ever play the same.
I'll mention this part again but it's very cool when reviewers spend enough time on a game to play it at different levels and see that the computer AI actually plays differently. You can imagine the tedium in writing computer AI that is intentionally "Stupid" at lower levels to represent on-line play.
Much of the AI design came from the Warcraft 3 beta incidentally. On Battle.net, players are automatically put up against players of a similar skill ranking. Our goal with the AI was that as players bumped up the intelligence level on opponents, it would feel the same as going up the ladder on a multiplayer game (except where the other guy doesn't drop as soon as things go against him or her <g>).
You can read the GameShark.com review here.
The next one is from GamingTrend.com. They really liked the game but took some points off for no multiplayer and that the graphics are a bit "static" in some places (which is true as making sure the game ran on lower end hardware took priority and so the budget for more on-screen "stuff" was put into other areas).
Their conclusion:
Stardock has made Galactic Civilizations II a great game, and they have made an even bolder move by not including any type of copy protection with the game. Their sense of humor shows not only within the manual but in the game as well. It has personality throughout. It looks and sounds very good. The thorough manual explains to you the building improvements, super projects, and differences in difficulty levels. Tables showing the Star Base enhancements are also included. Stardock has gone a long way to make this look like a professional effort, even with a development team that is small compared to the ones used by the big publishers, and it shows throughout.
Gamers looking for a strategy game that has the depth of Civilization IV but want a more futuristic setting should definitely look at Galactic Civilizations II. It’s perfect for laptops since it doesn’t require a CD to be in the drive. The replayability of the game is almost infinite. The response to the game has been overwhelming, with the first printing flying off the store shelves. If you have any interest in turn-based strategy games, be sure to pick up a copy or download it from Stardock’s web site.
You can read their full review here.
Those are some of the reviews that came out this week. If there's a review I missed or that you'd like me to post about (good or bad) please feel free to command in this thread and I'll check it out.
