I was fine with the review until this part...

Visually, the Dark Avatar expansion doesn't seem to add any graphical enhancements, though Galactic Civilizations has never really been known for its looks.

There have been several graphical enhancements...  one being the beefed up ship textures... (you notice your race logo on your ships, right?) and the other being the visible ships in orbit around planets from the map view... that's an awesome addition to the game that I dont think many expansion packs would have added... because it's purely cosmetic...but it's just...awesome.

Kudos to the team for all the great content we're getting in Dark Avatar. Truely an epic expansion to GalCiv2. 

The more I get into Dark Avatar, the more stunned I am by the sheer volume of enhancements and their implications. It is a stunning- and brave - move by Stardock. Its an expansion in the Dictionary sense of the word, and an awsome one. The old industry terminology of "sequel" "expansion pack" etc (beloved of Marketers and Spin Doctors trying to cover up an excuse to squeeze more dosh out of people) has just gone out the window.

In value for money terms its incredible - effectively its GalCiv III by old industry standards, but for the price of the old expansion pack genre. I hope Stardock get their just rewards for shaking the game industry out of its mind-numbing stupur of revenue driven "expansion packs" and spin doctor driven scenarios.

I honestly believe this will make many in the games industry review their Business Strategy, and swing the balance more towards value-for-money, not value-for-revenue, when the see what I believe will be an awsome level of Sales for Dark Avatar.

Regards
Zy

I was fine with the review until this part...

I was fine until I saw the mention of the tech tree being streamlined a little. Given that part of DA isn't in yet... that (and the "no graphical enhancements" comment) convinced me that the person that wrote the preview has no idea what he is talking about and likely didn't even play it.

It's possible he may not have played GC for a while and doesn't remember exactly how everything looked before.

The Gamespot beta has the updated tech tree system build.

Well then, I suppose I can take that comment back... but the "no graphical enhancements" comment still bugs me.

Mostly positive read as it should be. I, like the others, am a bit confused over the graphical comment. I'm not sure if they bothered to compare GC2 with DA side by side but I'd say the improvements are noticeable. Ah well.

For me personally I think DA has far exceeded my expectations for the expansion. As many have said this is what I'd expect from GC3 if another dev were doing the game. I really hope the rest of the industry starts to take notice here. This is quite refreshing and makes me really wonder why I've ever bothered to buy a so called expansion from other developers in the past.

There have been some new techs, but I would like to see more weapon and defence techs.