DateyourGame’s Blog

By: Goldenhero

Here’s my review of Galactic Civilizations 2:Dread Lords!

Basically, this is a turn based strategy game that closely resembles Civilization 4 in many ways. There is an enormous tech tree and many strategies that can be used in the game. This is a game with four different possibilities to win a game. There is the Military victory, in which you eliminate all those who oppose you. Also Diplomatic victory, which you must ally with all the nations, or ally with some and kill the rest off. Influence victory, in which you need to have 75% of the galactic influence to win. Or a technology victory, which you have to research a very long and expensive tech line, in order to obtain this victory. Along with the similarities to Civ 4, there are a ton of differences.

In GalCiv2, you can choose 9 preset Civilization, or make your own Civilization. If you choose to make your own, the possibilities are ENDLESS. Do you want a Civilization that is very populated and militaristic? Do you want a Civilization that isn’t very populated but very diplomatic? Do you want all three, and have a populated, forcefully diplomatic Civilization? You can in GalCiv2, and you can even choose what techs to start out with. Now with the preset Civilization, there is still a lot of flexibility. You can have even a preset Civilization with different abilities than another players matching Civilization. You can also choose from 5 basic ship designs for each Civilization with about 30-35 different color choices, and 5 editable color spots. But from there the strategies and ships will vary as much as the civilizations will. The shipyard feature of the game is something I have not seen in a game before, where a ship is COMPLETELY customizable by the player.

So how do I rate this game? Well I’ll break it down.
Overall difficulty of the game – (5/5) This game has a difficulty for every level of player. From the total beginner to the seasoned veteran, there is a level that will challenge everyone

Graphic Level- (3/5) This is where I feel the game is lacking. The game has decent graphics, but is not the most realistic that I’ve seen, especially in a land battle. However the graphics could be enough to cause some lag on slower systems.

Playability- (5/5) Since the word playability is very vague, I decided to narrow it down to how well a new player can pick up the game and go. In the game there is a large section of tutorials covering each aspect of the game. After watching the tutorials, a new player would be able to pick up the game very easily.

Differing Strategy- (5/5) Since this is a strategy game, I felt like I should add this rating in. With such an expansive variety of strategy in the game, including Early Game, Mid Game, and Late Game, this is easily a 5. There are so many options in the game and so many things you can do to micro manage and make sure you have an edge, its amazing.

Replayability- (5/5) One could honestly play this game for years and not get bored with it. Since there is so much you can do, and so much the computer civs will throw at you, there is never really a dull moment in the game. You are always doing something, whether it be expanding, or organizing a superior attack force, you are always doing something in the game. As such you could play this for any given amount of time and not get bored with it. There is also an online feature, called metaverse, which is the online galciv2 database. If you log into metaverse and play a game, when you finish you will have the opportunity to submit the game score online, and you can compete with other players with the games that they submit.

Systems Check- (4/5) Most systems will generally run this game very smoothly without any trouble. However, there are systems that would have trouble running this game efficiently. Sometimes when I play at a higher level of difficulty, there is lag because of how many ships there are on the map.

Flexibility- (5/5) This game is very flexible, and completely customizable by the players. From changing the civilization settings and creating your own ships, to even creating your own modification to the game code itself and posting it online for other players to use, this game can do it all.

Goldenhero’s Overall Rating : (4.6/5) Very good game!

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 15th, 2007 at 9:12 am and is filed under Goldenhero300, Review, Video Game. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.