I haven't played it but watched so many of their livestreams and other people demoing it that I can safely say that this firaxis game is my biggest disappointment from them. More than Civ 5, which had enough redeeming qualities to balance off the bad ones. Considering the huge difference between the sheepish media reviews and player reviews (completely mixed, varying between awesome and terrible), I suppose that I am not the only one.
But i'm too old school and elitist when it comes to 4X games. I usually don't like the new direction Firaxis seems to be taking in their games, and while they mean to cater to a bigger audience with more gimmicky and bland gameplay (in my eyes), I think they are losing their old school fans like me.
Though i'm still not totally sold on a bad opinion either. There are good ideas in that game and it doesn't seem awful, far from it.
My biggest gripes atm :
- Gimmicky gameplay, basically turning everything into gather a few points (like virtues, etc), unlock that little perk, get small bonuses, start again, choose another one... Typical of their latest games.
- Factions do not have much differences between them and their tiny bonuses just seem to be meaningless. Also still struggling to see why Brazilia suddenly got to be the militarist faction. Why not ? Ok, but weird.
- Bland, weird factions. They do not seem to 'speak' to me. I feel like there is nothing special in the lore.
- Interesting but messy tech tree. I don't like it. It's confusing, especially for the first playthroughs, and only add unnecessary complexity where it should not. Too much freedom in that kind of things kills freedom. Same for virtues.
- Tech tree freedom means that if you want to win, especially technologically, forces you to rush techs by skipping most of the things. Affinities also mean that you have to let 2/3 of them behind. It is debatable if that's good or not, but I hate it. Especially as an usual technology player.
- Like in Civ 5, no direct control over budgets and interior policies like in the old civs and most 4X games. Why they decided to drop that is beyond me, though it hints at :casual: :casual: :casual:...
- So few units ! They keep telling that they are customizable, but it's just about a few perks here and there. Give it 20% bonus against range. Yay. Not even an unit workshop, something I would expect from a 4X game that wants to use base 'hulls' like units to build upon.
- Completely debatable, I know, since it's not a SMAC successor (but it still draws many inspirations from there) : I would have expected a much deeper gameplay like in SMAC, with meaningful things like elevation gameplay, water gameplay and cities, meaningful and in depth factions, each one of them with a very different gameplay, a 'random' tech tree, interior policies, a true UN style council of factions with serious consequences, and fucking mind worms, not stupid cheesy kawaii aliens.
- Art direction is piss poor. Landscape look awful, and aliens look stupidly bland. Each affinity's design also look rubbish, especially the harmony one. And if you are not fan of mechs, then purity, not so much either... To be honest, I just feel that everything is cliché, almost childish in its looks, which was already an issue in Civ 4-5. It's very indicative of their casual approach to their games. Compared to a game like Endless Legend (
), it's pretty shit, but I guess that game set the standard higher too recently for it to impact on civ games. Not that they care anyway.
- Also, while they say it's a Civ in itself, and so uses the same engine and all, I can understand why trolls sometimes say that it's just Civ 5 with a SciFi skin. We usually see much more work and novelty between each Civ title.
Pros :
- The music, as usual.
- Interesting ideas, like choosing what you bring with you in your spaceship, though the choices are awfully limited eventually.
- The idea behind affinities.
- Espionage, like in SMAC.
- Quests.
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Topic: Civilization: Beyond Earth (Read 5640 times)