Civilization 5 review by Tyson
Overall
Buy
Civilization 5 is my first entry into the Civilization series and I have to say that I really enjoyed the several hundred of hours that I spent with this game. I feel that Civilization 5 is one of the best games that the PC platform can offer.
Gameplay
In Civilization 5 your main goal is to make your civilization the best of the world. Each civilization will have its own unique ruler such as George Washington for the United States or Ganghis Khan for Mongolia. What I found really impressive is how each civiilzation plays into the game. Each civilization will have its own unique bonus and units or buildings. Each civilization is also generally tailored for one of the games many different victory conditions. You can win the game by doing things like conquering the capital cities of rival civilizations or by being the first civilization to send a man out into space or by various other actions. Going for these victory conditions can change throughout the game since what resources are around you or what your rival civilizatins are currently doing can drastically change the outcome of the game.
On the outside Civilization 5 seems like a complex game. You need to keep track of many different resources like gold, culture, science, and happiness. Each of the different resources will help you do different things as the game progresses. For example the culture resrouce is used to purchase social policies that enhance certian aspects of your civilization. You can use gold to instantly buy units, buildings, or land. The science resource will help you learn new technologies that will bring you new units, buildings, and even reveal more resources from the land. The Happiness resource will help you go into a golden age that will speed your unit or building construction time in your cities and give you some extra gold per turn as well.
The game world itself is a major player in the game as well. The world will have various resrouces that you will need to keep your civilization happy or resources used for units or buildings. To get more resources you will need to build new cities to expand your civilization but you will also need to be observant of the varius othe civilizations and computer controller citie states around you. Expand to close to another civilization and this might mean war. Another aspect of the game world that I liked is that each map is randomly generated and this gives the game a lot of replayability since each game feels different and will require your attention at different areas throughout the game.
Dealing with other civilizations, either computer or player controlled, is one of the most challenge and fun aspects of the game. You can setup trade deals between each other such as trading your extra cotton for their extra gold or even become friends and help each other out during times of war. You will also need to be aware of what each of the civlizations is doing since you want to become the dominant civlization. For example if France is becoming the dominant leader in culture you will need to either quickly shift your focus into building up your culture to surpass theirs or possibly going to war with France and take over some of their cities or even their capital city to stop its culture domination. Its stuff like this that makes Civilization 5 so much fun to play.
If I had to nickpick about some issues its that some games can last several hours or more. Also there are times where there is some dead air so to speak since you will be waiting for units or buildings to be built. So I recommend having a podcast running in the background or bring a book to read during the slow times. Still even with these issues I find Civilization 5 a really fun game to play.
Control
Its possible to play Civilization 5 using just the mouse but you can get more streamlined by using various keyboard shortcut keys. If you have the ability to play this game on a touch screen device then you can also use those controls as well.
Graphics
I really enjoyed the look of Civilization 5. I liked how many different tiles on the game world had various different animated effects like whales jumping out of the ocean or foxes chasing each other around. I liked the animated sequences with the various different civilization leadears as well. I really loved the look of Cathrine the Greats corset dress top. The only main issue i had with the graphics was different kinds of glitches I got here and there. For example some times some civilization leaders wouldn’t animate when dealing with me.
Sound
This is another area where I feel Civilization 5 excels at. You have differnet background music for the differenet civilizations and the various leaders of the different civilizations speak in their own native language which is awesome. I also liked the narrative about your civlization at the start of the game as well.