by  killa_dilla
from Gainsville, FL, United States | Dec 7, 2004 |
As the first person with a review for Civilization III Complete on this site, I feel it is my duty to deliver a good honest one. First, lets start with the good about this game.
First, it has excelent graphics for an isometric TBS game. The cities take on a different form from Age of Empires and Empire Earth. Instead of having a town center and different buildings, all you have to do is build the city itself. You start off with a city that you can "zoom in" on and get population, tax, and economy info, etcetera and a border around the parimeter. Much more realistic.
The units are still representation though. You'll notice that the landscape is tiny in comparison with the units but unlike previous strategy games I have played, it looks clearer. You can tell the units are representation instead of big guys on a small area.
Gameplay is good for a turn based system. I am used to real time strategy myself so it takes some getting used to. In short, your turn length is based on how many units you have. Each unit is set to do different things. In a given turn you can have a unit move and attack (ie aircraft carriers or strike ships) but sometimes they can only attack in one turn.
As far as music is concerned, it is fun to stop playing the game for a sec and listen to it. Atari did good to put variety into the soundtrack. Best of all, there is no annoying talk from the units when you click on them. Sure it was fun in Age of Empires when you clicked on a japanese guy and had him say something in his native tongue but only for the first few million times.
Trade runs smoothly in this game. The diplomatic exchange screen is interesting to toy around with. The game gives you the option of declaring war on a neutral or allied civilization. You can steal from them and declare war or just place military units in their borders to piss them off. It works rather smoothly.
As of every game, it has its bads as well as its goods and for every silver lining, there has to be a cloud.
The game does get kind of annoying after some time playing it and its replayability is startlingly low. It can become quite the headache when you have more than one unit out and the screen moves constantly from one unit to the next. Not to mention it gets extremely confusing after a while.
Also, the game doesnt have a solid timeline as in Empire Earth. I havent been able to yet discern one age from another... They seem to be automatic. I heard that in Civilization I, you were able to play from prehistory into the future (I wouldnt know, having never played it myself) but so far I have noticed no linear structure of events.
I havent been able to find much else wrong with it so I can safely say the goods well outweigh the bads. All in all I encourage people to get this game and enjoy it for what it is... A well put together turn based strategy game. |
| 4 out of 6 people found this review helpful. | Did you find this review helpful? YES NO |
|
forums
4.50/5.0
4.5
