Galactic Civilizations 2 Gold Review

The more you play this game the more you will realize just how much Stardock has put into it. Each race has distinct and unique differences. Every time you play will be a totally different experience. They have also added so much flavor and random events (if you turn them on) that even playing the same race over and over will yield a new result every time. The more you play, the more you will realize this game is not just their weekly check, but it's also a labor a love. All the depth in the game has meaning. Nothing here feels piecemeal or thrown in, just for the heck of it.

The world has never looked prettier.

Never knew pyramids would make it to outer space.

I also like that the complexity is mostly hidden. You can play this game with the difficulty set on 'easy' and get by well enough while still having fun. You could even ignore most of the menus at your disposal and generally you would be OK. The beauty part is when you start thinking, "it would be cool if the game did this." What you will find more often than not is that the game does exactly what you were wishing for. In fact, whatever control or option you are looking for is usually right where you would expect it to be, you've just been ignoring or overlooking it. Nice.

One last thing to throw out there... because I know some of you will be interested. The multiplayer. There is none. What's that? No multiplayer? What where they thinking? Well someone went and asked them just that question and they said only a very small percent of their fan base actually wanted a multiplayer. So, instead of focusing lots of time and effort of a feature very few of their fans would actually use, they spent that time making the game better. In the end, they do have multiplayer of sorts. It's called the "Multiverse." You can create a galaxy and customize it any way you want it, and then save it out for you friends. Then you can both play this galaxy (which will play out the same way for both of you) and compare your scores at the end. There you have it, "Multiplayer."

All that being said, here's the bottom line. If you like strategy, you will mostly likely love this game. If you especially like 4x space strategy games then you might as well take a week off from work and dig in. Either that or skip that morning meeting. This game is the best one-more-turn game I have played since MOO. Good thing I can survive on 4 hours sleep a night. I can recover on the weekend, right? (Or just do like 2Lions does after playing late into the night: Sleep at your desk - Ed) (Such filthy lies! I deny everything! - 2Lions)