Sid Meier's Civilization V Collector Edition

The working relationship between a game designer and his publisher is never a simple one. So I would not know where exactly to place the blame, Sid Meyer or 2K GAMES. But in the end, it does not matter. Because it is simply sad to see a great gaming franchise came to this.

THIS IS NOT A CIVILIZATION GAME
A great number of major features of this beloved series have been simply removed. A fellow gamer called this "Civilization For Dummies" and he is absolutely right.
There is no trading maps or technologies. There is no claiming resources outside your borders by building a colony. There is no need for transport ships as units apparently are now all..amphibious (and they need 15-20 turns to cross an ocean!). There are no city-growth milestone requirements (granary, aqueduct, refrigeration). There is no culturally conquering an enemy city (detonating a "culture bomb" by consuming a Great Artist will only get you extra territory tiles but no cities). There are no spies nor health/pollution balance. And there are no armies (please read on).

ARMY CASTRATION
Someone please tell me what was so wrong with armies that had to be yanked out? Napoleon almost conquered Europe with one army. Germany almost conquered the eastern hemisphere with three and the US still holds a two-and-a-half armies doctrine. How can a turn-based game be called Civilization unless one can emulate, well, a real civilization? Building an army, seasoning it on minor conflicts and then going for the enemy's capital was one of the most fun parts of any Civilization game. Why Sid, why?

YOU MAY BE ABLE TO LAUNCH INTO SPACE YET CANNOT CLIMB MOUNTAINS?!
Movement should be hindered by rough terrain. Units that have 3 or 4 moves on the plains should not be expected to do more than 1 or 2 on a mountain, right? Well, no. Mountains seem to be those magical places no unit can climb or pass through (not even ...helicopters of jet fighters!). And I cannot see how this makes for more complicated strategic decisions than timing your movements, claiming the high ground and having a bonus for elevated artillery?

UNIT STAMPEDE
A major issue for me, this was what really ruined the game. For some unfathomable reason units cannot be stacked. A worker can coexist with a military unit but that's it. Artillery and shock-cavalry are very vulnerable to attacks and (with the new hexagon layout) one would need ...six defensive units to protect a single artillery battery.
As a result, units keep getting on each other's way (especially when ordered to move for distances that require more than a turn), they refuse to even pass through friendly units (!) and the "tactical" considerations that result from this are trivial. And whenever besieging an enemy city, one has to endlessly maneuver his units around it (while exposed to its bombardment) whereas wounded units are never easy to withdraw.
You cannot even garrison more than a single unit within a city. Not that it would make a difference, since the garrisoned unit is not automatically awaken to fight back when the city is under attack(!), the city is left to defend itself.

CAN YOU REALLY COMMAND WITHOUT A...CENTRAL COMMAND?
The economy is nose-diving into the red and you want to reduce the percentage going into research for a while to avoid having units of yours deleted one by one? The fickle people of your civilization are unhappy and you want to placate them by increasing their entertainment allocation? You have discovered conscription and you want to upgrade all your musketeers into recruits? Well, TOUGH LUCK! There is not central command screen to do so. Only advisers that you have to thank for annoying you.
You have zero control of both your cities resource distribution and your national economy. And units have to be hunted down and upgraded one by one.
Speaking of the economy, when are going to see a Civilization game where one can run and manage a national debt?

NO FREE EYE-CANDY IN THIS UNIVERSE. NOT EVEN A STALE ONE.
The game does look new and polished and the units are well designed but not cutting edge and not without a steep hardware price. If you expect anything comparable to STARCRAFT II crispiness you will be disappointed - at my 1280x1024 resolution it is not easy to discern roads from railroads.
The system I am running my copy was top of the line about a year ago and still I had to tweak the video settings with a mix of high and medium to get it running. Even then, whenever I scroll to a different location of the map, I can see the image fleshing out, just like zooming in a Google-Earth map.
So one can only wonder: why should one need a...Cray to run a Civilization game at full?

STEAM OF WAR
The game requires OnLine Activation (and rumored perpetual reactivation every few days) and has to be tied to a STEAM account. Effectively this means that the game is a piece of rentware the buyer never really owns and yet it is sold at full price. I realize that to some people this may not be a serious issue so, in case you are wondering, I deducted a single star from my overall rating of the game because of its DRM scheme. To every other gamer however, you can now make an informed decision.

This was a major disappointment. I never though I'd say this but I while playing the latest Civilization game I caught myself wondering if they would ever make...CALL TO POWER III.

New gamers, steer clear of this mess, this is NOT what a Civilization game plays like.
Seasoned gamers, we know better than to call this a Civilization game.

Sorry Sid, EPIC FAIL.

To put things in perspective, the only other Civilization game I've ever played was Civilization Revolution. This makes my review pretty much worthless to any hardcore veteran of the series, but is great for people who've never played it or only played as much as I have.

In comparison to Civilization Revolution, this game is significantly better. That isn't to say the other was bad, but Civ V has everything I wished Civ Rev had - longer games, more choices, a more realistic and serious look and feel, and various other aspects. This only adds to how enjoyable the game is, living up to its "just one more turn" legacy. I also greatly enjoyed the need for new strategies, due to having hexagonal tiles, and not being able to stack units. Because of these two new features, you're forced to pay much closer attention and can easily win or lose a war or battle by only making one or two simple strategic or tactical mistakes. There are also plenty of Civilization's to choose from, all with unique traits, buildings, and units, as well as more to buy through DLC.

The game is occasionally plagued with glitches and flaws, and although none are game breaking, they're annoying. One of the most common is giving a unit a destination and it not being able to get to the location, for no valid or stated reason. When moved manually, the unit gets there fine. Another common one is the 'auto-alert' feature which notifies you a unit needs an order, and takes you to it after a second or two wait. Sometimes this feature is overexcited and takes you to each unit that needs an order in under a second, not letting you move the units on your own or take care of something else first. When it's like this, you'll need to scroll around and go to various map areas much more than you'd like because the game won't let you play yourself. Then, there are other times where it hardly works at all, taking 3-7 seconds to take you to the unit that needs an order unless you click the button telling you about the unit. And even then, it doesn't work right away sometimes. There's also a glitch I've noticed while playing very long games in one sitting, where certain tiles or structures will remain on one spot on the screen. For example, you could have a mountain tile in the middle of the screen while looking at the map, and when you scroll or click to another part, that mountain tile will remain a ghost in that area despite the actual mountain not being there. This can happen with as little as one tile at a time, or as many as ten or so. The last glitch I've experienced is waves or flashes of colors, sometimes alternating, taking up a large portion of the map or the entirety of it. This has only happened to me two or three times, and requires a restart of the game to go away as it's completely glitched out and unplayable unless you do.

The game does have quite a few of flaws outside of gameplay as well. Since I bought this game near release day, it's crashed at least five or more times, and typically crashes my entire computer along with it. It also heats up my computer and makes the fan run heavily. There's also a need for some back and forth scrolling around the map to make everything show up properly, or in some cases, at all (this is mostly in reference to land improvements). My computer has the recommended specs, and in many cases, greater than what's recommended, so these problems should be non-existent or minimal. This could just be some error with Steam, or my files, but even then, it's on the games end.

These extreme problems keep me from giving this game a five star rating and almost make me want to give it a three star rating as they greatly hinder what you can do and how nice and efficient your experiences are.

The special edition content is nice, although like most special editions, it seems overpriced. The book has a lot of amazing art with decent information, the figurines don't look too bad, and the CD's are great if you like the music a lot or want a behind-the-scenes look.

I can't say whether or not this is better or worse than past PC Civilization games, but I greatly enjoy it and would recommend anyone with a powerhouse of a computer try it out.

If you loved all previous CIV games, the limited edition is a no-brainer. I am also a miniatures collector, so probably the beautiful putter minis included mean a lot for me. Te box is great and the extra Soundtrack and DVD included are a great addition. The game itself lives up to its predecessors and absolutely revives the "one-more-turn-mom, please" syndrome I lived with in my teen ages, tough now it is more a "one-more-turn-honey, please" syndrome. IMHO, some previous editions were a bit more involving and I would have expected more of the influence and religious stuff from the past, but now influence is less determining than ever before and religion was totally removed (maybe a wise move in the world we live now).

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 18 reviews  3.7 out of 5 stars