I was rather looking forward to this. Although I’ve played
Civilization: Revolution for the PS3 the last ‘proper’ Civ I’d played was Civ
II for the original Playstation, which released in 1999.
As preparation I cunningly watched quill18’s excellent mini-series
on Youtube (it’s well worth a look), and then completed the tutorial, which was
rather more forgiving than I deserved.
Then I cracked on as Rome. At the time of writing I’ve
probably played an hour and a halfish of my first game.
The basics are mostly intuitive, although it took me a
little while to realise that clicking on a city first selects the unit on that
square (and units, excepting siege/settlers, don’t appear to stack) and you
need to press up or down on the d-pad to select the city. One thing missing is
a straightforward toggle between the cities. Not a problem early on but I’m
guessing that could be irksome late on in a massive game.
The housing and amenities stuff is a little bit over my head right now, but I'm sure I'll get the mechanics down after a game or two.
All the combat stuff is basic but sensible, with
bonuses/penalties based on terrain, damage, and policies (which are very simple
to set and change).
The art style is cartoony but works fine, although the
pedant in me has to point out that Victoria was a British not an English queen
(Elizabeth I would’ve been a better choice).
When it comes to the perennial PS4 problem of noise due to
insufficient cooling, there’s a little bit but it’s nowhere near the jet engine
certain other games produce.
One problem others may face (which I learnt via the
Multiplayer Media Youtube channel) is that screens sometimes eat the edges. Which
is a huge problem if that affects you here because critical info is on the
edges of the screen. You’ll need to satisfy yourself that isn’t the case, or
have a tricky time of things. Multiplayer may or may not be functional, but as
I’m a solo player that’s not a problem for me.
I’m enjoying it a lot so far. Even being acutely aware of
the time, I found myself losing an hour or so before getting ready to leave the
game (currently, Qin and Gilgamesh like me, and Cleopatra’s being a bit of a
bitch). I’ve already managed to bugger up one city’s location (although Ravenna’s
looking good). Incidentally, renaming cities can be done by entering the screen
with all the housing/happiness info and tapping triangle. Units can also be
renamed but do need to get two promotions first.
Bit of a learning curve right now, which I expected. On Prince,
the standard difficulty, things seem decent enough for someone who does have
outdated experience of the series.
The loading time (standard map size) was not very long,
which was another pleasant surprise.
All in all, I’m liking it a lot, minor quibbles
notwithstanding.
Thaddeus
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