Recent reviews by TwilightDragon

It's Civ 5 in space.

As many have said, this is the game No Man's Sky should have been. It's also a fraction of the price. This is a superb example of early access done right. The game has plenty to do already and is updated on a regular basis. My only real complaint is it does have a bit of a learning curve, but it is definitely worth overcoming. It even has multiplayer so you can experience galactic survival with friends. It can be a grind at times, but the moment you're in the thick of battle against that pesky Epsilon base, tearing it apart in a ship you built with your own two hands, it's one of the most satisfying experiences in gaming I've had in years.

If you like action, adventure, survival, and/or sandbox this is definitely worth your time.
9/10

So, after playing for a couple days I can give this game a proper review. It won't be pretty.

I'll start off by saying the amount of bugs in this game is atrocious. I have had:

-Frame rate drops after playing for a while, requiring a restart to fix (has happened 10+ times)
-Glitched holes in the terrain I have fallen through (not a feature, literal tears in the terrain) required a restart
-Mislabelled resources (see my screenshot, an Emeril vein was labelled as Heridium from space)
-My ship's phase beam got stuck on when I landed once
-About 3 random crashes
-Numerous other minor bugs (such as "floating" ships)

The game is in general, not fun. You'll be spending most of your time looking for resources to upgrade your exosuit/ship/multitool but expect to search for hours on end before you find that one Iridium vein that won't even give you enough resources to upgrade your cannon. Oh, and you probably won't even have inventory space for it. Want a new ship? Have fun mining for hours on end to save up the millions of units you'll need for a ship that looks like it would be more at home underwater than in space.

There does seem to have some sort of "story" but it's simply not interesting enough, has little to no discernable effect on gameplay and just seemed to have been shoehorned in there at the last minutes. So far it just seems to be "warp 4 times to get to space station A so you can talk to a rock, warp 5 times to get to space station B so you can talk to a rock, warp 7 times to get to space station C so you can talk to a rock.." seeing a pattern?

The randomly generated worlds are somewhat interesting but get you'll see similarities in geology, flora and fauna very quickly. The planets are also in general quite dull. Where are all the cities? All you'll find is small outposts here and there, with the occasional alien ruin or crashed ship.

The only part that I can say is fun are the space battles, but expect to get your butt kicked. Oh, you were trying to help that freighter fend off pirates? Too bad you accidentally shot it in the crossfire and now it's shooting at you. And if you do fight back, expect to sentinels; the intergalactic police, to come and take you down.


Boring, repeatative, buggy, unsatisfying game. Avoid.

I had an ice factory catch on fire. 69/10.

No, but seriously. I have played a lot of city sims in my day (Simcity, Tropico, CitiesXL, etc) and I can say this is the best I have played. While the game may be hard to wrap your head around at first (the game does a poor job introducing you, and there doesn't seem to be any real tutorial) once you start learning how to create your districts, city blocks, highway systems, services, mass transit, etc. the game really starts to take off in sheer size and scope. The maps are huge and could easily take you weeks to fill out with a single city. It's a far cry from the tiny 'districts' from the latest Simcity. The mechanics, such as placing buildings and infrastructure, are intuitive and easy to use for the most part (the transit lines could use a bit of work), and rarely did I have to wonder "why can't I place this here" or "why isn't this working?". The amount of in-game content for your city is also quite robust, and the ability to download additional content via the workshop lets you add even more.

This is a rock solid city builder that any fan of city sims or simulation games in general needs to own.
9/10

In it's current state, I simply cannot recommend this. Being an RCT vet, playing all the previous games, I was very happy to learn that they were releasing a reboot to this franchise that I hold dear. While I do still have some hope that this will be a great game at full release (assuming it doesn't get stuck in pre-release limbo), the game has too many problems right now, ranging from very bad staff AI to terrain sculpting bugs, lack of customization for rides and coasters, to very barebones instructions for what you have to do.

The one somewhat redeemable feature is the coaster builder. After some headaches figuring out how to use it (again, the game does not explain very well how to do so), I was able to build a pretty sweet coaster looping around a lake with plenty of inversions, loops, and the like.

If they can get the AI fixed and bring back all the customization for rides from the previous games, this could still be a good game. Then again, maybe that's why they added mod support.

Anyway, it's at most a 4/10 right now. Save your money for now.

This expansion adds quite a bit to Civ:BE, the biggest part obviously being greatly enhanced aquatic gameplay. Oceans are no longer a barrier to expansion, but an entirely new frontier with the addition of aquatic resources and ocean cities. It feels completely natural and something that should have been in the game to begin with. There's submarines and melee naval units now too, along with hybrid affinity units, which are all pretty sweet.

The main downside, and this seems to be a universal complaint, is they really messed diplomacy up. You can't trade resources, energy, etc. anymore, instead diplomacy is mostly done through agreements, which the AI hardly ever agrees to anyway.

Still, a good expansion overall. If you liked BE but wanted more, or are looking for a reason to give BE another try, this expansion may do it for you.

7/10

5 hours in and I'm already hooked. Civ5 players should feel right at home after they get used to the new changes. Yes, you can clearly tell it was built straight from civ5 rather than a new game altogether, but 50$ is definitely worth it if you are a civ fan. (in comparison, BNW was 30$ as I recall, and that was just an expansion.) There is a robust game here that, while it feels like civ5, is different enough that it also feels like a new game.

8.5/10 overall. Get your "Just.. One.. More.. Turn.." on!