Galactic Civilizations II: Ultimate Edition - 20/20 hours

Well, it took me a day longer to complete this game than I thought it would, but that's mostly because I was crazy tired yesterday thanks to missing out on my usual bedtime. But that was a completely unrelated thing. Once I got some sleep and caught up on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (seriously, you should be watching that show), I was able to slip back into it no problem.

I didn't actually win a game in the last eight hours. I kept restarting my maps. I guess there was a point where I got tired of the expansion treadmill. Usually, I'd get so large that I had no security. NPC civilizations started building starbases and settling planets inside my cultural borders, and I would be all "what the fuck?! You're stealing my resources, you bastards!"

Obviously, the solution in these situations is to declare war, but . . . meh. That involves building a fleet, taking resources away from social development, and then having each of my turns take forever as I systematically hunt down enemy fleets (and don't get me started on GalCivII's planetary invasion mechanics - basically you have to dump hundreds of millions of your citizens onto single-use spaceships and hope the RNG goes your way). I've won military victories in the past, but I was not at all in the mood this time.

Overall, I'd say that Galactic Civilizations II is exactly the sort of game that I enjoy, but that over the years, I have acquired so many great games of this sort that I don't really have much need for it anymore. I'd much rather be playing Civilization V, or, if I'm more in the mood for space-opera, then Space Empires V, the Star Ruler games, or even Endless Space all take precedence. It's nothing about the game, per se. It's just that its particular mixture of elements is not quite balanced optimally towards my interests. You have to be too aggressive, micromanaging planets is nicely detailed, but the interface fights you, ship designing is cool, but your military hardware becomes obsolete so quickly that it's better to put it off until you're high up in the tech tree. I enjoyed myself playing the game, and I would have enjoyed it more once I got back into the habit of managing its economy, but I don't regret putting it back on the shelf and moving on.