At one point, Evoland 2 made me play Pong. I thought I understood the game's ambition before, but that was the moment it really sunk in - it really does intend to be every game. The Pong puzzle was just a simple match to five points, maybe a minute total in length, but it was eye-opening.
At first I was ambivalent about this variety-pack approach. I thought that the individual elements were too watered-down to really sustain a whole game in the long run - like, sure, there's a lot of stuff to do, but if it's all second-rate then all you're really doing is sitting through a second rate game for a couple dozen hours. However, I am now fully on-board with this project. I want it to go farther. Pull in more genres. When we found a new time portal, my demon companion, Menos, worried that it might take us to a hellish FPS world. And while I'm pretty sure it was a joke, I really do want Evoland 2 to go for it. It's triggered my hunger for excess now, and there's no way I'll be satisfied with less than everything.
Funnily enough, though, Evoland 2's best moments are when it's not imitating anything in particular. There was this forest dungeon where you had to solve puzzles by shifting between the game's three main time periods, with past, present, and future presenting different obstacles and resources (ie trees were smaller in the past, so you could get by them, but in the future certain enemies were dormant, etc). It's not something that would have felt out of place in a Legend of Zelda game, but it wasn't specifically referencing the series. Similarly, at one point, you fall into a temporal anomaly and there were puzzles where you got trapped in a time-loop and you and your duplicates had to hit switches to get out (and the solution to one of these puzzles was successively suiciding your time clones to "disarm" a series of deadly traps), and a couple of platforming sections where you had to rotate the stage 90 degrees from top-down to side-view, changing gravity in the process.
And as much as I've been enjoying Evoland 2's eclectic approach, I kind of want to play the game it might have been, if it were just a time-based, puzzle-driven adventure game. It's got these gimmicks of shifting art styles and a million and one gameplay references, but when it's not indulging them, it also has some flashes of genuine originality.
It's really confusing, to be honest. There's just so much to this game, and not all of it is "good," but even the less good parts contribute to the overall effect by being part of its over-the-top "let's throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" approach, but I also get the feeling that the game designers are talented enough that they could have made a more focused game and had it stand on its own, and do I even want a "gaming's greatest hits" anthology, and if I did, do I want it built around the skeleton of a game with its own promise, and heck, while I'm wishing for things, maybe the characters could be a little less bland, and . . . ARGH!
I don't know any more. Maybe Evoland 2 is a great game. Maybe it's a disjointed mess trying to get by on its sheer audacity (at one point, you see Mario, Link, and Bomberman waiting in line to talk to the game's oracle, which struck me as pretty cheeky). I don't, however, think the truth is somewhere in-between. Those are your two options.
Tuesday, July 4, 2017
Evoland 2 - 10 hours (14/20 total)
I may have to rethink my approach to Evoland 2. I'm really enjoying it, but I may have been under the misapprehension that it was game, instead of an unholy Frankenstein's monster made of stitched together pieces of games.
Don't get me wrong. This is Evoland 2's greatest strength. It is kind of delightful to go into a dungeon and not know in advance if it's going to be an homage to Legend of Zelda or Super Mario Brothers, to face a boss and not know if it's going to be like Secret of Mana or Street Fighter. However this wild smorgasbord approach to game design does come with a downside. Sometimes, you'll have a long, unskippable section of the game based on a bullet hell shooter and your player will have little experience with the genre, making it a frustrating slog that nearly causes him to throw away his controller in despair.
I mean, I got through it eventually, but it was not a time in my life that I'm going to relish on my deathbed.
I will say this, though. That section of the game caused me to change my mind about the shallow rpg-homage that makes up the bulk of Evoland 2. It was then that I finally realized that the goal here was to quote as many of the classics as possible. Sure enough, just a little later, I ran into a dungeon inspired by Bomberman and a boss fight in the style of Mega Man.
So, of course this game is not going to be as good a time-traveling rpg as Chrono Trigger, in the same way it was not as good a fighting game as Street Fighter or as good a shooter as, hell if I know, because I mostly don't play shooters. Time spent deepening and perfecting mechanics is time that could be spent referencing another game.
With that in mind, it's impressive that Evoland 2 is as polished as it turned out to be. All of its most memorable moments may be cribbed from other games, but they work. The controls are smooth and accurate. The art looks great. And aside from a couple of hiccups, where it's unclear about where you're supposed to go next, the plot is perfectly functional.
Whether the whole can transcend the sum of its parts remains to be seen, but it's clear to me now that the "parts" aren't just an afterthought. They are, in fact, the essence of the game. That will make Evoland 2 an impressive achievement, even if it winds up falling apart in the final half.
Don't get me wrong. This is Evoland 2's greatest strength. It is kind of delightful to go into a dungeon and not know in advance if it's going to be an homage to Legend of Zelda or Super Mario Brothers, to face a boss and not know if it's going to be like Secret of Mana or Street Fighter. However this wild smorgasbord approach to game design does come with a downside. Sometimes, you'll have a long, unskippable section of the game based on a bullet hell shooter and your player will have little experience with the genre, making it a frustrating slog that nearly causes him to throw away his controller in despair.
I mean, I got through it eventually, but it was not a time in my life that I'm going to relish on my deathbed.
I will say this, though. That section of the game caused me to change my mind about the shallow rpg-homage that makes up the bulk of Evoland 2. It was then that I finally realized that the goal here was to quote as many of the classics as possible. Sure enough, just a little later, I ran into a dungeon inspired by Bomberman and a boss fight in the style of Mega Man.
So, of course this game is not going to be as good a time-traveling rpg as Chrono Trigger, in the same way it was not as good a fighting game as Street Fighter or as good a shooter as, hell if I know, because I mostly don't play shooters. Time spent deepening and perfecting mechanics is time that could be spent referencing another game.
With that in mind, it's impressive that Evoland 2 is as polished as it turned out to be. All of its most memorable moments may be cribbed from other games, but they work. The controls are smooth and accurate. The art looks great. And aside from a couple of hiccups, where it's unclear about where you're supposed to go next, the plot is perfectly functional.
Whether the whole can transcend the sum of its parts remains to be seen, but it's clear to me now that the "parts" aren't just an afterthought. They are, in fact, the essence of the game. That will make Evoland 2 an impressive achievement, even if it winds up falling apart in the final half.
Monday, July 3, 2017
Evoland 2 - 4 hours (8/20 total)
Evoland 2 owes a lot to Chrono Trigger. The mechanics of time travel, the overall shape of the "we must save the future" plot and the presentation of the worldmap are spot-on recreations. But you know what, it's all right. Time travel is really the best possible use of the Evoland series' characteristic multiple graphical styles. The present uses run-of-the-mill indie-rpg 2D sprites, the future is full on 3D, and the past has a greatly simplified presentation (I believe there's a fourth time period, farther in the past, that is Game-Boy-era monochrome, but I haven't reached it.)
If you've played Chrono Trigger, you already know the game's plot - the present is a peaceful time under the rule of a prosperous and benevolent kingdom, but a few generations ago the antecedents of that kingdom waged a brutal war against a race of occult creatures. The game begins when the main characters discover a particular location that has the strange property of connecting two different time periods. The party then travels to a distopian future where large numbers of people have been slaughtered by a mysterious "destroyer" and they resolve to figure out the secret of the time portals and use them to change the future.
It's probably impossible to write a time-travel-themed rpg and not at least reference Chrono Trigger, but man, there are so many callbacks - you get thrown in prison early on in the game, there's a corrupt rich guy you need to manipulate for a key item, the bridge between human and demon territory plays a prominent role in the plot, the food of the future is bland and unfulfilling. I don't know how many of these are deliberate references and how many are just coincidence, but I get a deep sense of familiarity playing this game.
Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The only problem is that Chrono Trigger is already the goofy, free-wheeling version of Chrono Trigger. Evoland 2 has its funny moments, but nothing as memorable and weird as "am I butterfly dreaming I'm a man or a bowling ball dreaming I'm a plate of sashimi?"
I don't mean to be a curmudgeon here. I get that the Evoland series is trying to be a casual-playing scrapbook of the history of the rpg genre. And when the idea works, it really works. I really liked the Diablo dungeon in the first game. However, at other times, the games' referrences are incredibly shallow. In the first game, you meet a guy named "Sid" who gives you an airship, during the second game's mandatory stealth sequence, you have to sneak around in a cardboard box, the main town in the second game is called "Genova." I'm certainly reminded of games I've loved in the past, but . . . then what?
Luckily, Evoland 2 is a fun game in its own right. It's a Zelda-esque adventure game with dungeon puzzles, collectible special abilities, and simple real-time combat. Games of that sort never really needed anything more than the barest skeleton of a plot. Just a series of excuses to go dungeons, solve puzzles, and fight monsters. For that purpose, a bunch of pop-culture references centered around some bland, but likable characters is good enough.
If you've played Chrono Trigger, you already know the game's plot - the present is a peaceful time under the rule of a prosperous and benevolent kingdom, but a few generations ago the antecedents of that kingdom waged a brutal war against a race of occult creatures. The game begins when the main characters discover a particular location that has the strange property of connecting two different time periods. The party then travels to a distopian future where large numbers of people have been slaughtered by a mysterious "destroyer" and they resolve to figure out the secret of the time portals and use them to change the future.
It's probably impossible to write a time-travel-themed rpg and not at least reference Chrono Trigger, but man, there are so many callbacks - you get thrown in prison early on in the game, there's a corrupt rich guy you need to manipulate for a key item, the bridge between human and demon territory plays a prominent role in the plot, the food of the future is bland and unfulfilling. I don't know how many of these are deliberate references and how many are just coincidence, but I get a deep sense of familiarity playing this game.
Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The only problem is that Chrono Trigger is already the goofy, free-wheeling version of Chrono Trigger. Evoland 2 has its funny moments, but nothing as memorable and weird as "am I butterfly dreaming I'm a man or a bowling ball dreaming I'm a plate of sashimi?"
I don't mean to be a curmudgeon here. I get that the Evoland series is trying to be a casual-playing scrapbook of the history of the rpg genre. And when the idea works, it really works. I really liked the Diablo dungeon in the first game. However, at other times, the games' referrences are incredibly shallow. In the first game, you meet a guy named "Sid" who gives you an airship, during the second game's mandatory stealth sequence, you have to sneak around in a cardboard box, the main town in the second game is called "Genova." I'm certainly reminded of games I've loved in the past, but . . . then what?
Luckily, Evoland 2 is a fun game in its own right. It's a Zelda-esque adventure game with dungeon puzzles, collectible special abilities, and simple real-time combat. Games of that sort never really needed anything more than the barest skeleton of a plot. Just a series of excuses to go dungeons, solve puzzles, and fight monsters. For that purpose, a bunch of pop-culture references centered around some bland, but likable characters is good enough.
Sunday, July 2, 2017
Evoland - 4/20 hours
I'm a little annoyed with this game. It wouldn't recognize my controller at first. So I searched online and found that to fix the problem, you've got to run the game in Windows 7 compatibility mode. Fair enough. However, upon doing so, I discovered that it stopped tracking my time in Steam. You'll just have to trust me when I say I've got a bit more than four hours into this game (it may even be as many as 5).
With that out of the way, I've beaten Evoland. Turns out all the trouble was the fault of this demon-looking guy named Zephyrous. Not that I found this out until the last dungeon, where he just came out of nowhere and claimed responsibility for the game' plot.
Taken on its own terms, Evoland's story was pretty weak overall. I'm not even going to summarize it. Suffice to say - bad stuff happens, you get an amulet, you take the amulet to a place, you fight a villain at the place, and then the bad stuff presumably stops (it never does say explicitly, though). However, I'm something like 95% sure that the weakness of the game's story was entirely intentional.
It doesn't quite rise to the point where game is winking at the player, saying "see, we did this shitty thing on purpose because it's funny." In fact, I'm not sure the plot is meant to be funny at all. I think that it was meant to simply give a broad-stroke impression of the genre as a whole. Much as the progression of graphics and mechanics was meant to evoke the history of rpgs, the story was meant to be the most rpg-est rpg story to ever be conceived.
Just as there was a dungeon that played like a low-fi version of Diablo and a dungeon that was a simplified version of Legend of Zelda and an overworld that was reminiscent of a scaled down Final Fantasy, so you also had story beats that felt like references to other games, stripped of their complexity and depth.
I can't say that I liked it, exactly. It was fine. A parody would have had more teeth. Plagiarism would have tried to capture more of the originals' context. Evoland tended to fall into the murky middle-ground in-between. Let's call its story a "slideshow of homages." Since I enjoyed the originals, I felt a certain degree of pleasure in the recognition, but I wish they'd done more with them.
I don't mean to be too down on the game, though. There were quite a few extraordinary moments, (mostly when the game was switching between technologies) and it's obvious that a lot of pride and care went into the making of the game. For me, it never rose above the level of a curiosity, but a well-done curiosity is something people will pay money to see. And Evoland is no exception. I'm glad I played it.
With that out of the way, I've beaten Evoland. Turns out all the trouble was the fault of this demon-looking guy named Zephyrous. Not that I found this out until the last dungeon, where he just came out of nowhere and claimed responsibility for the game' plot.
Taken on its own terms, Evoland's story was pretty weak overall. I'm not even going to summarize it. Suffice to say - bad stuff happens, you get an amulet, you take the amulet to a place, you fight a villain at the place, and then the bad stuff presumably stops (it never does say explicitly, though). However, I'm something like 95% sure that the weakness of the game's story was entirely intentional.
It doesn't quite rise to the point where game is winking at the player, saying "see, we did this shitty thing on purpose because it's funny." In fact, I'm not sure the plot is meant to be funny at all. I think that it was meant to simply give a broad-stroke impression of the genre as a whole. Much as the progression of graphics and mechanics was meant to evoke the history of rpgs, the story was meant to be the most rpg-est rpg story to ever be conceived.
Just as there was a dungeon that played like a low-fi version of Diablo and a dungeon that was a simplified version of Legend of Zelda and an overworld that was reminiscent of a scaled down Final Fantasy, so you also had story beats that felt like references to other games, stripped of their complexity and depth.
I can't say that I liked it, exactly. It was fine. A parody would have had more teeth. Plagiarism would have tried to capture more of the originals' context. Evoland tended to fall into the murky middle-ground in-between. Let's call its story a "slideshow of homages." Since I enjoyed the originals, I felt a certain degree of pleasure in the recognition, but I wish they'd done more with them.
I don't mean to be too down on the game, though. There were quite a few extraordinary moments, (mostly when the game was switching between technologies) and it's obvious that a lot of pride and care went into the making of the game. For me, it never rose above the level of a curiosity, but a well-done curiosity is something people will pay money to see. And Evoland is no exception. I'm glad I played it.
Evoland - 2/20 hours
Evoland is an easy game to play. It doesn't take up a lot of my headspace. There's not some great challenge to it. I don't have to wrack my brain to solve its puzzles or carefully hone my reflexes to survive its battles. It's just a simple slice of rpg-adventure gaming that is so thoroughly familiar I could play it on autopilot.
I will say, though, even for a genre send-up, the story is not very well constructed. It's self-aware about the fact that it is using The Basic RPG Plot - go to places, kill monsters, collect geegaws, thwart some nebulous evil - but it doesn't doesn't seem to want to do the work to establish the stakes, create memorable characters, or flesh out the world. It's as if it's relying purely on its evolving graphics gimmick to sustain the player's interest.
And to be fair, it's a pretty fun gimmick. All of your different graphics and gameplay upgrades are presented as treasure to be found in the world. You find a treasure chest, open it and BAM you go from black and white to color or from 2D to 3D. Seeing the world transform around you and returning to previous locations to see the same area rendered in different styles is damned cool. I probably would have preferred it if there was some story significance to the game's graphical evolution, but it's still pretty neat that the game gets prettier as time goes on.
I'm withholding judgement until I see the end of the story, but so far Evoland strikes me as one of the weaker comedy rpgs. I've been smiling a lot in the course of playing it, but I haven't laughed as much as I did in Half Minute Hero or Cthulhu Saves the World.
Those complaints are pretty much nitpicks, though. I'm enjoying the game, and that's enough.
I will say, though, even for a genre send-up, the story is not very well constructed. It's self-aware about the fact that it is using The Basic RPG Plot - go to places, kill monsters, collect geegaws, thwart some nebulous evil - but it doesn't doesn't seem to want to do the work to establish the stakes, create memorable characters, or flesh out the world. It's as if it's relying purely on its evolving graphics gimmick to sustain the player's interest.
And to be fair, it's a pretty fun gimmick. All of your different graphics and gameplay upgrades are presented as treasure to be found in the world. You find a treasure chest, open it and BAM you go from black and white to color or from 2D to 3D. Seeing the world transform around you and returning to previous locations to see the same area rendered in different styles is damned cool. I probably would have preferred it if there was some story significance to the game's graphical evolution, but it's still pretty neat that the game gets prettier as time goes on.
I'm withholding judgement until I see the end of the story, but so far Evoland strikes me as one of the weaker comedy rpgs. I've been smiling a lot in the course of playing it, but I haven't laughed as much as I did in Half Minute Hero or Cthulhu Saves the World.
Those complaints are pretty much nitpicks, though. I'm enjoying the game, and that's enough.
Evoland & Evoland 2 - Initial Thoughts
About the Game (From the Steam Store Page)
Evoland
Evoland is a journey through the history of action/adventure gaming, allowing you to unlock new technologies, gameplay systems and graphic upgrades as you progress through the game. Inspired by many cult series that have left their mark in the RPG video gaming culture, Evoland takes you from monochrome to full 3D graphics and from active time battles to real time boss fights, all with plenty of humor and references to many classic games.
Evoland 2
Evoland 2 graphics style is changing as you travel through time and its gameplay evolves as you move along the storyline. It is also a real RPG at heart, with a deep scenario based on time travel: explore different eras and change the history of the world. But are you sure that the consequences will not make things worse?
Full of humor and references to classic games, the aptly named Evoland 2, A Slight Case of Spacetime Continuum Disorder brings a truly epic and extraordinary adventure, unlike anything you’ve ever played before!
Previous Playtime
0 hours
What Was I Thinking When I Bought This
With the first Evoland, I thought the premise was pretty cute. As you advance in the game, the graphics style becomes more modern. Since I've been playing rpgs since the original Final Fantasy on the NES, it looked like a fun little romp through my childhood nostalgia.
My thought when buying Evoland 2 was, "oh shit, all these Evoland reviews have less than 6 hours, and I don't necessarily want to play the game four times in a row, oh, it has a sequel, maybe I could play the two games together and still keep a shred of my integrity . . ."
I always feel a little disingenuous when I bundle games together, as if I'm trying to skirt around the edges of my self-imposed goal. Then I remember that I played 20 hours of Sakura Spirit and give myself permission to fudge the numbers just a little bit. And seeing as how I explicitly bought Evoland 2 for no reason other than to bundle it with Evoland, it feels mostly legitimate to me.
Expectations and Prior Experience
I'm going in mostly blind, with only the store page screenshots to judge by, but it looks like I've played a lot of the sort of games Evoland is parodying and I've always enjoyed them. I don't think I'm going to have any problem getting to 20 hours on these two.
That being said, the expanded scope and ambition of Evoland 2 reminds me a bit of the Half Minute Hero series, where you had the first game with a fun original idea and then a second game that took itself way to seriously and lost track of what made the first game great. I have no reason to think Evoland 2 has fallen into that particular trap, but if I'm being pessimistic I have to acknowledge it as a possibility.
It will probably still be fun, though. It's possible to make a console-jrpg-inspired game that is a massive slog, but I feel like the flaws and pitfalls of the genre have been so thoroughly investigated over the years that you'd have to be deliberately oblivious to not design around them.
Evoland
Evoland is a journey through the history of action/adventure gaming, allowing you to unlock new technologies, gameplay systems and graphic upgrades as you progress through the game. Inspired by many cult series that have left their mark in the RPG video gaming culture, Evoland takes you from monochrome to full 3D graphics and from active time battles to real time boss fights, all with plenty of humor and references to many classic games.
Evoland 2
Evoland 2 graphics style is changing as you travel through time and its gameplay evolves as you move along the storyline. It is also a real RPG at heart, with a deep scenario based on time travel: explore different eras and change the history of the world. But are you sure that the consequences will not make things worse?
Full of humor and references to classic games, the aptly named Evoland 2, A Slight Case of Spacetime Continuum Disorder brings a truly epic and extraordinary adventure, unlike anything you’ve ever played before!
Previous Playtime
0 hours
What Was I Thinking When I Bought This
With the first Evoland, I thought the premise was pretty cute. As you advance in the game, the graphics style becomes more modern. Since I've been playing rpgs since the original Final Fantasy on the NES, it looked like a fun little romp through my childhood nostalgia.
My thought when buying Evoland 2 was, "oh shit, all these Evoland reviews have less than 6 hours, and I don't necessarily want to play the game four times in a row, oh, it has a sequel, maybe I could play the two games together and still keep a shred of my integrity . . ."
I always feel a little disingenuous when I bundle games together, as if I'm trying to skirt around the edges of my self-imposed goal. Then I remember that I played 20 hours of Sakura Spirit and give myself permission to fudge the numbers just a little bit. And seeing as how I explicitly bought Evoland 2 for no reason other than to bundle it with Evoland, it feels mostly legitimate to me.
Expectations and Prior Experience
I'm going in mostly blind, with only the store page screenshots to judge by, but it looks like I've played a lot of the sort of games Evoland is parodying and I've always enjoyed them. I don't think I'm going to have any problem getting to 20 hours on these two.
That being said, the expanded scope and ambition of Evoland 2 reminds me a bit of the Half Minute Hero series, where you had the first game with a fun original idea and then a second game that took itself way to seriously and lost track of what made the first game great. I have no reason to think Evoland 2 has fallen into that particular trap, but if I'm being pessimistic I have to acknowledge it as a possibility.
It will probably still be fun, though. It's possible to make a console-jrpg-inspired game that is a massive slog, but I feel like the flaws and pitfalls of the genre have been so thoroughly investigated over the years that you'd have to be deliberately oblivious to not design around them.
Saturday, July 1, 2017
Sid Meier's Civilization VI - 20/20 hours
The civics tree in this game is, indeed, something I could write a whole meandering post about. It exemplifies the main flaw of the Civilization series, one so deeply baked into the game's design that it would be unrecognizable without - the notion that history is like an arrow pointing forward and that societies can be grouped based on how far "ahead" or "behind" they are of each other.
It's a blatant ideological assumption that is both made obvious and rendered absurd by splitting off the "social technologies" from the main tech tree. The last thing you can research on the civics tree is "Social Media." And given that the structure of the tree is such that you can't get to the end without first researching a bunch of interlocking prerequisites, it kind of implies that social media is the inevitable and culminating outcome of thousands of years of political and philosophical thought.
It's silly, really. Which is a shame because it's actually a good basic idea. A big problem with, say, Endless Space's four-directional tech tree or Fallen Enchantress's three separate tech trees is that though they allow players to potentially focus their research and become stronger in their areas of particular interest, all of the different directions compete for the same resource, and thus the most efficient path is almost always to spread out your research and only occasionally beeline for the more expensive techs when getting them early would give you a significant advantage. Civilization VI's culture system forestalls that by requiring significant separate infrastructure investments for each of your main branches of research. It would be interesting to see that sort of thing taken overboard and combined with a tech tree as complicates as Space Empires V's.
But I've said too much already. By now "Civilization presents itself as a simple board game but actually has some surprisingly sinister ideological assumptions behind its mechanics" is a quotidian observation. I'll just say that I love the series in spite of all that and have long since accepted its absurdities as the price I have to bay for all that sweet turn-based grid-filling action.
It's a little sad to move on from Civilization VI a mere three days after I started. I could easily play this game for another hundred hours at least. It's definitely starting to grow on me, despite the AI declaring wars that make no sense, the way certain tooltips inadvertently overlap to make some information virtually unreadable and a city-state system that's a step up from Civilization V, but still in need of a few tweaks to make it a truly compelling alternate avenue of power.
However, as much as I've enjoyed myself these last couple of days, I'm also aware of the fact that this is one of those games that's going to be dramatically improved five years from now. So much so that it was probably foolish of me to buy it so soon. However, I like to think that my purchase will be counted as a vote to make an expansion pack. The basic foundation of the game is really good, and I'm excited to see what the designers are going to do with it.
In the meantime, it's been good for my morale to have a game that I could clear in less than a week. My goal is to be done with the blog by June 21, 2018 and at the rate I've been going, I should just barely squeeze in under the wire. I'm hoping that I've got a few more games as addictive as Civilization VI to help me get ahead of the curve.
It's a blatant ideological assumption that is both made obvious and rendered absurd by splitting off the "social technologies" from the main tech tree. The last thing you can research on the civics tree is "Social Media." And given that the structure of the tree is such that you can't get to the end without first researching a bunch of interlocking prerequisites, it kind of implies that social media is the inevitable and culminating outcome of thousands of years of political and philosophical thought.
It's silly, really. Which is a shame because it's actually a good basic idea. A big problem with, say, Endless Space's four-directional tech tree or Fallen Enchantress's three separate tech trees is that though they allow players to potentially focus their research and become stronger in their areas of particular interest, all of the different directions compete for the same resource, and thus the most efficient path is almost always to spread out your research and only occasionally beeline for the more expensive techs when getting them early would give you a significant advantage. Civilization VI's culture system forestalls that by requiring significant separate infrastructure investments for each of your main branches of research. It would be interesting to see that sort of thing taken overboard and combined with a tech tree as complicates as Space Empires V's.
But I've said too much already. By now "Civilization presents itself as a simple board game but actually has some surprisingly sinister ideological assumptions behind its mechanics" is a quotidian observation. I'll just say that I love the series in spite of all that and have long since accepted its absurdities as the price I have to bay for all that sweet turn-based grid-filling action.
It's a little sad to move on from Civilization VI a mere three days after I started. I could easily play this game for another hundred hours at least. It's definitely starting to grow on me, despite the AI declaring wars that make no sense, the way certain tooltips inadvertently overlap to make some information virtually unreadable and a city-state system that's a step up from Civilization V, but still in need of a few tweaks to make it a truly compelling alternate avenue of power.
However, as much as I've enjoyed myself these last couple of days, I'm also aware of the fact that this is one of those games that's going to be dramatically improved five years from now. So much so that it was probably foolish of me to buy it so soon. However, I like to think that my purchase will be counted as a vote to make an expansion pack. The basic foundation of the game is really good, and I'm excited to see what the designers are going to do with it.
In the meantime, it's been good for my morale to have a game that I could clear in less than a week. My goal is to be done with the blog by June 21, 2018 and at the rate I've been going, I should just barely squeeze in under the wire. I'm hoping that I've got a few more games as addictive as Civilization VI to help me get ahead of the curve.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)