Recent reviews by [DFC] Chuck

This game's best unique feature is probably it's lobby system. The lobby system hasn't been done like this in any other game, as far as I'm aware. You're sent to what looks like a sprite style game mode where you can walk around on a small town map. You can interact with, and fight other players you find here. Treasure chests sometimes appear, and you can pick them up. During the 10 second window after you start interacting with the chest, another player can challenge you for the chest's contents. You can gain currency called Salt, which you can use to buy hats and other customizations for your lobby character. The shop is located in the town map your character walks around on.

The best thing about the lobby is the "Salt Mines" lobby game. It's sort of like a PvE dungeon exploration salt collecting game that gradually adds more elements of horror as time goes on. Players in the mine try to explore and mine salt, while avoiding or fighting cpu predators in the game. The predators get more difficult as time passes. At the final stage of the salt mine mode, the player who has gathered the most salt becomes a predator character with a ton of health that scales to the number of players, and gets to hunt down all the players currently in the mine. Meanwhile, the players have to navigate their way through almost-complete darkness in the mines. This turns the last stage of the Salt Mines into a surprisingly good asymmetrical horror game. At the end of the round, everyone gets a certain amount of salt, which can be used to buy cosmetics for use in the lobby. If you get knocked out before the end stage, then you can spend salt to re-enter the mine.

While the cast of characters isn't the biggest here, each character is radically different from each other. They all have unique mechanics. Even the way characters build up their magic gauge for special attacks is different from character to character. Arizona needs to use her lasso to grab an opposing character in order to get magic charges, while Oleander needs to sit and study her book in order to gain magic, and there are other characters that just passively gain magic over time. What makes it slightly easier to learn the characters is that each character has a small number of universal inputs, like a simple combo string, that the player can learn to add on to.

The 4x genre isn't the most populated genre out there. There aren't necessarily a whole bunch of games being published in it every single year. Still, in this genre there are a few franchises that are household names, and are known for being shining examples of it. Galactic Civilizations is one of those franchises.

GalCiv 3 probably has the most DLC and expansion packs out of all the other games in the franchise. It's also still getting patches and updates, despite first being released a number of years ago.

There are differences between GalCiv 3 and 2. It's not exactly true that 3 is better in all respects than 2. It's just different in a lot of ways. The way you build troop transports to do planetary invasions is different than in 2, as is the way constructors and starbases work.

This isn't a game you'll blaze through in a week or three, only to toss it out in favour of the next 4x game that'll come out soon. These games are made to last.

If you get this, I can say that you'll get a 4x game that's a strong example of the games in it's genre. It's got a good story, but not necessarily the best in-game way of telling it. It's got a bunch of very different races and tech trees in it. It also has the ability to mod tons of different custom races and ship designs in it. You'll get your money's worth, I'm sure.