Galactic Civilizations is a turn based strategy game that was released in early 2003 by Stardock. Dominate the galaxy either by waging war, advancing technology, having an advance culture, or with diplomacy.
Overview
Galactic Civilizations Overview
Galactic Civilizations is a turn based strategy sci-fi game for the PC. Galactic Civilizations takes place in space where players battle for dominion over the galaxy. The player can choose to dominate either with war, culture, diplomacy, or technology. The game could be rather complicated at first, but once figured out it has a great AI, and intense, strategy combat. Unfortunately the game does not support multiplayer, but does have a large modding community that keep the game changing and interesting.
Galactic Civilizations Screenshots
Galactic Civilizations Featured Video
Full Review
Galactic Civilizations Review
By, Eric Arevalo
Backdrop
.hack Part 1 Infection (Dot Hack) begins with a bang. Something disastrous happens to your character‘s real world friend, while innocently playing a 20 million-subscriber base, wildly popular online RPG game (MMORPG), The World. To unravel the mystery of your friend’s misfortune, you become an online, ingame rogue hacker, exploring every corner of The World, even some virus-infected ones.
The hero is armed with the special skills of Data Drain and Gate Hack, and some colorful, talented fellow adventurers to fill the two other available party slots. Different adventurers must accompany you depending on the plot‘s development. You have some control over the others in your party, including upgrading them through trades or gifts. You can play only a single class, Twin Blade. Other characters are from different classes, with varied strengths and weaknesses, from a mage type (Wavemaster) to a bully (Heavy Axeman).
Gameplay
Gameplay takes place in three principal areas – towns, fields, and dungeons. Towns house The World’s servers. There, the player can save the game, buy magic scrolls and useful and unique items, store items, buy equipment, and talk and trade with lots of other players in character online. One town has an unusual ranch to check out, a patent homage to an enduring feature of just about every Final Fantasy.
The town’s Chaos Gate provides instant teleportation to a particular wide-open Field, containing monster encounter hotspots, a mystical spring, treasure, and lots of mysterious food. You enter three distinct keywords, some known at the game‘s onset, and others learned through play. Whatever keywords are entered, the difficulty level of the destination is helpfully revealed. This prevents a low-level party from being massacred. Once the keywords are entered, you travel through the Chaos Gate. (You can enter specific keywords learned to continue the plot, do side quests, or do unlimited exploring. Or, you can instruct the Gate to enter random keywords, and take your chances. There‘s also an option to enter any keywords you wish from a word list.) Every Field houses a single Dungeon. The dungeons, where you spend much of the game fighting for your life, are not overly large in size, and always range between three and five average levels.
Many have compared Dot Hack to Phantasy Star Online Episode I and II (PSO) on the Gamecube. Let us gently discredit this. We feel Dot Hack has far better graphics than PSO. The Fields and Dungeons contain many colorful, over stylized backdrops and settings, including weather effects. Dot Hack’s monsters resemble the beautifully-drawn monsters of the later Final Fantasy’s. Dot Hack’s world is gigantic with a seeming infinite number of locations to explore. PSO’s world is relatively small, and plot is threadbare, with meaningless, though fun, side quests, which instill no enthusiasm in the player. Dot Hack’s plot is deep and complex, with each subplot advancing the story just a little bit further. (Remember though, the end of this game in no way comes close to wrapping up the story, to be completed in the three games to be released later this year.) One visual treat, however, was lifted directly from PSO – the cascading rings that accompany the teleportation of characters to and from different areas.
Combat
Dot Hack’s combat engine can best be described as modified real-time. Much like the action-RPG, Kingdom Hearts, button mashing can be effective to beat monsters. Monster combat icons appear as large yellow twirling landmarks. As you approach, the landmark dissolves, monsters come at you big-time, and, undoubtedly, players will feel a healthy adrenaline rush. Some of Dot Hack’s many monsters do not stand around waiting to be pummeled, rather some you need to catch. Dot Hack lets you turn combat almost into a turn-based affair. The player needs only to hit Triangle in the middle of battle to pause the game instantly. From there the player can give orders to the others in the party, anything from healing someone, reviving another, casting a spell, designating a target monster. Without jeopardizing your party from the hailstorm of monster blows, combat becomes a calmer, more strategic, experience. This will help the many action-challenged. Camera angles play a big role in successful combat. You must be facing a monster to do any damage. As in many games, manipulating opposing environmental elements, like fire vs. water, is a key to successful monster combat.
Dot Hack’s cyberspace setting provides a wealth of Wow-inducing outbursts. The Data Drain option in combat is a great example. When a monster’s approaches zero, the player can Data Drain to reduce a horrendous, gigantic steel robot, for example, into a sniveling, puny monster, easily defeated with a single blow. Data Drain always results in a nifty, rare item or essential Virus Cores so you can Gate Hack areas of The World now closed, but needing investigation. One bad side effect – if you defeat, a Data Drained monster, but a single experience point is earned. One REALLY bad side effect – if you Data Drain too often without giving the skill a rest, you may overload and explode. Game Over. In the case of Boss monsters, Data Drain works the same, but what remains is no sniveling puny monster, but a full-blooded slightly less tough monster. All of this makes for interesting and captivating combat, a large part of the game.
Fresh Features
Dot Hack is replete with new and interesting features that kept us riveted.
To start, the entire background and story of a real world gamer becoming a rascal hacker, penetrating deep into a virus-infected online game, is quite novel. Combine this with Dot Hack’s emulating the look and feel of an online game universe. (Message traffic on the web shows many gamers mistakenly believe Dot Hack is a real online MMORPG, along with monthly fees! No real Internet connection is required.)
Just like in the real word, Dot Hack replicates your excitement level when “New” appears before a popular forum or on your email screen. Some of the game involves receiving emails as the plot develops, as well as new, crucial information surfacing on The World’s Board. (Look out for emails challenging you to a strange game of Tag.) The online game world looks very familiar with a bunch of characters wandering around the game’s towns, with the ubiquitous balloon icons talking typical “trash” to each other, even criticizing “newbies“.
Combat grippingly called for surprisingly strategic decision-making to succeed, not related to the usual attack or defend choices. Do you go for experience and upgrade your character or try for some special equipment or a Virus Core, vital to Gate Hacking? The innovative control of other party members became second nature to us after some practice. The game rewards a player taking chances, like entering a Field or Dungeon rated 5 levels above the player’s current level. On the other hand, the game scoffed at players entering areas much lower rated the their current level, by awarding negligible experience points for victory.
Dot Hack takes progress reports to a new level, by slowly unlocking books that contain much in the way of statistics and information. There’s even a monster compendium with tips for defeating them.
Some might complain about the minimal “Save Game” ability, but we thrived on it. You explore a very hostile cyberspace environment without the facility to save. Only in a server-hosting town is saving possible at the local Recorder. We may be a solitary voice in the Wilderness, but we like this throwback to the good old RPG days. Those of you old enough to remember the Wizardry series, may recall those fingernail-biting multi-combat treks back to the Castle just to save the game. In case you’re really stuck deep in a dungeon, a common item will teleport you to the outdoor field, from where you can simply gate back to town from the command menu.
Many pieces of equipment come with distinctive powerful attack, healing, and status skills, essential to combat dominance. The player must tradeoff whether to equip something that will raise defense or offense or something less vigorous that lets you use a powerful skill. Trading is the most successful way to upgrade equipment.
In a first, Dot Hack comes with a 45 minute anime video. This gives some great background on what’s going on in The World, as well as provide clues for completing the game. In a nice twist, voiceovers for game speech can be set for Japanese or English presentation. Listening to the authentic Japanese voices really keeps you glued to the game.
Though some may scoff at what follows as meaningless, we liked the game’s unlocking of some nifty new “toys” to like, some only available when the game is cleared. You can unlock many different background music play lists. Tired of creepy tunes, just switch to something more upbeat, or futuristic. Just like real world gamers, who constantly change their desktop wallpaper, new and different wallpapers are unlocked along the way. Some are concept art of characters, while others are full blown anime renditions of the characters. This makes for great fun, and seems to pump additional energy into the game. As you progress over a dozen special cut scenes or movies will become viewable after defeating the game.
Though Dot Hack’s extras and new wrinkles enhance the RPG game experience, much of the gameplay will ring true to those who enjoy RPG‘s. Expect plenty of exploration in a huge 3D world, frequent monster combat, tons of treasure to earn and discover, upgrading your character’s weapons and armor, and needing to level before tackling pivotal story dungeons. The status screens for the characters and all equipment are well laid out and easy to grasp.
Time for Completion
Game length in hours always concerns many purchasers. A short RPG normally takes a lot of flack, and many online are asking about Dot Hack‘s time for completion. (Some have questioned whether Bandai should have released a single 80 hour game for $50, rather than four 20-hour games for $200 for a single story. This matter is beyond the scope of this review, but our high opinion of this game as a standalone is obvious.) Our experience, playing the plot without doing side quests or extra exploration, is in the 12 to 15-hour range. Players side-questing and extensively exploring, aside from the main plot, can expect to spend 25 hours to complete the game. You can even continue to advance your character, after game completion, to get a jump start on Part 2 due in May. In the next game, your character can be imported from Part 1.
Furthermore, imagine trying to explore every nook and cranny of the fields and dungeons accessible by a large number of 3-word combinations. Doing that would put the game in the 50-hour range, if not more. However, at a certain point, new items dry up, and a single experience point is earned for any defeated monster, no matter how tough.
Shortcomings
While, as is evident above, there is much to recommend in Dot Hack, certain concerns to varying degrees deserve mention.
From the “Why oh why did they leave this out?“ File. Pregame game board traffic and information about the Japanese version released months ago had many salivating for replaying the game in “parody” mode. This mode apparently converted all Dot Hack’s game world characters into satirical comedians. Sorry to say, this highly-anticipated feature is missing from the version released here.
The game requires massive amounts of button pressing. Every item or treasure uncovered from combat victories or exploration (opening chests, searching expired adventure remains, collecting food for Grunty’s, as examples) must be confirmed with a button press. When there could be 50-100 such occurrences in a single dungeon or field, over the course of the game, finger cramps seem inevitable. Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance also required lots of bashing for buried treasure and chests, but the items literally flew into your inventory, a much better way to handle this.
The manual is woefully terse and lacking in some crucial information and guidance. While the ingame tutorials fill in many of the gaps, one extremely important gameplay feature is missing from both the manual and tutorials – instructions on control your characters directly during combat.
Final Word
We got a kick out of Dot Hack. The feeling of “just one more dungeon” dominated our lives for the 3 days to completion. The engaging environment held our attention without much effort. The strategic nature of combat, plus the convoluted plot kept us going for hours on end. The constant unlocking of both frivolous and important gameplay features created a “what’s next” anticipation. Now, if I could only read Japanese better, Dot Hack Part 2 is already out in Japan!
Final Grade: B
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A NEW SPACE BASED STRATEGY GAME
Galactic Civilizations, a new 4X strategy game developed by Stardock and published by Strategy First has been released. It is a single player turned based strategy game that has many interesting qualities to its credit as well as some flaws. While Galactic Civilizations could have been better, many interesting features make this game worth suggesting. |
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THE STORY
Humans have finally discovered the means to journey to the stars. Scientists have developed a new and powerful technology, the “hyper-drive” which will allow humans to join the other alien civilizations in interstellar travel. This new technology will revolutionize interstellar travel to an extent never thought possible. Thinking that this will benefit not only the human race but all other alien civilizations that exist in the galaxy this new technology is shared with them as well. While this was very generous it may have proved a fatal mistake in humanity’s race to make their mark in the galaxy. Communications between all civilizations then abruptly stop. Now humans as well as the rest of the five other alien civilizations exploit this new technology to colonize and ultimately control the galaxy. Who will win the battle of supremacy that looms on the horizon, will humans become the victors or will they be defeated by the might of the others? |
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THE GAMEPLAY
Galactic Civilizations has huge replay value due to the many options that you can use in customizing the game. You can choose what political party you belong to which will award specific bonuses. Choose the war party and each of your ships will receive an extra 50 hit points. Choose the mercantile party and you will receive an additional 20 points in trade and espionage skills. Other parties offer their own unique bonuses and you will have to choose one of them carefully as it will affect certain conditions within the game. You can also choose the size of your galaxy, or how large the playing field will be, from a tiny galaxy that can be completed in an hour or more to a gigantic galaxy that can take weeks or even months to complete. There are five alien civilizations, each with their own agendas and characteristics that you will learn to appreciate. |
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The five alien civilizations include the Drengin Empire, Altarian Alliance, Arcean Imperium, Torian Confederation and Yor Collective. You can even customize whether the intelligence of these alien civilizations will be that of a fool or whether they have a vast and superior intelligence that will truly test your skills. You can decide their morality and whether they will be a good race or a vile race. I especially liked that players can tailor the difficulty of these opponents because not all players play the same way. This game will bring many options for playing in many different and unique ways. It is these intense details and options that make this such an intriguing game.
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You are part of the Terran Alliance, a human with the potential to pave the future as your actions will decide the fate of humanity. So much responsibility rests upon your shoulders that you will have to make wise decisions that will ensure victory. Victory in Galactic Civilizations can occur through military power which involves destroying all of your enemies, or through a political, cultural or technological victory. One of your main goals is to colonize as many worlds as possible. Not all of the worlds you will find will be suitable for colonizing and worlds you will come across will be ranked based on a scale of 20 different classes of planets, with one being the poorest up to 20 being the best. It is advised that you colonize planets, such as yellow stars, that are classified as 15 or higher as only they are suitable planets for colonizing and will yield the best results. You begin the game with a colony ship and a survey vessel.
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Your playing field, which is in the vast region of space, is presented adequately, and you will appreciate some of the detail that went into showing the planets, anomalies and other areas that you will encounter. The graphics tend to be simplistic and could have used some improvement but they do the job. The game uses a fog of war to hide much of the playing field and it is only uncovered as you move your ships into new and unexplored territory. Colony and survey vessels are very important. Your colony vessel will help you in colonizing suitable planets. Your survey vessel is the only ship that can explore anomalies on the map. Anomalies are occurrences in space such as worm holes and other strange phenomena that grant additional bonuses when you discover them. Eventually you can also build constructors which have the capability of producing star bases on resources, which can grant you additional abilities. You will need to carefully decide the technologies that are important to your civilization.
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Research technologies in defense theory, weapon theory, communication theory, industrial theory, propulsion theory and medical theory. Researching defense theory will allow you to build defenses that strengthen your ships and all planets under your control. Communication theory is also important because it will allow you to research the universal translator that you need to understand other alien species so that you can trade with them. Research into propulsion theory can aid your ships in traveling faster. Weapon theory will allow you to research powerful new weapons and ships. Many other surprises await you within each of these technologies and you will need to know which of them will aid your civilization the most. You may decide that you want to conduct trading with other civilizations. In order to trade within Galactic Civilizations you need to belong to the body of government known as the United Planets which passes laws that all those that belong to it must follow. Combat was also nice to see and it is determined by the statistics of each of the ships in battle, such as attack, hit points, and defense. This and much more await you as you pave the future for the human race in Galactic Civilizations.
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STANDING PROUDLY AMONG THEM
Stardock developed an interesting strategy game inGalactic Civilizations. Even more impressive is the support they are offering players through Metaverse, where players can post about their victories and defeats in the game. Stardock has already released a bonus pack that extends the gameplay experience and can be downloaded from the official web site. The artificial intelligence is another area that seems to have been done well and Stardock hopes that in the future they can simulate the AI to play like another human player based on player information posted on Metaverse. That the developers are doing this plus providing excellent support to their customers is to be commended. |
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A few things in this game could have used vast improvement. There is no excuse for the lack of an in-game tutorial. There is a survival guide of tips available as well as a basic walkthrough in the manual but that can never replace the need for an in-depth in-game tutorial as seen in many of these types of strategy games. The manual is also plagued with typos and mistakes such as mentioning the option of choosing Universalists as a political party in the game when in fact you can’t. The readme included with the game mentions this but even that does not tell you what two political parties were removed.
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I also would have appreciated some type of campaign that told the story of the struggle of the human race against the other five civilizations. They had beautiful cutscenes in the game when specific events occurred as well as excellent music that played in the background. I wish that they could have used the talents evident there to create a campaign that many players would have appreciated. I know they omitted a linear campaign in order to provide replayability through random events but I still would have liked a campaign or at least a better way to present the story. While not the best of the 4X space based strategy games out there, Galactic Civilizations still manages to stand proudly among them and will be one game that you will enjoy playing!
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