Recent reviews by cruise13

TL;DR 9.5/10 A great game!

I've been hooked on Civ since the first one came out many years ago (granted, I wasn't good then -- maybe even now). But the "just one more turn" feeling of this series of games really captured me. If you like the turn-based strategy game, Civ V is a good one. Be aware, I play this only in single player mode.

Some observations for Civ V:

1. In Civ 4, you don't need to build everything in each city. In fact, a good strategy is to have cities that focus on a particular build. Here in Civ V, you have to build every building to enable some National Wonders, which means you're probably going to build most buildings in all your cities. I feel like this is the wrong choice for Civ V.
   
2. The Global Happiness mechanic severely cripples warmongering. If you're planning to win by domination, you'll have to plan for this accordingly -- and happiness resources are mostly random on the map.
   
3. Religion and culture mechanics are cool but they do add more balls to juggle. You have to manage faith at the start or you won't get religion -- which is a handicap unless you're prepared for it and your neighbor's religion choices are good. In the late game, the archaeologist searching for artifacts requires micro-management. When you have 15+ archaeologists scouring the globe for artifacts, it's hard to tell which ones are going where.
   
4. I still don't get why we can't have in-game notes in Civ V. When I'm planning a long-term strategy on Turn 2, I should be able to consult my in-game notes on Turn 145 so that I can get the feeling of "WTF was I thinking on Turn 2?"
   
5. The diplomacy triggers isn't so good here. I've been called a warmonger when I don't think that's called for -- AIs take more cities and I'm the warmonger? I also think the number of turns for keeping promises and agreements doesn't make sense, given the total number of turns in a game. For promises there's no way to tell when the turn will be up (or maybe I just don't know where to look?). So if you promised not to settle lands near some guy, you might miss the note that this promise can now be broken.
   
6. A tip for beginning players is to lock their citizens on tiles and put their cities on production -- to take advantage of the fact that food is calculated first before hammers. This means a new citizen that is added if food amount is enough will add to the production. Civ V is already a nightmare for micro-management -- this is just poor game design.

You'll notice that most of these observations (critiques, mostly) are about specific mechanics. Don't let that fool you, as I do think it's a very good game. The fact that I can nitpick is a positive here. It means the structure of the game is mostly great, otherwise I would criticize broader aspects of the game.

TL;DR 7.0/10

This is a good game for Magic: the Gathering beginners and those who just want to waste time playing MtG. There are some problems with multiplayer (occasional issues, but not game-breaking) and minor bugs with some cards (which can make you lose some games you would have otherwise won). Don't play this if you're trying to go pro or doing the tournament circuit -- it may mess up your competitive edge.

I would have to say though, that WotC is discontinuing support for this -- this may have an effect on your decision to buy packs in-game. I did get all the cards without spending real dime, but this requires a lot of grinding.