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Civilization 2: Test of Time - PC
Additional Details
Product information
ASIN | B00000K4DV |
---|---|
Customer Reviews |
3.8 out of 5 stars |
Best Sellers Rank | #121,894 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games) #4,865 in PC-compatible Games |
Product Dimensions | 7.6 x 5.3 x 1.4 inches; 2.47 ounces |
Type of item | Video Game |
Rated | Everyone |
Item model number | 99548 |
Is Discontinued By Manufacturer | Yes |
Item Weight | 2.46 ounces |
Manufacturer | Atari |
Date First Available | April 1, 1996 |
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Product Description
Amazon.com
Build a powerful civilization that will thrive and dominate, then travel to new worlds to continue your epic journey of conquest into the unknown. Civilization 2: Test of Time takes you where no Civilization game has ever ventured, and the challenge awaits those who dare to reshape history, legend, and the future. This Civilization includes three epic games covering 10 worlds.
Review
Civilization is probably my all-time favorite game. It is elegantly simple but far-reaching in scope and has virtually limitless depth. Few games have ever come so close to perfection, let alone in their first attempt. Of course Civilization II improved on the original, but only by filling in a few blanks rather than by revolutionizing the concept. And now that the Civilization concept is so refined, there is no excuse for milking the franchise and gouging us for another $40 only to force us to play the same damn game again, only with new names for the units and technology advances. I already own Civilization and Civilization II. I don't want to buy a carbon copy.
The fact is I tried my best to play Test of Time. I really did. I tried the fantasy game. I tried the science fiction game. And I dabbled in the Midgard fantasy scenario. I think it was sort of clever for the designers to add quests in the game and restrict certain units to certain races. The Mermen are the only ones that get certain underwater units, the winged Buteo are the only ones that get key flying creatures, and the Goblins are the only ones with the larger, more brutish foot soldiers. There are also new worlds to explore and colonize. But rather than being pleased with these almost clever changes, I was exceedingly annoyed. The unit names and technological restrictions make no intuitive sense, and the new worlds just add to the tedium. They screwed around with Civilization and made it worse.
The worst part about this game is that you simply cannot play any of the nontraditional games without always having the massive technology poster open and at hand. The designers renamed practically everything, and nothing makes sense anymore. In Civilization, you made informed choices in research based on your strategy. You could go for warrior code for strong military units, or you could go for writing to get diplomats. Try for a granary to boost growth or a temple to stave off riots. But in Test of Time's fantasy and sci-fi games, you can't make such intuitive decisions. You are constantly hobbled by the game's naming conventions. Even the poster doesn't always help, because the military units themselves are also renamed. Sagas lead to Ideograms, and that naturally leads to Beast Dominion, right? Do you know what the sorcerer unit is? It's like an airplane or a nuclear missile, for it can float over terrain but crashes if it doesn't land in a city. That makes no sense, and in fact, few or none of these naming changes make the game the least bit better.
Yes, not all the new names are nonsensical, like warcraft and horse breeding. But why rename warrior code to warcraft anyway? Why change horseback riding to horse breeding? It's ridiculous. Why rename the granary, such a vital structure in the early game, to a storehouse? Why screw around with what gamers already know? I understand the desire to change things around in the interest of surprise and variety, but all that this effort achieves is needless frustration.
Of course, if the designers didn't rename all the technology and units, then the game would be exposed for what it truly is: Civilization II with absolutely nothing new. They didn't create any new technology trees and kept practically all the old units. The original Civilization II is now three years old. We waited three years for this?
Call to Power at least tried to create brand-new units and new wonders and even made new movies for the wonders. Here, the designers didn't even do that. Worse yet, when you meet with rival rulers in the fantasy or sci-fi games, there is no picture or herald. You just stare at a blank wall. The designers couldn't even draw simple 2D pictures for the new rulers of the fantasy and alien races.
There are many other little things that make this game seem hastily thrown together. Yet it's apparently been in development for two years. What took so long? Not the multiplayer game, since that was already done. And the new fantasy- and science fiction-themed games couldn't have taken that long to make, either; the designers just had to edit a text file in Civilization II. Besides, there have already been numerous expansions since the original game's release, including fantasy and sci-fi scenario packs. And speaking of which, excluding Midgard, there aren't even any new scenarios in Test of Time. So what did we wait for? New graphics and new names. That's just not worth $40 and two years' time. --Elliott Chin
--Copyright ©1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited. -- GameSpot Review
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Customers like the quality of the video game software. They mention it's one of the very best strategy games ever, a classic piece of work, and an intriguing game. Opinions are mixed on performance.
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Customers find the quality of the game to be great, classic, and intriguing. They also say it's a strategy masterpiece and encourage Civilization fanatics to revisit it.
"...Its a strategy masterpiece and I encourage Civilization fanatics to revisit this work...." Read more
"...From a graphics perspective, it is much darker, but much better looking than the base Civilization II game, and the graphics, even in this day and..." Read more
"...This game really rocks and I really wanted to get it up and running again (been wearing out Civ II Test of Time CDs for 10 years)." Read more
"Still one of the very best strategy games ever. Far better than the more recent Civ games except for graphics. Many different possible outcomes." Read more
Customers are mixed about the performance of the video game software. Some mention that it works great, while others say that it's not perfect and sometimes the saved games disappear.
"...Old disk developed crack in indexing zone. New one works great...." Read more
"...The game is sadly not perfect (but what in this world is?),..." Read more
"...Will work fine on 32-bit windows, if you have 64-bit you can patch it." Read more
"...Also, sometimes the saved games disappear, so it's better to save often and to copy the saved files somewhere else just in case...." Read more
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Then I bought Test of Time.
And I was severely disappointed.
The graphics make the game next to impossible to play. Plains look like deserts, forests are indisinguishable, units are blurry, and so on. The familiar flashing unit it replaced by four yellow lines around the base of a unit, so it takes several moments simply to distinguish which unit you are using. The city interface is more difficult to use, plain and simple. The layout and interface are confusing. The whole game is simply a dark indisinguishable mess, a far cry from the brightly colored, easily distinguished graphics of civilization and civ 2.
This game really does have so much promise conceptually. Its a shame its next to impossible toplay. For those of you who really want the next generation of Civ games, get Activision's Civilization- Call to Power, a game that blows this piece of @#$%^ out of the water any day.
Graphics first. The graphics engine, in fact the entire game engine, is virtually the same as that for Civilization II. This is an engine that was made in 1996; made, essentially, for 640x480 resolution, and it suffers greatly. This isn't helped by the poor quality of the graphics.
The learning curve can be difficult, to say the least. Many of the games have multiple worlds, each with their own separate terrain types, none of whose effects can be easily learned. In Civilization II, the task of remembering which terrain type does what is reasonably simple, since terrain types correspond to terrain in real life: there are mountains, hills, grasslands, plains, rivers, swamps, tundra, deserts, and glaciers. Imagine trying to remember that many terrain types for each of four different worlds, without being able to refer to real life. What sort of effects do you think metallic hydrogen would produce? Without the terrain chart and the technology tree poster, things rapidly become ridiculous.
This was a game made without Sid Meier or Brian Reynolds, and it shows; though there is some promise to the concept, the execution seems to have consisted of taking the buildings, units, and technology of Civ II and scrambling it all up; it's Civilization II with new names for everything. Not even that much; in scrambling everything around, it loses the excellent game-design of Civilization II, and punishes prior knowledge of Civilization; if you've played Civilization, you know that all of the buildings and wonders are simply renamed versions of the old ones, and to know that, and to know that you'll have to relearn the names of the scrambled buildings, is a depressing thought.
If you truly want a follow-up to Civilization II, buy Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, or wait for Civilization III, both from Firaxis and both done with Sid Meier. If you like the idea of a fantasy game, or like the idea of multiple parallel worlds, the concept was done much better in Master of Magic, a game, that, though five years older than Test of Time, looks and plays much better. It's simply too bad that the sequel was never completed.