THIS GAME IS SO GREAT ??? REALLY ?!?!?!?
In MOF2 you had great music, in diplomatic screen when alien got angry the music became nasty, the management screen was a lot more nice you could see the buildings and allocate people to work in an easy and not in the sick way of this game (go to move a slide bar that changes the productions of all planets), in mof2 the ship battles were great you could FIRE your weapons and MOVE the ships you build...not just watch at them.
And the land battles in GALCIV 2 are also more sick than the ship ones!!!!!
You choose a strategy(that's a good thing but the BAD thing is that you see always the SAME SEQUENCE every startegy you choose) AND THE SEQUENCE IS SO LAME...you see your soldiers and the others and behind them you see HORRIBLE BIG BOXES that should be tanks or something and they got smashed like......boxes, in few words it looks horrible. In MOF2 a game of over than 6 years ago ALL WAS BETTER, great music during land battles, you saw your little soldiers but well done charging and firing, and you could scream "shoot at them, kill them all!!!!" and all your bonuses were showed in a simple and clear way, ALL THOSE THINGS MISS IN GALCIV2 a game made in year 2006.
Many are the not well made things...for example the tech tree is messy and confused, you don't even know what you already know, what you can do with the research you have and what is the best thing to research...to figure this out you have to spend half an hour to go find the right research screen and do a reserch youserlf !!! And when you discover a new tecnology it's funny what happens : It appears a drunk robot who moves his arms with a sick music....this can make laugh....or cry :)
I remember in MOF2 when you spy teconology a spy appears,when you conquer a planet and steal a tecnology a soldier appears, when you research a researcher appears (AND ALL THOSE CHARACHTERS WERE DIFFERENT FOR EVERY RACE!!!!! WHEN HERE YOU GET JUST THE DRUNK ROBOT FOR ALL!!!)...and with some good sound not sick.
Little things that can make you understand how the 6 years or more old game was much more well done than this.
In conclusion this game IS NOT TERRIBLE, but NOT GOOD, the strategic and management part is well done...but it looks BAD, screens are not user friendly, the music is terrible, in few word this game didn't entusiasm me like the great MOF2. After 1 hour i played at this game i was thinking "OH MY GOD and people say this is the sequel of MOF2?!??!? a game made 7 years later that look worse, the sound is terrible, the screens are crappy , the ship battles a boring watch show, the land battles ridiculous ???"
Well i see that i compared this game in all my review to master of orion 2 because i think that is one of the best turn based game i ever played, so i suggest to you to go and play mof2 you will see that the 6 or more years old game is 300% better than this galciv2.
And after i played this glaciv2 i went to search for my old cd of mof2 to play it again , hear it's great music and see that simple but nice graphic ,go and design another ship in that nice screen that i still remember with that great music, perhaps put a tractor beam on the ship so I can CHOOSE to fire in the engine of the enemy ship in the battle screen and then i can board and capture the enemy ships and use them against their builders or sell them.
This galciv2 is lots more similar to the crappy master of orion 3