3 hours in and I miss: stacked units, capturing cities with culture, too few options, too much or not enough hud info.
1. It has a good intro
2. The startup interface is polished
3. I haven't had any performance or crashing issues
But... when you dig in to the game and start looking for familiar bits and pieces they are substantially... missing.
Here's what I miss:
- Unit stacking: now your units cannot occupy the same square on the map, that means only one garrisoned unit per city.
- Generals/heroes: they just don't feel like that big a deal any more. The pomp and circumstance of getting one isn't worth it.
- I've always enjoyed expanding my influence with culture. Seeing those borders grow and eventually encompass an enemy city and having them come over to the dark side is GONE.
- The hud does have some options for what you would like to display, but it seems like there's always too much or not enough. For instance, the resources for occupied squares ALWAYS display. I can't enjoy the nice graphics on the terrain with all those green and yellow circles.
- Separate city management interface. The swing-in interface for managing the cities is nice, but it just doesn't feel like I have everything I need to effectively manage them anymore.
- Where are the nice video's of wonders? These static pictures are so "ho hum"! I don't feel rewarded and like I've done something wondrous when I make one. Once created they look okay I guess, but the tiny icons on the map just don't do much for me.
- Ditto for research... I don't feel like it's much of an accomplishment when I research something.
- Intuitiveness of the interface: there are some significant omissions in the interface. It's just harder than it should be to get to things I used all the time. The whole building queue thing bothers me. I like how it's simplified on the main screen when you're prompted to build something, but when I go in to add something to my queue it's not apparent at first how to add, remove and sort the queue. I did eventually figure it out, but it should have been easy.
Maybe this is like the upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7... maybe I just need to get used to where all the different options are and how the game works, but I just can't help but feel that it has been too... simplified.
I like the game well enough I guess, but I'm not going to drop the other games I'm playing for it. Also, I do wish I'd waited until it went on sale for $39.99. It just doesn't feel like I got the $50 game I was looking forward to.