First, second, and third contact confirmed, sir.
Prep the cannons as Irreverend Opinions engages Galactic Civilizations III!
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The Blurb
The latest edition of Stardock's 4x turn-based strategy title range, this third title offers shiny new graphics, expansive maps, custom ship designs, and tech trees dependent on racial outlook.
Leaving the drama aside entirely, please take discussions about it to other sites.
The Good
As advertised, 'linear' victory conditions are out of the picture, letting players really achieve the "4x" standard - Exploration, Expansion, Extortion, and Extermination all have "win" conditions, from following the ancient species to ascension to simply being the only species left standing.
Graphics are quite nice, with detail paid to not only planetary design but ship combat processing as well.
Gameplay can be tweaked to suit fast, short games or epic-scale conquest.
Ship designer allows for immense customization, allowing players to create hundreds of variants for their roles.
Modding support enables incredible levels of customization for your game.
The Bad
Lack of finishing in the QA process makes this the buggiest game of the GC series. Crashing to desktop should be expected, and numerous unpatched errors still remain since release.
AI is not great, even on higher difficulty settings.
Multiplayer matchmaking takes far higher data requirements than theoretically necessary, making unnecessary latency issues for players in a turn-based strategy game.
The Ugly
Sound is particularly buggy, and players can expect that after certain memory thresholds will fail to function any more at all.
Suggestions
A thorough bug fix analysis is needed to cover the issues that are produced. If you suffer repeat issues, opt-in to the "beta" through Steam to help bypass certain cloud-related issues.
The Summary
8/10. A solid sci-fi 4x turn strategy title. Despite issues, can be played quite well, and the ship builder allows for plenty of workshop content even if you're not much of a modder yourself.
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This review is hosted for archival and backup purposes; the original can be found on Steam.
