Genre: 4x Strategy
Developer: Stardock
Publisher: Stardock

For a game made in this century, the graphics are pretty bad. The "alien portraits", as Sniper said to call them, are very good. They are picture like, and are very detailed. However, the actual moving "pieces", A.K.A. ships, are not. All the other images are very pixellized and could have been made five years ago on the PC. If the resolution was not so high, 1024x768, I think it could run on the SuperNES! My rating is based solely on the moving animations.

I love this game's music! It's the perfect mixture of soothing sounds for exploring the glaxy, and foreboding when you have contact with an evil race. I'm not sure if this music fits every aspect of the game, but it comes extremely close. For example, when you are at war with a race, the music is still calm and soothing.

Although this game is very addicting, I have a few complaints. My first one is that the game is too difficult to pick up without instruction. You cannot just pop this game in and begin playing it without some prior knowledge of the previous GCs. It is even hard to pick up on strategy when watching someone else play the game. My second, and last that will be mentioned, complaint is that the game is too difficult to learn to be good at. Once you learn the basic knowledge to the game, you can play hours on end. However, if you make the level of play more difficult you suck badly.

If you look past the bad graphics, as I have, and learn to deal with playing at a lower difficulty level, as I have, this game rocks. It does have an extremely bad interface, but, once you get the hang of everything, you end up memorizing the makers' stupidity and profit greatly from fast decision making.

Genre: 4x Strategy
Developer: Stardock
Publisher: Stardock

To be certain, this version of Galciv looks quite a bit nicer than its now-ancient OS/2 predecessor; the alien art, sprite designs, and interface appearance are all nicely constructed. However, complex 3d engines are now easy to create or license, and are par the course in the gaming industry- imagine how nice this game would look with one of those!

All of the music except for the song that loops during play comes from the OS/2 version of Galciv 2. As I liked it then, I like it now. The main song is a bit cheesy, as it sounds like an audio clip captured from an Everquest session, but it's tolerable. As for sound effects... wait, are there any? Aside from a few generic laser sounds, the answer is "no".

The Galciv games have always had marvelous AI, and the case is the same with this iteration of the series. There are also a multitude of strategies, innumerable technologies to research, and dozens of paths the player can follow to either victory or obliteration. The problem here is the interface, which is clunky at best, and hinders what is otherwise an almost perfectly balanced strategy game.

This Galciv is one of the better 4x strategy titles to ever be witnessed in the galaxy. The interface, however, is about as unintuitive as any I have seen; I am still confused by its odd mesh of icon buttons, tabs, and inconsistent layout. Despite this critical flaw and the lack of modern gaming technology, anyone who enjoys strategy and has the patience to learn the interface will be stuck in their chair for hours at a time with this title.