Civilization 6 Review (PS4)

History's greatest nations.  World domination.  This is Civilization 6

Civilization 6 is the next in the excellent series of Civilization games.  Once again, you get to choose from a number of history's greatest rulers and the nation they ruled over.  I must admit, it made me happy to see nations like Australia and the Scythians get representation, while Greece taking up TWO spots made me not so happy.  They could have easily brought another civilization or swapped in one of the DLC civs instead if they were low on ideas.  Also, a lot of the civilizations from previous games feel weird.  The Aztecs and Russians feel like total garbage, totally unrecognizable from their Civ 5 representations.  Whoever you choose, your mission is to beat out the other rulers become the greatest nation in the world.

The inclusion of Australia makes me happy.

After hours of play, I still don't know what to make of some returning civs.

There are many ways to become the most powerful nation to ever exist.  Culture, science, and religion are peaceful methods.  Of course, you can try to whup everyone's ass for a domination victory.  If none of those appeal to you, the ability to go the distance and win with the highest score is also possible.

Civ 5 was my introduction to the Civilization series and I loved the heck out of it.  At first I thought this game would be Civ 5 with a fresh coat of paint, but the this game does a lot of things quite a bit differently.  Exploration is the only thing that seems similar to the previous game, but even that is different.

I hate exploration for one reason; movement.  Movement is trash in this game, a fact compounded by how your primary exploration unit, scouts, are handled.  In the past, scouts were bad fighters, but could climb hills and cross rivers with no problems.  In this game, scouts can still do those things...if you level them up.  It's weird.  Even weirder is how movement works across all units.  In the past, a unit could move is they still had movement points.  In this game, if you move and come to an obstacle, you'll need two movement points to go forward or you can't make the move. For example, let's say you're walking in same hills with three movement points. In the past, you could use two points to cross one hill and use your remain point to make another move.  In this game, if you don't have at least two movement points, you have to wait until the next turn.  This needless change makes exploring feel shitty and overly complicated.

Scouts and movement in general piss me off in this game.

The most obvious thing the game does differently is building up cities.  You are heavily encouraged to build Districts, or specialized zone, to strengthen your cities.  These enable you to gain major boosts as well as gain those ever-important Great People.  You'll still be building granaries and monuments, but Districts should be a major part of your plans.  Make no mistake, you WILL be planning your cities.

Districts are the name of the game for city-building.

In the same vein as city-building, the builders are handled MUCH differently.  Each one can improve three tiles before dropping dead and needing to be replaced.  The improvements are immediate, but this makes building cities much slower because you have to take the time to create another one of these bums instead of building more important things, like soldiers or useful buildings.  True, you no longer have a bunch of do-nothings wasting space during the late game, but I like the Civ 5 method better.

Not really a fan of builders only getting three uses per unit.

With builders dropping dead in three uses, how will you build roads?  With your Traders.  Traders automatically build roads between the cities they connect.  Roads aren't as godly as they used to be, but they do negate those irritating movement penalties.  It's quite useful for connecting your own cities, especially for military purposes, so get a trader as soon as you can.

Need a road.  Build a trader.

Government progression seems more restrictive than ever, mainly because of how early you have to pick the type of government you want.  There are many policies you can use to customize your government.  You start off only able to select two of them, but can equip more as you progress through the game.  When selecting a government type, you could cut yourself off from using certain policies, so be careful which one you choose.

The Government system is robust, but restrictive.

Barbarians start off MUCH stronger than in previous entries, starting off with a spearman in each encampment.  They seem to also spawn more frequently.  Gone are the days of raiding those encampments with a single warrior.  You'll have to bring three or four guys to take them down.  They also seem to actively target scouts, who will be raped if they are caught.  On top of that, barbarians have their own scouts.  On the whole, I like what they've done with the barbarians, because they are more of a threat.  You really have to watch out for them now.

City-States work differently than before, as well.  The thing you might notice at a glance is that they field bigger militaries.  It's not unusual to see a City-State with four or five warriors patrolling.  In other words, you won't be steamrolling these guys like you could in the past.  Also, you'll need to complete tasks to earn envoys to gain favor and earn rewards.  Personally, I prefer Civ 5's system of dealing with them, so this change kind of sucks.

City-states come prepared this time around.

The map types are a personal problem I have.  I like to play huge maps with lots of civs and city-states.  Unfortunately, the huge option isn't available for every map I don't know why.  The game also maxes out at 24 city-states.  Perhaps it's only a PS4 issue or maybe it's every version of Civ 6.  However, this combined with the fact that other always civs seem to generate too close to you indicates that even the huge maps are too small.  In the past, I could max out civs and city-states but sometimes still get the entirety of North or South America to myself.  In this game, no way that's happening unless you keep civs to a max of perhaps four or use the True Start maps and pick a civ that's not even in the same hemisphere as the others.

Speaking of the other civs, my goodness, the stupidity.  They will settle near you, then complain that you're to close.  They'll denounce you for reasons that can only be described as retarded.  I once had a civ denounce me because I explored too much.  No joke.  Worst of all, they don't shut up.  In previous games, when a civ kept talking to you, it was a sign that you were about to get your ass kicked.  In this game, they seem to talk just for the sake of hearing themselves talk.  There's usually not any pending ass-whuppin'.  When there is an war in the making, it just suddenly happens, sometimes for no reason.  No denouncement, no talking.  Just a foot in the ass unless you load up on military units early on.

I did nothing to him and I'm on the other side of the continent, yet he still denounced me.

It's tiring when civs talk to you every three turns for no good reason.

There are too many nuances in a Civilaztion game to tackle in one short review, so I will move on to the little things.  The graphics don't seem as good as Civ 5's.  It could be because I'm playing it on a console, but they definitely seem a little worse than Civ 5.  And there are performance issues.  Stuttering and brief freezing are issues you'll be dealing with every few turns.  I do, however, like the parchment effect on the map, so that's a positive.

The music is forgettable.  Obviously, there are exceptions to this, but the soundtrack is simply too bland to notice while playing.  A huge step down from Civ 5.

On the DLC front, there is a bunch of it to be found.  Gathering Storm and Rise and Fall are huge, game-changing additions that really change the way the game is played.  You'll have to deal with things like natural disasters, governors, city loyalty, and more things than I can say here.  Then, you have more civs, some which have never been represented before, like Vietnam.  It's quite impressive, really.  This is how DLC is done.

Disasters are just some of the DLC you can obtain.

In the end Civilization 6 is a step down from Civilization 5.  Civilization 6 had (and still has) the potential to be a step up from Civ 5, especially if the great DLC continues.  Unfortunately, they made weird changes that make the game not as good as its predecessor.  Moving units around is more painful than it needs to be, draining a great deal of fun out of exploring.  AI opponents are bipolar, stupider than dogshit, and twice as annoying to deal with.  The graphics and music are a clear step down.  It's addictive for an hour or two, unlike Civ 5, which was so good I can still drop 4-5 hours into per session.  It still has a "one more turn" feeling, even if it's not for as many turns.  Get the Anthology if you can so you can get all that sweet DLC with the base game.  This one is solidly a Play It.

Industry Giant 2 Review (PS4)

So you think you can run a conglomerate?  You say you want to affect change and provide for the masses?  Well, here's your chance.  This is Industry Giant 2.

Industry Giant 2 is a business simulator and a fairly complicated one at that.  In it, you play as an all-seeing, all-knowing, invisible tycoon in your bid to create a monopoly in everything...or just one thing.  If you want to focus on grocery stores, that's possible.  If you just want to focus on toys, like Toys 'R' Us, you can do that.  While you can't create a bunch of one-stop shops like Walmart, put your fingers in any many pies as you want.  You get to decided the type of greedy bastard you want to be.

Gameplay-wise, the game is like a city simulator, but not really.  There are various cities around the map, but you don't build them up.  You can plop down parks, colleges, roads, and other things, but you don't have full control over when and where the people build.  Instead, you "influence" them to grow by giving them the products they want.  But how does one do this?  It's here where things get complicated.

As a tycoon, your job is to control every aspect of the products you're selling.  I mean EVERY aspect.  Gathering the raw resources, manufacturing the products in factories, and getting them to stores for the customers to buy, making sure you have enough products to buy, it's all on you.  You have build storehouses, transportation, and stores, making sure everything is in sync the whole time.  You have to determine how hard your workers work and how much to pay them, what and how much product the factories make, what products the warehouses store, where the transports take the products.  It's all...pretty tiring to be honest.

A number of factors go into meeting your goals.  Placing buildings is a very finicky process.  Generally, you want to aim for maximum effect.  You want your stores where there are a lot of customers.  You want your farms where they will produce the most, but as far as possible from cities.  You also want to make sure you products are within range of the storehouses and that your storehouses are in range of your stores.

At the start, place stores in areas with lots of customers to profit quicker.

It's not just enough to produce goods and build stores.  You also need to figure out the best way to get those goods from city to city.  You can chose to use trucks, trains, and boats to transport things from storehouse to storehouse.  Good sense comes into play when choosing your transports.  Trucks may be good for transporting good to small markets that are near your producers, but they don't make much sense when trying to supply a large market on the opposite side of the map.  When in doubt, trains are the way to go.

Everything would be fine if the game wasn't so clunky.  I mean EVERYTHING is clunky.  Producing goods is clunky, especially when said goods need multiple resources to create.  Every part of the good has to be in the storehouse or you're not making anything.  If you're not sure what you need, you can always check the Lexicon and search for whatever you're trying to produce.

Make sure everything you need is in a storehouse if you want to make products.

You'll see the makeup of every product as it becomes available.

Transportation is even clunkier.  You select a transport station near a warehouse, select the good you want to transport, select another transports station near another warehouse that's also near a store, then finally send your vehicle on its way to the next station, which is hopefully near another storehouse.  To select a station, you simply press X.  Then selecting goods requires you to press L1 to get to the goods menu and Square to select the goods.  Finally, to select the station to transport to, you have to press L3 (or pressing the left stick down for the uninitiated).  This sounds simple, but it took me TWO HOURS to figure out what to do and how to do it.  So yeah, don't pass on those tutorials.

Figuring out transportation can be a bitch if you forgo tutorials.

Well, on to the little stuff.  The graphics look good for what they are.  The buildings look good, on par with games like SimCity 3000, maybe even a little better.  You'll see the cities slowly growing, building its own roads and structures.  The resources are clearly indicated on the map, so you'll immediately know what building you need to harvest them.  You'll see your trucks, boats, and trains cruising along as fast as they can from transport station to transport station.  In short, the graphics are adequate.

With these comical-looking markers, you'll always know what harvest building you'll need.

The cities look quite good.

If the graphics have a flaw, it's that they are too small.  This is especially the case with the text.  It's barely readable.  There's no option to resize it.  You're just stuck to deal with it the best you can, which is bullshit.  You shouldn't need a magnifying glass to read the darned text.

If you want to read anything, bring your magnifying glass.

The sound is serviceable.  When you get close to a store, you'll hear a cash register.  Approach a chicken farm and you'll hear chickens clucking.  Things sound generic, but it's not something that can be vastly improved.  The same is true of the music.  Nothing will have you rocking your head, but you won't be reaching for your earplugs, either.  It works for the most part.  Each song has a unique flavor, but there aren't many tracks, so you'd better get used the them because they'll repeat often.

A major flaw I came across was a loading error where I couldn't load a game I'd been working on for a while.  It only happened once and I was able to load the game later, but it was quite odd.  There was some minor freezing here and there, but the game performs well enough otherwise.

On the whole, Industry Giant 2 is a clunky, complicated beast.  It has quite the learning curve, so you'd better be ready for some growing pains.  You'll learn that it's not easy being a greedy bastard.  Besides the small text size, though, nothing was too off-putting.  Things will be quite clunky in the beginning.  As long as you aren't expecting the game to be like SimCity or Cities Skylines, you should be able to get some enjoyment out of it.  Give It A Try.

Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout Review (PS4)

A cute, little girl.  Cute, little monsters.  A cute, little world.  It time to return to the world of Atelier.  This is Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout.

The Atelier series has been one of my favorites since Atelier Totori.  These games seem to be coming out more frequently since then, but I still look forward to each entry.  The cuteness of the world is appealing to me and at the center of it all is a cute, innocent female protagonist.  This particular tale stars a girl call Ryza and her merry band of friends as they search for adventure and discover danger.

Ryza is a little different than other Atelier protagonists in one obvious way; she's stacked.  Seriously, her character model would be fine for Dead Or Alive, but it's a little too much for the main protagonist of an Atelier game, where the heroines usually seem to be 15 or under.  I'm not sure how old Ryza is, but the point is she's simply too sexy to be an Atelier protagonist.  Also, she's not as stylish as most other protags, choosing drab but functional clothes over the gaudy garments of past alchemists.

Our protagonist is hotter than she has any right being.

She still an Atelier protag deep down inside.

The gameplay is quite different from past Atelier games, especially when it comes to combat.  You are encouraged to increase your tactics level.  Each time you do this, your characters will perform longer combo attacks, doing more damage to enemies.  You have very little control over your AI allies, but you can freely switch characters at any time.  On the whole, the combat is refined and I enjoyed battles more than previous games.

Combat has a lot of moving parts, but is pretty smooth overall.

On the map, monsters may or may not attack you.  Some will charge you if you get close.  Some will stand there looking confused, especially if you're much stronger than them.  Some won't attack, but may issue a warning in the form of a hiss.  Others will be going about their daily lives, laughing and frolicking through the tulips.  No matter what, if you touch an enemy, you'll enter combat.  Make sure you "touch" them with your staff to get a preemptive strike, which usually gives you two free rounds to attack and one free tactical level.  Unlike most games, you don't have to sneak up on them for this to work.  Just hit them with your staff before they touch you and you'll have the advantage.

Sometimes monsters will ignore you and go about their daily business.  It's cute.

You'll also go on quests, both for NPCs and party members.  Completing a request for a party member may allow them to learn a new move, so you'll want to do those.  You also have storyline request, which you MUST fulfill to progress the story.

Party quest will make you characters stronger, so make sure to do them.

Alchemy is a little different.  Supposedly, you can create your own recipes, but that's BS.  You CAN find recipes within others, but you can't just pull a recipe from your ass with whatever ingredients you can put together.  It's not bad, but perhaps I was expecting too much.

Recipes can be found within other recipe or by reading books.

As usual, you'll have to forage, scavenge, and buy the best materials you can find to make the best items.  You'll even rob farms of their crops, beat on trees with an ax and hammer, and dig through garbage to get what you need.  Using different tools on a gathering point will usually yield different resources.  For example, using an ax on a tree will usually get you eiche, but using a hammer usually will get you dried lumber.  So you're encouraged to try everything.

There are differences outside of combat and alchemy, too.  The most jarring thing is that you can't just talk to anyone.  You can only talk to people with a Pacman symbol over their heads.  You can also talk to people with a box of stuff over their head, indicating their status as a shopkeepers.  Of course, you can talk to people with quest markers.  It's not a big deal, but as someone who's played many RPGs where you can talk to everyone, it was an adjustment.

Tell me that doesn't look like Pacman.

At first, I thought this was a castle over the shopkeeper's head.

Request badges come in red urgent task and green for less urgent tasks.

On to the little stuff.  Graphically, the game is the best Atelier game yet.  Characters and especially environments seem to have more "pop" than in previous games.  I've already gone into detail, about Ryza's appearance, but another character is even...bigger than her.  All the females have more "appeal" than in previous entries in the series.  Most of the monsters are still cute and little, but some actually look intimidating.

Look at the size of this woman's..."appeal".

It's so...cute!

Environments are beautiful, especially at night.

The music is a little less cute and more epic than usual.  Just a little.  There's still plenty of cute flute music in here.  As for sounds, the biggest difference I've noticed is that that monsters on the map make noises.  The eerie, childlike laugh of the fairy-types stands out the most.  Sadly, there are no English voices.

On another note, there seems to be an unusual amount of swearing in this game.  I've played a lot of Atelier games and I've missed just as many, but I don't remember the characters talking like this before.  It's not overkill, but it was pretty weird to see.

Did Atelier characters always talk like this.

Of course there's DLC.  No game is complete without it these days.  Honestly, some of it is interesting if nothing else.  It's there if you want it.

With Atelier Ryza, we have a good game.  Graphically, the game has more pop.  Musically, the game has a slightly heavier tone, but still has some cuteness.  The game has a slightly more mature feel without losing too many of the things that make an Atelier game.  Ryza herself is a little much physically and there is an uptick in swearing, so some innocence has been lost.  Obviously, there's stuff I didn't touch on for the sake of length, but for the most part, everything has been improved.  Can't wait to try the sequel.  Play it.