 Preview By: Nick Arvites |
Developer: | Stardock Entertainment |
| Publisher: | Stardock Entertainment | |
| Genre: | Strategy | |
| ESRB: | Rating Pending | |
| # Of Players: | 1 | |
| Online Play: | No | |
| Accessories: | Minimum System Requirements: Windows XP/Vista Pentium III 800 MHz or equivalent processor 256 MB RAM 32 MB DirectX 9.0c compatible video card (32-bit color depth req'd.) Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar or Gold Edition |
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| Estimated Release: | 04/30/2008 |
After playing through a few sessions with Twilight of the Arnor’s improvements, my personal favorite is the unique tech trees. My biggest complaint about historical 4X titles is that I usually find myself losing the gunpowder race to civilizations that never developed gunpowder historically (specifically: Aztecs), or getting nuked by Carthage. Twilight of the Arnor gives each of the 12 major civilizations a unique tech tree to finally fix this annoyance in strategy games. You can still acquire the race-specific techs through trading and negotiation, but it makes it harder for some races to get particular advances and particular units. It also provides a massive amount of replay value, and numerous ways to play through the game. Humans, for example, are easier to set up a trading empire with than a military empire, at least from the start. The militaristic Drengin start off with numerous military techs and have special unique military techs unavailable to other races however (at least through research). This fleshes out the races and makes choosing your race at startup feel like it has additional importance away from the racial bonuses and appearances. This is a feature that I can only hope other 4X titles copy and utilize in the future. It works on far too many levels to be absent, and provides numerous additional strategies and ways to play the game.
Each race also has unique planetary improvements to match their histories. While humans may have broadcast centers, another race might have a gladiator pit. Planet surfaces also look different on the map screen. These features may seem cosmetic, but it gives each race an unique touch and brings the planetary improvements more in line with the various back stories of the races in the game.
The Terror Stars are also an interesting addition. Players cannot build Terror Stars until a variety of prerequisite technologies are developed. Even then, each particular component of a Terror Star has to be researched before it can be built. Terror Stars start out as space stations, and upgrading Terror Stars installs newly researched components until they are finally mobilized. The Terror Stars are limited as a useful military tool however. The upkeep is relatively high and they move very slowly. The slow speed makes them useful for mop-up duty, but not much else. The extensive research in order to even build one is also constricting. In my sessions, I was only able to get a base-level Terror Star station operational very late in the game, and even then they weren’t as useful as my military fleets or other attempts to expand (culturally and economically).
The graphical improvements are worth mentioning on two grounds. First, they make every ship look better than in prior iterations. They have more details and look like actual ships instead of assembled geometric shapes floating in space. Second, these improvements utilize system resources more efficiently. In practice, they give the ships a slightly more detailed look. The performance increase is real; my system resources on both my desktop and notebook were taking a smaller hit from Twilight of the Arnor than they did with the original Galactic Civilizations II.
From the preview build, Twilight of the Arnor looks like an excellent addition to an already solid product. Galactic Civilizations II brought fresh life to the 4X genre when it was originally released, and Twilight of the Arnor looks to be another solid addition to the series by Stardock. The new features make this seem more like Galactic Civilizations 2.5, and further strengthen an excellent series.
Look for Twilight of the Arnor on April 23rd.
Posted: 2008-04-09 19:56:07 PST