Review of Civilization 2: Test of Time

What is this, then?It's a rip-off of a wonderful game; the technology trees make no sense, the graphics are horrible, and it adds nearly nothing to Civilization II in terms of gameplay.In many superficial aspects, the designers tried to make a complete break from Civilization II; however, they tried to do so while making as few changes to the underlying engine as possible.The result is a somewhat muddled mess.

Graphics first.The graphics engine, in fact the entire game engine, is virtually the same as that for Civilization II.This is an engine that was made in 1996; made, essentially, for 640x480 resolution, and it suffers greatly.This isn't helped by the poor quality of the graphics.

The learning curve can be difficult, to say the least.Many of the games have multiple worlds, each with their own separate terrain types, none of whose effects can be easily learned.In Civilization II, the task of remembering which terrain type does what is reasonably simple, since terrain types correspond to terrain in real life:there are mountains, hills, grasslands, plains, rivers, swamps, tundra, deserts, and glaciers.Imagine trying to remember that many terrain types for each of four different worlds, without being able to refer to real life.What sort of effects do you think metallic hydrogen would produce?Without the terrain chart and the technology tree poster, things rapidly become ridiculous.

This was a game made without Sid Meier or Brian Reynolds, and it shows; though there is some promise to the concept, the execution seems to have consisted of taking the buildings, units, and technology of Civ II and scrambling it all up; it's Civilization II with new names for everything.Not even that much; in scrambling everything around, it loses the excellent game-design of Civilization II, and punishes prior knowledge of Civilization;if you've played Civilization, you know that all of the buildings and wonders are simply renamed versions of the old ones, and to know that, and to know that you'll have to relearn the names of the scrambled buildings, is a depressing thought.

If you truly want a follow-up to Civilization II, buy Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, or wait for Civilization III, both from Firaxis and both done with Sid Meier.If you like the idea of a fantasy game, or like the idea of multiple parallel worlds, the concept was done much better in Master of Magic, a game, that, though five years older than Test of Time, looks and plays much better.It's simply too bad that the sequel was never completed.



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