The Brief:

You’re a God-King: create, discover and reshape the history of the world.

Game Story:

Become Ruler of the World by establishing and leading a civilization from the dawn of man into the space age: Wage war, conduct diplomacy, discover new technologies, go head-to-head with some of history’s greatest leaders and build the most powerful empire the world has ever known.

Scale:

• Great
• Good
• Decent
• Not bad
• Bad
• Nope

Game:

• Graphic: Good
• Sound: Good
• Animation: Good
• AI: Bad
• Gameplay: Good
• Modding: Decent

Details:

• Graphics are great in terms of being compared to the previous game; they did crank it up a notch.  Although it does have some glitches here and there, e.g. You build a farm and then you wonder where it is even though you can see the barn part of the farm – then you move down the map and the farm appears. Yes you kinda have to do that from time to time. Same goes for any other improvement on tiles.
• Sound is pretty good, it does have it’s small flaws here and there nothing too big although that is more tied into the animation of it – where you can keep hearing a unit moving even though it’s not there. The best way you can get rid of it is to restart the game which can be annoying due to the long load time.
• Animations overall are good, but for it to get a great scale grading I would need to not experience the small animation glitches, like where sometimes a unit moves on the spot even though you moved the unit and it should be standing still. Though like I said, besides the small issues, the animations are great. There will always be a few bugs/glitches here and there and that’s to some degree understandable.
• AI needs a lot of fixing.  It’s really bad and honestly could’ve been done way better. Gandhi! I am looking at you!  For the most part, you don’t know why the AI just decides to go against you, unless you yourself have been keeping track at all times to see what upsets them. Even then, you can be mind boggled as to why they decide to backstab you.
• Gameplay is pretty solid overall and it has been improved with the DLCs and the Gods & Kings + Brave New World expansions. Stacking of units is not longer possible so that’s a good thing to know coming into the Civ V game if you were planning “stack of dooms” from the previous titles.
• Modding is pretty decent in terms of what you can mod and makes the game more interesting.  If you are like me and have played a huge amount of hours and want to spice things up a bit.

Conclusion:

The game is solid if you get the GOTY Edition or you get the game + DLCs & expansions cheap like say 20-30 Euros then it’s worth it.  Sure it has some very small animations and sound glitches but can be fixed with moving the camera around or restarting the game (of course remember to save before). No unit stacking, like I’ve said in the Gameplay section and the AI not fully fleshed out playing and worthwhile diplomacy. Other than that, for a TBS (Turn Based Strategy) with many options for Empires to play and maps to play on + Modding, it is worth it’s price tag.

I would say give it a go.  Watch some gameplay videos to see if it interests you.  If so look for a somewhat cheap but still decent pricetag.  The studio is worth supporting as far as TBS games go.