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CTP is the biggest disappointment of any game I have ever bought. I've bought bad games before, but this is the first time that I have ever felt ripped off. The interface is unforgivably non-intuitive. (I'm being kind). Info that you need to know is always in some submenu, somewhere else. At least, that is the claim. (Yes, I took the tutorial). Unit movement is unnecessarily complex.(Once again, I'm being kind). Diplomacy is the worst of all. (Here, there is no way to be kind). You must open all of those submenus just to tell that enemy to stop moving his units into your area. Over and over and over and over and over. EVERY TURN! Mindnumbingly tedious. A game should be fun after all. Wonders are bizarre in their irrelevance. The terrain is pretty, though. Small consolation. Can anyone really tell what unit is what when you open the unit menu screen and you see them in that tiny grid of nine squares without getting about 2 inches from the monitor and using a magnifying glass? You would think that such a thing as being able to tell for sure what units you have in a stack without squinting would be an important detail.
I've yet to hear a beta tester rave about CTP. In fact, I've yet to hear a beta tester be anything more than lukewarm about the product. Therefore, one can only assume that Activision, in its hurry to cash in on the Civ name, doesn't really care about the quality of the game. Nothing that they have done (rush delivery, ignoring beta testers criticisms, lack of scenario editor, etc., hell, the game doesn't even install easily!) can be said to inspire confidence that they are serious about this game other than as a means of making easy money. Most of the new ideas included are truly excellent, like unit stacking, etc., but the great ideas only serve to make the game more frustrating because you can see how great the game COULD HAVE BEEN.At best, Activision, trying so hard to add new game enhancements, missed the forest for the trees and forgot that a game should be fun to play. More likely though, the interface is clunky because Activision didn't have access to the original Microprose codes so just threw all of this together knowing that it would sell because of its name alone. I mean, it looks like they used an old typewriter to type the text in the submenus. Hard to read, cheap looking. Activision will make a fortune, but they have lost a lot a good will. In the future, I will wait until unbiased reviews come out before I will even consider buying another Activision game. If any think that I'm being too hard on Activision, bear in mind that they will be crying all the way to the bank to deposit YOUR money into their account. Even if Activision cared enough to release patches that deal with the hundreds if not thousands of compaints (and it's only been out a day or two) the game is still BORING. Somewhere in the makeover the game lost its appeal. There is no sense of empire building, ...only a sense of accomplishing tasks which become tedious much too quickly. I wanted to love this game. When I heard about it I started salivating. Then I played it and was disappointed. But, hey, this is Civ so I hung in there and played some more. No matter, I would eventually find that I was looking at the screen and didn't give a d*** about what was happening; the thought of playing another turn would rank up there with the thought of having all of my wisdom teeth pulled out at the same time. My review: I have already uninstalled this pathetic pretender to the throne and begrudge Activision every penny that they got from me.
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