Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I'm writing this review as honestly and impartial as I can, from the prospective of someone that has played the civilization franchise for over 13 years. Plain and simple, they dumbed down and washed out the game to make it more attractive and simple for a broader market. If you are a civilization fan, or enjoyed Civilization 4 for its strategy difficulty, its complexity and micro-management as well as the decission making problems and interaction with the AI, then save your money and don't buy this game, because all that is practically gone. The game has been so streamlined and simplified that is border line irritating for someone that has played civilzation for the past decade. The cool changes regarding combat system, resource limitations, hexagonal grid, (which are great don't get me wrong) simple go out of the window when you are faced with a game that honestly seems to be geared to children and very casual gamers that don't like to think too much and see more action. Added to that, is the poor (and by poor I really mean HORRIBLE) shape they shipped the game. I've had BETAs of games that were in a better shape than this. The amount of glitches, bugs, crashes and general game issues in Civilization 5 are just borderline un-acceptable. And to get the cherry on the cake, they force you to install and launch the game using STEAM, which is an online based service. So, doesn't mather if you bought your nice little CDs, you still have to go through Steam to install it, and use it. Now, Steam by itself is another company that has a reputation for very low quality services, and in this case they haven't improved anything. I suggest you go through the forums of Steam or 2k games and see the quantity of people that are days without been able to install or play normally their game just because of issues with Steam, in top of that you get the issues of the game itself which are below BETA quality. The cool looking graphics, leaders in 3D talking their languages, and the incredible simplification (I won't go into detail because it's a lot) of the game simply screams "geared for children, consoles and toysRus shelves". Our beloved Civilzation strategy game is gone, completely. So again, if you are new to the series and like a simplified strategy game to start, this is good for you. If you are an old civilization fan, or someone who enjoys strategy games for its complexity and micro-management then save yourself irritation and boredom and go out to have a nice dinner with those $[...] bucks. Firaxis has potentially killed his 18 year old franchise with this.