[Godzilla Blitz]

Initial Reactions...

So far I give it a +4, meaning that I went to bed 4 hours later than I wanted to (4AM instead of midnight). Given that I knew I needed to get up at 6:30AM, that's a pretty good start for the game. Definitely has the "just one more turn" force in it. The analogy of Civilization in space is right on the mark. I haven't played nearly enough to make a final judgement, but so far so good.

Random thoughts...

Just to try to figure out how to do stuff, I'm fumbling through a small galaxy game with all 5 opponents set at beginner (one above the lowest level of idiot). There are also a couple of minor nations involved, so altogether there are 8 civilizations in this particular game. The beginner AI isn't putting up much of a show so far, but that perhaps is to be expected given that it's only one click above idiot, and there are six or more AI levels, if I remember correctly. After about 20 years of game play I am far in front of the pack in all measures of achievement: population, colonies, economy, culture, military, research. They were slow out of the gate, and by the time they got going, I had colonies on the best empty planets in the galaxy. The key in the development stages however, was getting a colony on a huge fertile planet that is far and away the best planet in the galaxy. If this planet had been close to one of my opponents, I'm not sure if I would have as big of a lead.

Now that all the good stuff is claimed, it's time to start either eliminating civilizations for a conquest victory, strengthening culture for a cultural victory, or making alliances for an aliance victory. It's also possible to get a "research victory", but the game status screen says that I'm 65% of the way to a cultural victory, 55% of the way towards a conquest victory (I own a lot of the galaxy), and only 2% of the way towards a research victory, so that does not seem to be the way to go right now. I went to bed at the point of trying to decide whether to attack some of the evil civilizations or go on a massive, peaceful, culture spreading spree. I was hoping to try the alliance route, as I've got some friends out there, but I can't figure out how to offer alliances yet.

Fun stuff, in no particular order...

Trading between nations is very well done, and you can trade all kinds of stuff, in all kinds of creative ways. Because I don't know the value of things, it's hard to tell how good the AI is at this, but I get a sense that it knows what it's doing. One neat thing is that your diplomatic and military strengths (two different concepts) affect the deals you get.

The scope, scale, and flow of the game work very well. There are lots of fun choices to make, and so far, little micromanagement. Managing planets is getting a bit tedious now that I have a dozen or so of them, but I have yet to mess with the Govenors, which look like an excellent way to solve the micromanagement issue.

There's lots of stuff to find and explore. The research tree seems deep, rich, and well thought out. Everything seems to fit together. This is a game that doesn't overreach, and tries to do the things it does well, rather than trying to do everything.

Other stuff...

Still haven't fought any battles yet. My opponents left me alone during the beginning of the game, and now they're scared of me. However, combat (from what the manual says) and ship design are simplified compared to MOO2 or SEIV. The "think Civ, not MOO2" concept is the best way to imagine this.

The graphics are adequate. There are some neat cut-seen movies that add to the feel of the game, but otherwise not much eye candy. I don't need much to keep my happy graphic-wise, so your mileage may vary here.

I played the game blind, without looking at the manual for more than a minute, and for the most part could figure out how to do things with the help of some random clicking. However, I'm not sure yet how to do quite a few basic things (e.g. I have the technology to "make alliances", but I see no way to offer an alliance to a friendly civ in the diplomacy/trading screen). Unfortunately, the tutorial in the game isn't much help (it's not really there, from what I can tell), and reading the manual didn't clear up any of the questions I had. Other people have mentioned it, but the game and manual really need to give you more information on the technology tree. Although some of the choices are intuitive, you really don't know what are particular choice will do for you. Fortunately there seems to be extensive help on the internet.

Anyway, I should be back to the game sometime later, and will post more. I'm curious to see how the AI plays at more legitimate levels, as this will be the key factor as to whether the game gets a thumbs up or down. First I want to finish my current game, as I have seen a couple of interesting moves by the computer in the last couple of years, and I want to see what happens.