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Civ III isn't a bad game. Its actually a pretty good game. Its way better than CTP for example. It, unfortunately, isn't a great game.
Civ I was an all time classic. I can still remember going out in a snowstorm on christmas eve to go buy a copy, and almost getting killed by a semi on the way home because I was trying to drive through a snowstorm and read the manual at the same time. (No, I don't still drive like an idiot).
Civ II was, by most accounts (including mine), a great game. I stil have Civ II installed on my desktop machine, bought in August of this year, and I still play it.
SMAC got binary reviews, either you thought it was superb (like me), or you just didn't care for it. Still, some people walked away from it and thought "now this is a *great* game.
Civ III isn't great. Its good, its solid. I got my money's worth. I'm not mad. I'm just disappointed.
We all expected more from a Civilization game, and that's the source of the anger I think. We wanted it so badly to be great, and it was ... merely good.
If this were some random TBS written by somebody other than Frixaris, it'd probably get firendly and positive reviews. People would say "its a way to kill some time until Civ III ships."
Since it is Civ III though, people look at it and compare it to what they hoped it would be, which is perhaps unfair.
Then again, if you stick a brand name like civilization on a game, perhaps your customer base has a right to expect it to live up to the history.
Civ I was an all time classic. I can still remember going out in a snowstorm on christmas eve to go buy a copy, and almost getting killed by a semi on the way home because I was trying to drive through a snowstorm and read the manual at the same time. (No, I don't still drive like an idiot).
Civ II was, by most accounts (including mine), a great game. I stil have Civ II installed on my desktop machine, bought in August of this year, and I still play it.
SMAC got binary reviews, either you thought it was superb (like me), or you just didn't care for it. Still, some people walked away from it and thought "now this is a *great* game.
Civ III isn't great. Its good, its solid. I got my money's worth. I'm not mad. I'm just disappointed.
We all expected more from a Civilization game, and that's the source of the anger I think. We wanted it so badly to be great, and it was ... merely good.
If this were some random TBS written by somebody other than Frixaris, it'd probably get firendly and positive reviews. People would say "its a way to kill some time until Civ III ships."
Since it is Civ III though, people look at it and compare it to what they hoped it would be, which is perhaps unfair.
Then again, if you stick a brand name like civilization on a game, perhaps your customer base has a right to expect it to live up to the history.