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(This was posted first at ACOL since 'Poly was down for a while.)
First, let me just say that I have read and re-read all the glowing reviews. Any you know what? I guess they are right. But I wouldn't know because I never gave the game a chance. From the jerky frames of the Paradox intro-"movie" (I have a P3 800 / 256 Mb RAM blah blah blah), to the overly long load times at the start, to the numerous (endless) functions that are buried and / or never explained properly, I came to one conclusion last night after giving EU its last try:
The game is a labor of love. It was made by a bunch of guys who always wanted a Civ-like game in which you couldn't win simply by being a dumbass warmongerer. From what I see, they accomplished that very well.
Except, of course, they made the gamer work TOO DAMN hard to sort all the mechanics out and suffer through dozens of tiny annoyances that, for me, killed the game before it ever had a chance. Now, I've seen the number of people on-line who absolutely love the game, and I won't argue with them. They've undoubtedly given the game several (25+?) hours to really get the hang of things, to make sense of the mess of menus and the akward (horrible?) message system that is "supposed" to make playing RTS style possible.
I guess if you work your way though all that and spend a healthy amount of time looking for answers to the otherwise unexplained gaming elements, you can learn to like and even love the game. But for me, NO game is worth 25+ hours up front simply to feel comfortable playing. No game. I spent about 10, after which I decided I have better things to do with myself when I want to be entertained.
Now don't get me wrong: A steep learning curve can be justified as long as all the information is there. I rather enjoyed Total Art of War 2 in many ways, but simply found it boring...though it was much easier to get the hang of than EU was for me, and TAOW is considered to have an "Impossible" learning curve (Gamespot says that, anyway).
I guess I just have very little (bordering on zero) tolerance for games that make me work so hard before the pay off. "Well," one could say, "chess takes time to learn, but once you do, there's no end to how much fun it is."
True. And I'll be the first to admit that I might well be tossing out a diamond in the rough. But with chess, one can almost immediately begin working on strategy and NOT on finding hidden commands and missing information.
Finally, it's just a shame to me that a game with SO much going on simultaneously (econ, military, diplomacy) didn't give a priority to making it all easily digestible to the player. I would likely have stuck with this in my younger days, but now that I'm very, very busy, I demand more, I guess. For no doubt as all the reviews and on-line threads show, there is certainly a great game in there somewhere.
Just be prepared to work to find it.
First, let me just say that I have read and re-read all the glowing reviews. Any you know what? I guess they are right. But I wouldn't know because I never gave the game a chance. From the jerky frames of the Paradox intro-"movie" (I have a P3 800 / 256 Mb RAM blah blah blah), to the overly long load times at the start, to the numerous (endless) functions that are buried and / or never explained properly, I came to one conclusion last night after giving EU its last try:
The game is a labor of love. It was made by a bunch of guys who always wanted a Civ-like game in which you couldn't win simply by being a dumbass warmongerer. From what I see, they accomplished that very well.
Except, of course, they made the gamer work TOO DAMN hard to sort all the mechanics out and suffer through dozens of tiny annoyances that, for me, killed the game before it ever had a chance. Now, I've seen the number of people on-line who absolutely love the game, and I won't argue with them. They've undoubtedly given the game several (25+?) hours to really get the hang of things, to make sense of the mess of menus and the akward (horrible?) message system that is "supposed" to make playing RTS style possible.
I guess if you work your way though all that and spend a healthy amount of time looking for answers to the otherwise unexplained gaming elements, you can learn to like and even love the game. But for me, NO game is worth 25+ hours up front simply to feel comfortable playing. No game. I spent about 10, after which I decided I have better things to do with myself when I want to be entertained.
Now don't get me wrong: A steep learning curve can be justified as long as all the information is there. I rather enjoyed Total Art of War 2 in many ways, but simply found it boring...though it was much easier to get the hang of than EU was for me, and TAOW is considered to have an "Impossible" learning curve (Gamespot says that, anyway).
I guess I just have very little (bordering on zero) tolerance for games that make me work so hard before the pay off. "Well," one could say, "chess takes time to learn, but once you do, there's no end to how much fun it is."
True. And I'll be the first to admit that I might well be tossing out a diamond in the rough. But with chess, one can almost immediately begin working on strategy and NOT on finding hidden commands and missing information.
Finally, it's just a shame to me that a game with SO much going on simultaneously (econ, military, diplomacy) didn't give a priority to making it all easily digestible to the player. I would likely have stuck with this in my younger days, but now that I'm very, very busy, I demand more, I guess. For no doubt as all the reviews and on-line threads show, there is certainly a great game in there somewhere.
Just be prepared to work to find it.
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