Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth

 PC
User Score
5.5

Mixed or average reviews- based on 1084 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 343 out of 1084
  2. Mixed: 374 out of 1084
  3. Negative: 367 out of 1084
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  1. redbeerd
    Oct 27, 2014
    4
    This mod for Civilization 5 might have been entitled: Civilization: Space Caravan Management before it was given to a group of energetic marketing people to hype up before release. It features the following astounding features:

    - Complete sci-fi reskins for all your favorite civilization units and concepts. Meet the warrior… in a spacesuit! Start the game by building a “monument”,    This mod for Civilization 5 might have been entitled: Civilization: Space Caravan Management before it was given to a group of energetic marketing people to hype up before release. It features the following astounding features:

    - Complete sci-fi reskins for all your favorite civilization units and concepts. Meet the warrior… in a spacesuit! Start the game by building a “monument”, a.k.a. “old earth relic”, and monitor your empire’s happiness… err… “health”. It’s all the concepts from 4000 BC you love, taken straight into the 23rd century!

    - Take your suspension of disbelief to new heights as colonists from earth land on a new planet and have no map of the surface, even after launching satellites. Watch in amazement as the borders of your space colony expand due to cultural influence, probably as the hostile insectoid aliens start wearing blue jeans and listening to pop music. Conduct sci-fi trade by caravan!

    - Which brings us to the best feature: spend 50% (literally: half) of your game time managing space caravans, of which there will be dozens and which have to be manually re-assigned every couple of turns! Yay! 3 caravans per city! EPIC FUN on large maps.

    - Watch real f_AI_l brought out of the AI, which will not attack you once during a full game at the hardest difficulty setting, but which will proceed to launch waves of suicide air strikes against an alien worm sitting in a harmless spot and doing nothing.

    - If you should divert from caravan management to anything else, like achieving victory conditions, you will be punished! Feel victory turn to ash in your mouth as, after 50+ turns of building wonders to communicate with the ancient alien race you get a popup saying “Congrats! You’ve communicated with the ancient alien race! Game over.”

    Seriously?    … Expand
  2. Sturmir
    Oct 25, 2014
    4
    Is this game bad? No.

    Does this game disappoint? Certainly. I've been playing Civilization games since the second game came out, and I've played pretty much every strategy game that has been released for English and German. I think I have a pretty good background in the field of strategy games. First: I won't be repeating a lot of what's being said. Second: I actually like this    Is this game bad? No.

    Does this game disappoint? Certainly.

    I've been playing Civilization games since the second game came out, and I've played pretty much every strategy game that has been released for English and German. I think I have a pretty good background in the field of strategy games.

    First: I won't be repeating a lot of what's being said.
    Second: I actually like this game.

    Now, if Civilization Beyond Earth was released without any Hype or expectations I had for it, this game would have been scored higher. It however, has the unfortunate pleasure of being compared to Alpha Centauri and it's expansion pack Alien Crossfire. As the developers noted several times, it was suppose to be a spiritual successor to the game, and repeated the mantra: "We made this for you" (Alpha Centauri fans)

    Unfortunately, with such a huge monolith in the field the game cannot stand a chance.

    The first thing I notice is the technically inferior selection of "sponsors" (factions.) that you have available to you (Compared to the base game of Civilization 5 of 16) - While this may be in more aligned with Alpha Centauri's faction selection and yet further expanded on by minor bonuses you can select upon planetfall, it fails to really touch 1 major problem:

    The fact is that the factions in Alpha Centauri were massively developed. They had unique story elements, unique faction dialogue and communications and a plot. The figurehead in Civilization Beyond Earth have snippets of information included in the loading screen showing the leaders outlook of the pre-planetfall situation which can be summed to the same 2 sentences about how all hope was lost, or that they are more ambitious than the rest and going to claim the galaxy for themselves. The ruler themselves and the faction they represent aren't unique in the slightest. They feel exactly the same, look exactly the same, and do everything exactly the same
    . At the moment of writing this I have 30 hours into this game and have played four games (all massive, all standard) which I purposely chose a new path each time. They were the same exercises in the limitations of terrain and the reduction of strategy.

    Which leads me to this point: I created an account here on metacritic, because I am fed up with this simplification mantra and the dumbing down of strategy games.

    Just a few things that this game is lacking from it's precursor:

    Weather effects
    Alterable terrain (raising and lowering it.)
    Water Cities
    Customizable units (and selecting units in a tier does not count as customization any more than selecting two different pieces of bread counts as making a new sandwich.)
    Interesting story elements (while I admit the quest system has a lot going for it, its exactly the same copy/paste material for each faction sprinkled oh-so-lightly with flavour.)
    Mindworms, Oh god the mindworms. - Aliens are about as much of a threat on frenzied aliens as the faction AI. That isn't a compliment.
    Effective strategy elements - 1UP Tile thing, Okay I get it, but Alpha Centauri solved the massive wave of death via Collateral damage. Should take a lesson.
    Massive map and strategy - I hate the fact that if I spend 18 hours on a game, and finally take the entire continent, my continent has about 30 cities. That may seem like a lot, and if you go by the tedious ****ing micromanagement of continually selecting the same traderoutes again and re-agreeing to deals that should just auto-continue indefinitely unless interrupted (or give me a prompt: "Do you wish to continue doing the same thing?") A hint to the developers - Shrink the cities, make them a bit more dynamic and interesting, increase the map size by about half again. Your 1UP Tile system might actually work then.
    Multiplayer that worked - At the time of writing this my friends and I have experienced 18 disconnects, over 8 crashes (seemingly at random.) and ungodly amounts of out of sync issues when doing things like launching a satellite.

    Now, there is a lot of things I do enjoy with this game. I enjoy the satellites, I enjoy the covert op (which is currently broken for it's ability to capture 6 cities at once, every 30~ odd turns if you focus it, and the AI functions like the lemming it seems to wish to represent.) I enjoy the purity/harmony/supremacy hooks. I enjoy this game.

    I do not enjoy what they squandered with the chance to deliver a real strategy game, with depth and choice.

    I'm sure after they've released 8 DLC sponsor packs, and 2 more expansions, this game might be worth buying. I know you will buy it but if you can, wait until it goes on sale. If you can't wait you know it'll be a long term investment towards a game; the real content will be released for the low-low price of 90$ over a period of 3 years. Sit back and wait for the next round of content.

    Thanks for reading this, and if you don't agree with this, well... there isn't accounting for taste.

    Final Verdict: Go play Alpha Centauri and wait for the DLCs.    … Expand
  3. timeknight
    Oct 24, 2014
    4
    This game is nothing close to what Alpha Centauri was. The diplomacy, for one, is absolutely terrible. It's worse than Civ 5. You can get allies easily, but you can't do anything with them. There are no trade or research agreements. There's no planetary council. Diplomacy is just bad.

    This game does not bring anything new to the table except for a new skin for Civilization 5. It feels    This game is nothing close to what Alpha Centauri was. The diplomacy, for one, is absolutely terrible. It's worse than Civ 5. You can get allies easily, but you can't do anything with them. There are no trade or research agreements. There's no planetary council. Diplomacy is just bad.

    This game does not bring anything new to the table except for a new skin for Civilization 5. It feels more like a Civ 5 mod. Is it a spiritual successor to Alpha Centauri? No. Not even close.    … Expand
  4. MogRules
    Oct 26, 2014
    4
    This ladies and gentleman is another reason why we should not be pre-ordering or paying for games until they are released. I really had high hopes for this as I loved Civ 5 and didn't even get into the franchise until just before the last Civ 5 expansion.

    I wanted to like this, I really did despite early doomsday predictions saying that this was just a reskin of Civ 5 and it was going    This ladies and gentleman is another reason why we should not be pre-ordering or paying for games until they are released. I really had high hopes for this as I loved Civ 5 and didn't even get into the franchise until just before the last Civ 5 expansion.

    I wanted to like this, I really did despite early doomsday predictions saying that this was just a reskin of Civ 5 and it was going to be horrible. Does anyone remember the fallout from Battlefield 4? and all the people calling it Batlefield 3.5? Well apparently Firaxis and 2k didn't see any of that because they have gloriously recreated all of that here.

    Where do we start? Well the game is marketed as a new Civ game at the full $50 price tag for us here in Canada and as such you would expect just that....a new game, not a game that looks visually worse and uses most of the same concepts and ideas from Civ 5 and simply calls them something else...such as the health system.

    The first thing I noticed when I loaded up my first game was even the loading screen looks terrible...you are greeted to a galactic background with some horrible looking text that looks like it was thrown together in notepad at the last second. There is no voice overs, nothing to welcome you to your civilization and nothing that gets you excited. This isn't the only thing that they have eliminated the voices from, they also all but axed the voices when you completed a tech. Instead of a nice detail and quite following the tech you completed you get a generic "you completed X" and that's it.....

    The new research "web" is cumbersome and hard to navigate and generally a step back IMO. Yes, it does offer you some customization not available in Civ 5 but it looks terrible.

    The Graphics in BE are quite honestly just bad compared to the way things looked in Civ 5, and everything looks like an older game, not something new. Most of the terrains blend together and the gas is hard to see so you better hope you can notice your units taking damage and not rely on being able to see the gas on the map.

    All in all this is Civ, but it is NOT a new game in any way shape of form and you are basically paying a new game price for a re-skin or DLC pack for Civ 5 with less units and the same AI from the previous iteration. Even the text the AI uses is copy pasted from Civ 5 into BE when your talking to them...like how lazy do you need to be.

    Basically DON'T BUY THIS GAME. If we continue to support this crap then game companies will just keep trying to hawk it on us.    … Expand
  5. Mittsies
    Feb 18, 2015
    0
    Are you new to the Civilization franchise? Play Civ V instead - it's a more complete game that outshines Beyond Earth in almost every single aspect. Are you already a Civ fan? Steer clear. Beyond Earth adds nothing new to the franchise and has no style. It feels like a total conversion mod of Civ V, but with extremely limited features. I guess you can wait for 2K games to pump out a bunchAre you new to the Civilization franchise? Play Civ V instead - it's a more complete game that outshines Beyond Earth in almost every single aspect. Are you already a Civ fan? Steer clear. Beyond Earth adds nothing new to the franchise and has no style. It feels like a total conversion mod of Civ V, but with extremely limited features. I guess you can wait for 2K games to pump out a bunch of costly DLC and then maybe the game will be playable once you've bought it 3 times over, but even then I have major doubts.

    Bottom line: an extreme disappointment. Don't be fooled by paid reviews and hype.    … Expand
  6. GwionBach
    Oct 26, 2014
    3
    There are a handful of things I can sincerely praise about this game - the affinity system, the game setup screen, and the revamped tech tree.

    90% of the time, though, you're dealing with a horrifically broken and lazily-designed Civ V clone that's so achingly transparent in its crass and slapdash assembly that you wonder how a company like Firaxis could release such an insult to their    There are a handful of things I can sincerely praise about this game - the affinity system, the game setup screen, and the revamped tech tree.

    90% of the time, though, you're dealing with a horrifically broken and lazily-designed Civ V clone that's so achingly transparent in its crass and slapdash assembly that you wonder how a company like Firaxis could release such an insult to their own customers. Everywhere you look, you see a place where they:
    -Took an existing feature from Civ 5,
    -Hurriedly slapped a hopelessly generic name on it,
    -Added some lousy and nonsensical fiction on top of it,
    -Either kept the underlying game mechanics the same, or actually made them worse.

    Here and there, you see a few individual token efforts to really think about "hey, what would it be like to colonize an alien planet?" The affinity system, the game setup screen, and the miasma all fall into this category, and they all more or less work. If Firaxis had applied this kind of thinking to the entire game, we would have had something that felt fresh -- but alas, it's like tossing a bucket of sand on a dead dog and calling it a sand castle. There's too much of the old ugliness sticking out underneath that needed to be scraped away completely.    … Expand
  7. tobas1
    Oct 26, 2014
    4
    First of all this game have absolutely nothing in common with Alpha Centauri ... except one - both taking place in future. And really thats all!!!
    Alpha Centauri had unique ecosystem that felt alive and could really mess you up sometimes. Fungus was spreading and spamming mindworms and those could really do a lot of harm even lategame when apear in big stacks. Here alien life forms are    First of all this game have absolutely nothing in common with Alpha Centauri ... except one - both taking place in future. And really thats all!!!
    Alpha Centauri had unique ecosystem that felt alive and could really mess you up sometimes. Fungus was spreading and spamming mindworms and those could really do a lot of harm even lategame when apear in big stacks. Here alien life forms are normal barbarians from other Civ games - nothing to worry about. The only problem is siege worm that even dont do much damage if youre carefull arround him but when you take him down with your city's or mobile artilery there is absolutly no thread from alians any more! And if aliens really have some mechanics to promote 'green' thinking and not attacking, than i missed that totaly. They attack you even without doing them any harm at all, and when you killing them right from a start they attack you even less coz have less units. So green thinking here is dead - and Gaians were my favorite fraction in AC!
    Ah yes - fractions - except 1 small bonus that every one of them has they are all totaly the same! I cannot even name those that i played or played against coz they were to borring and uninteresting to even remember their names. And i can name EVERY Alpha Centauri fraction even now - and didn't play that game for years!

    What ele made AC great game for me? Terraforming - there you could drill rivers, buld improvements changing climate or even terraform up your land and flood other players with global warming. Here you can do **** You can cut trees and build improvements and thats basicly it. So your terraforming abilities are simmilar to Egiptian pessant with copper axe.

    Next is upgraing units - in AC you could take any unit and select what type of researched already wepon or armor or skill put in it and if you had enough money upgrade your units to this newer model. So for me it was brilliant. I needed fast artilery rover with no armor? or good armored garnison supressing riots with poor wepon? or mindworm catching unit? or maybe few types of terraformers to clean fungus faster or to move twice as much hexes? You could do EVERYTHING... if you could afford upgrating and first created prototype unit that costs twice as much as regular one. Here you can -again- do **** Through some strange God intervention every unit is upgrated without costs to new model after gaining point of whatever that was. Especialy strange coz newer model in production costs like 20% more so why the hell its free?

    And last thing is trade routes. In AC you could boost your production by sending suply crawlers to collect resources from not ocupied by your city hexes and this could significantly boost your production. Here you can do trade routs between your, neutral or other players cities. But those trade routs are ridiculusly good! Its not like 3 additional energy or production that you got from suply cravler, here from one trade route 2 cities will get for example 5 food+production each!! If you select your boosts wisely, you can just buy trade route building, teleport to that city 2 trade convoys (wtf is that anyway?) and send them to your cities (coz no point to send to other civs boosting their production) and from this your production in that city is 500% better - its crazy! and game killing coz the only limit for your expansion from now on is helth ... until you figure out that there is one terrain upgraide giving 1 helth each and you just build them all over your land. plus green upgraids giving you boost to trade routes and helth (why the hell its in the same branch if they are most important ones?) and in 100 turns in my playing for 2nd day i had colonised everything that i could being bigger than all other players combined. and it was supposed to be hard dificulity?

    Overall Alpha Centauri and this dumbed down thing that was supposed to be spiritual succeser have totaly nothing in common. And for me saddest part is that there is not even one thing that Beyound Earth did better than it was in AC - quite contrary! and Alpha Centauri is 15 years old! So really? people are getting so braindead that it's enough for them to be enterteined? Or just game developers are getting so lazy?    … Expand
  8. Boxtears
    Oct 26, 2014
    0
    I defended this game against the naysayers for so long but now I have to face facts and eat my own words. While BE isn't necessarily a bad game, it makes abundantly clear why there should have been an open beta. There's a thread on reddit right now that explains pretty succinctly what's missing or needs to be fixed, but suffice to say that there are a lot of amateurish missteps that neverI defended this game against the naysayers for so long but now I have to face facts and eat my own words. While BE isn't necessarily a bad game, it makes abundantly clear why there should have been an open beta. There's a thread on reddit right now that explains pretty succinctly what's missing or needs to be fixed, but suffice to say that there are a lot of amateurish missteps that never should've been allowed. This game is missing a lot of key UI features and shortcuts that were already in Civ 5. Why are we never told what a city JUST finished producing? Why do I need to refresh a gajillion trade routes without ever being reminded what they previously connected, or better yet why don't I have the option to leave them to continue until canceled? Why are victories completions even more lackluster than in Civ 5? Why am I never even told what victory condition another civ beat me with or keep track of their progress beyond vague quarterly updates? Why am I not able to see who is at war with whom? Why Why, Why, WHY?… Expand
  9. chakane048
    Oct 27, 2014
    0
    The quality of this game is a direct insult to Sid Meier. Beyond Exasperation. I might give this game a 1/10 score if they didn't slap my face by updating Civ5 today.
  10. ninepax
    Oct 25, 2014
    4
    Only 8 civilizations, same engine, same diplomacy, same interface and less options.
    Civ 5 with less options=Beyond Earth.
    I have played Civ 4,Civ 4 BTS and Civ 5. This Civ Beyond Earth is the worst of all.
  11. Kokoloris
    Oct 26, 2014
    0
    AI is completely terrible and passive. First game I played was on the middle difficulty and I got attacked ONCE. So the second game I went for the hardest difficulty and they didn't even attack me. Such an easy and boring game. I didn't know the mechanics and I won on hardest difficulty on my second game. No campaign to make up for it. And all in all, the mechanics are too similiar toAI is completely terrible and passive. First game I played was on the middle difficulty and I got attacked ONCE. So the second game I went for the hardest difficulty and they didn't even attack me. Such an easy and boring game. I didn't know the mechanics and I won on hardest difficulty on my second game. No campaign to make up for it. And all in all, the mechanics are too similiar to Civ(and where they differ the game is just worse than Civ5). If this where an addon it wouldnt even be worse 10€. I regret buying this game more than any other game.… Expand
  12. Ghostrider
    Oct 24, 2014
    3
    If you didn't like Civ5 (but liked Civ4 and older versions), then you are unlikely to enjoy Civ:BE. It has all of the problems of Civ5 and then some. Most game mechanics are Civ5, reskinned. Very boring. Most of the time you have nothing to do but click "Next turn" and wait for the really slow AI to do his turn.

    In Civilopedia list of units fits on a single screen. Techology tree    If you didn't like Civ5 (but liked Civ4 and older versions), then you are unlikely to enjoy Civ:BE. It has all of the problems of Civ5 and then some. Most game mechanics are Civ5, reskinned. Very boring. Most of the time you have nothing to do but click "Next turn" and wait for the really slow AI to do his turn.

    In Civilopedia list of units fits on a single screen. Techology tree unintuitive and confusing.

    Civ:BE continues the pacifist trend of Civ5. There is no one to fight with, there is no point in fighting and you hardly have any units to fight with. So why bother?

    It doesn't seem that despite buying the "deluxe version" (out of fond memories of Civ4 and the games before) I would bother to complete even one playthrough.

    The game is an utter disappointment.    … Expand
  13. BarimLee
    Oct 25, 2014
    0
    It ruined critical system of civilization. Each civilization has no characteristic ability like unit, construction, etc but small benefits. They should named it as "Tactical" not "Civilization". There is no pleasure to develop my civilization. Just dull and tactics remained
  14. Nikkolette
    Oct 24, 2014
    0
    Game is godawful to say the least.
    1. UI is atrocious. Queuing is so bothersome and that I don't use it - you have to click three times on different menus to put something on queue...only from city queue - no hotkeys, Ctrl or Alt modifiers from main map. In other words - you will waste more time on clicking than if you manually issue orders.
    2. Diplomacy somehow managed to become even    Game is godawful to say the least.
    1. UI is atrocious. Queuing is so bothersome and that I don't use it - you have to click three times on different menus to put something on queue...only from city queue - no hotkeys, Ctrl or Alt modifiers from main map. In other words - you will waste more time on clicking than if you manually issue orders.
    2. Diplomacy somehow managed to become even worse than in CivV, which is achievement on its own. With reduced unity types AI knows only ONE tactic - swarm of suicidal berserking human/tank waves.
    3. Absolutely primitive execution of advertized features. Ie. Alien agressiveness is linked only to alien nest destruction it seems. You can shoot dozens upon dozens of aliens standing outside 2 tile radius from their nest without any fear of counterattack - Ai cannot into attack.
    4. Absolute lack of any automation. If you have 10 cities then you have to manually isue each and every production order.
    5. Leaders lack any personality - they are just animated talking heads.
    6. Once again you are spammed with approvals, denouncations and gazillion other meaningless and useless notification via leader animation screen "we like that you like X", "We do not like that you like Y" etc every turn.
    7. Trade routes - Firaxis showed phenomenal ability to make their own idea as terrible a possible - if with CivV you had to deal with 5 or so TR now you have 3 per city, you have to manually reassign EACH an EVERY of them. I cannot imagine playing with 10 or so cities.

    Game miraculously managed to fall even below my lowest expectations. Firaxis used most primitive approach - dumb down everything, cut loose ends, wrap it up in shiny package and show into custumers' throats. This release shows their inability to solve major broblems - CivV AI was horrible and their put no effort in fixint it. Diplomacy was awful - it still is.
    Beyond Earth serves only one purpose - to show how much Alpha Centauri surpasses it in every aspect except for graphics.    … Expand
  15. ShooP
    Oct 24, 2014
    1
    Too similar to Civ 5 with very few innovation. A shame that AI is even dumber than in Civ 5, offering no challenge at all, even in higher difficulties. Game mechanics forces you to expand slowly and you have very few cities to manage even late in the game.
    Really disappointing.
  16. APCY
    Oct 24, 2014
    3
    I have tried this game and all I have to say is that im disappointed. Firstly nothing has been changed apart from sci-fi theme. Combat system, building, exploring and etc are same. Even materials do the same they just changed their icons so it would look diffrently. I would say brave new world dlc was a way bigger and more interesting, and this game counts as new and for 50 euro... imI have tried this game and all I have to say is that im disappointed. Firstly nothing has been changed apart from sci-fi theme. Combat system, building, exploring and etc are same. Even materials do the same they just changed their icons so it would look diffrently. I would say brave new world dlc was a way bigger and more interesting, and this game counts as new and for 50 euro... im really disappointed, they were very lazy, but ya money is more important for them I suppose.… Expand
  17. Qgal5kap
    Oct 29, 2014
    1
    Bah, this is just a reskinned version of CIV 5 with worse game mechanics. More micro-management, less automation. A total cash grab!! Avoid, avoid!!!!

    In the future, we have the technology to travel to alien planets, but we lack the technology of networking and computing?? We have the power of space flight, but we lack the ability to keep a geostationary satellite in orbit?!?!?! We    Bah, this is just a reskinned version of CIV 5 with worse game mechanics. More micro-management, less automation. A total cash grab!! Avoid, avoid!!!!

    In the future, we have the technology to travel to alien planets, but we lack the technology of networking and computing?? We have the power of space flight, but we lack the ability to keep a geostationary satellite in orbit?!?!?! We have the knowledge to settle on an alien planet, but we don't know how to build a settler???
    There are just so many breaches of logic here! Lazy work by the dev!!!    … Expand
  18. Raf_KR
    Oct 25, 2014
    4
    Graphic 2/5
    There is no info graphic.
    You must read text for getting information.

    Sound 3/5
    Not impressive.

    Gameplay 3/5
    Alien = Kinds of animal.
    limited type of units.
    No different from each civilization.
    Tech tree = sux. confused. meaningless tree.

    Replayable 2/5
    Very little volume.

    Conclusion 2/5
    Don't buy this game.
    Play again Civ5.
  19. ThiagoF
    Oct 24, 2014
    0
    Sry but this is another Scam.... this is not a new game, if you want to play wait for discounts this don't worth the price.
    This is a Failed DLC, they really screwed up this time.
    Really disappointing. So... now come the list os problems 1) The maps are small you can`t customize your planet; 2) The Leaders don`t have any personality, they are just talking heads and there are few;    Sry but this is another Scam.... this is not a new game, if you want to play wait for discounts this don't worth the price.
    This is a Failed DLC, they really screwed up this time.
    Really disappointing.

    So... now come the list os problems

    1) The maps are small you can`t customize your planet;
    2) The Leaders don`t have any personality, they are just talking heads and there are few;
    3) The made the diplomacy even worth then Civ5;
    4) You have to do everything by hand, managing trade routes on many cities its a NIGHTMARE!;
    5) The UI is abysmal, sometimes you need alot of clicks just to Queue stuff;
    6) The tech web is a mess and you don't fell any diferences after you complete stuff;
    7) The aliens are stupid the A.I. make no sense and the creatures at the see they are REALLY unbalanced almost everything can easily kill your ships.
    8) The lack os inovation kills the game;    … Expand
  20. Crimson
    Oct 24, 2014
    1
    This is an extremely simplified re-skinned Civ V, with far worse graphics, and absolutely nothing new that is interesting or worthy of praise. I could pick apart every new system, all of which are extremely flawed and cumbersome but there's almost no point. Its clear this is just nothing more than a money grab, with 2K trying to milk its fan-base. This feels like a 'direct to VHS'This is an extremely simplified re-skinned Civ V, with far worse graphics, and absolutely nothing new that is interesting or worthy of praise. I could pick apart every new system, all of which are extremely flawed and cumbersome but there's almost no point. Its clear this is just nothing more than a money grab, with 2K trying to milk its fan-base. This feels like a 'direct to VHS' sequals of popular a franchise.… Expand
  21. Loki64
    Oct 24, 2014
    0
    Terrible game. In fact mod for civilization 5. With a terrible interface, bad textures.
    Even in alpha Centauri was able terraformable, you could raise mountains, stop the rain, and the enemy had died of starvation. You could build a city on water, under water.
    Sordid AI,the same terrible diplomacy inherited from civilization. The computer is behaving inappropriately. The developers have    Terrible game. In fact mod for civilization 5. With a terrible interface, bad textures.
    Even in alpha Centauri was able terraformable, you could raise mountains, stop the rain, and the enemy had died of starvation. You could build a city on water, under water.
    Sordid AI,the same terrible diplomacy inherited from civilization. The computer is behaving inappropriately. The developers have promised the ability to customize the space Shuttle before launch.
    In the end, we have a couple of paragraphs the settings and all...
    The creators were too lazy to do a proper icons for buildings.
    Also, the developers promised the possibility of fine adjustment of units-in the end, we have three options for the development of the unit without the ability to change weapons,armor. In alpha Centauri it was all you can do... what can we say about the alpha Centauri,low-budget Studio made the game Endless legends,where there is an interesting battle system, the ability to customize units and just very beautiful graphics! What have you spent money these developers I personally don't know.    … Expand
  22. Harold_Lanchest
    Oct 24, 2014
    4
    The developers got away with Civ 5. Huge slap in the face, which made me abandon the Civ franchise entirely in favor of far better strategy turn based games. I have no idea how they're getting away with Civ 5: the addon standalone.
  23. horepung
    Oct 27, 2014
    2
    After playing Civ 5 and now playing Civ: BE I can only say that this was a huuuuge let down. What a disappointment!

    1: The A.I. is dumber than ever in this game. It's not even fun to play this when the different factions played by the A.I. have like no personality at all. They're all the same in every way. Spamming you with the same **** meaningless praises and requests over and over    After playing Civ 5 and now playing Civ: BE I can only say that this was a huuuuge let down. What a disappointment!

    1: The A.I. is dumber than ever in this game. It's not even fun to play this when the different factions played by the A.I. have like no personality at all. They're all the same in every way. Spamming you with the same **** meaningless praises and requests over and over again.
    2: The UI is lack luster to say the least. Confusing and strange placements.
    3: After playing like 2 games some of the design choice you encounter are so **** aweful that I don't even believe the game designers even played their own game. Like the constant renewals of the trade routes and the workers that simply cannot be automated when researching the teraforming tech, they will ruin you with building stuff that drain all of your energy.
    4: There's no strategic depth at all. The game is bland in every corner and it seems like you could just pick every affinity, virtue and tech at random and it would mean nothing for the outcome of the game.

    Summed up, if you wonder if you want to buy this or Civ 5, go for Civ 5. This is basically Civ 5 only stripped to the bare minimum. This game should be no where near a 50$ price tag. If you really want to try it, try the demo or wait for a steam winter sale or something. I regret buying this game.    … Expand
  24. kuburga
    Nov 4, 2014
    2
    I'm a huge Civilization V fan. However this game turned out to be very shallow, very disappointing. Nothing that is worth the price, gets boring pretty fast.
  25. herpderp69
    Oct 28, 2014
    2
    This game has no real challenge. This failing is not just a balance issue, it undermines the central story of the game: colonising a strange, unhospitable, dangerous planet. The dramaturgy of this game does not work, you start out in a good position and then it just snowballs from there.

    I played my first game at the second highest level without knowing what I was doing and I still    This game has no real challenge. This failing is not just a balance issue, it undermines the central story of the game: colonising a strange, unhospitable, dangerous planet. The dramaturgy of this game does not work, you start out in a good position and then it just snowballs from there.

    I played my first game at the second highest level without knowing what I was doing and I still ROFLstomped the AI. One wonders how a decent player might lose the game? The AI is slow to reach victory and do not put up much of a fight and the aliens ar much more of a nuisance than a threat.

    Trade routes are brokenly good and tediously micromanagable. The rate of return on a trade route is 3-5 turns whereas most buildings have a rate of return of 30-50 turns. There is no challenge in colonising this inhospitable planet, you just build a trade depot and two trade routes in every city and then it can more than sustain itself. They seriously need a redesign.

    The tech web looks neat but it is too easy to get to the really strong things early, especially if you take one of the 2 sponsors that get free technologies. If they had used the fourth orbital for more than one tech, it might work better. It is one of the fe places in the game where there are real meaningful decisions.

    After four years Civ V is still unbalanced with some game-breaking bugs. Is there any reason to believe the same will not be the case with Beyond earth? That being said Civ V is till miles ahead of beyond earth at the moment by virtue of being fun.    … Expand
  26. Hellseele
    Oct 28, 2014
    4
    I was sadly disappointed with this game. While it plays much like Civ V, it feels like a lazier, cheaper copy. The game is full of new features, some which work well and some that don't, but ultimately operates more like a Civ V expansion than a proper next installment to the game.

    In the end, I only wanted 3 features fixed from Civ V: mods in multiplayer, improved diplomacy AI, and AI    I was sadly disappointed with this game. While it plays much like Civ V, it feels like a lazier, cheaper copy. The game is full of new features, some which work well and some that don't, but ultimately operates more like a Civ V expansion than a proper next installment to the game.

    In the end, I only wanted 3 features fixed from Civ V: mods in multiplayer, improved diplomacy AI, and AI which contacts players in multiplayer games. This is a list that a lot of people agree with, and have been waiting for since 2010, and not one of them was touched.    … Expand
  27. theirrelephants
    Nov 19, 2014
    1
    There are few things that can make me mad enough to rate a game lower than 5. The game has to be completely broken, bug filled, or just genuinely not fun at all. Or, in the case of Beyond Earth, a reskin of an existing game with no new features (unless you count bugs as a feature) repackaged and sold as a new game for full price in an attempt to cash in on an old, dead series that wasThere are few things that can make me mad enough to rate a game lower than 5. The game has to be completely broken, bug filled, or just genuinely not fun at all. Or, in the case of Beyond Earth, a reskin of an existing game with no new features (unless you count bugs as a feature) repackaged and sold as a new game for full price in an attempt to cash in on an old, dead series that was actually good (Alpha Centauri).

    I'm not sure exactly when things like this became acceptable to do, but it certainly explains why pirating video games is now so widespread. When you can't trust your brand new purchased game to actually be a new game, pirating becomes a must in order to save your wallet.

    This is over fifty dollars I'm never going to get back, so yeah, I'm a little mad I got ripped off like this. Civilization V didn't hold a candle to Civilization IV, but at least it was a new game.    … Expand
  28. psybient
    Nov 14, 2014
    1
    Made an account here just to warn people about this game. Do not buy. It is an overwhelmingly mundane and even boring experience. The game doesn't make you care about the world at all. The different faction leaders have no personality and compared to SMAC the game is an absolute let down. Being Australian I paid almost $100 for this game and feel completely ripped off. Also the game hasMade an account here just to warn people about this game. Do not buy. It is an overwhelmingly mundane and even boring experience. The game doesn't make you care about the world at all. The different faction leaders have no personality and compared to SMAC the game is an absolute let down. Being Australian I paid almost $100 for this game and feel completely ripped off. Also the game has issues on some PC's (even top model PC's with latest specs) and keeps crashing on my main gaming rig before I can even load a map so I've been playing it on a laptop.

    The game looks nice (as long as you don't choose an Arid climate otherwise even the graphics are dull) but there is so substance to it whatsoever. It is a mashup of popular sci fi concepts with the very heart and soul ripped out of them leaving you clicking your mouse doing repetitive tasks and not really caring what happens to your civilisation. Winning the game on hardest difficulty is very easy if you just always max out trade routes. It's a shame when you have more than 5 cities you spend half your play time clicking just to manage the trade routes.

    Judging by the difference between user reviews here and critic reviews I can no longer trust big gaming website's reviews: they are obviously just in bed with the developers and were paid to write glowing reviews of a garbage game. Play SMAC instead and I've just purchased Pandora as I've realized that might be the game I've been looking for all along.

    Don't pay full price. Wait for the mods and the patches and get it on sale if you're going to spend your money on it at all.    … Expand
  29. Stevie_D
    Nov 21, 2014
    3
    I was worried that this would be just a graphical total conversion of Civ 5, and be me wasting my money.

    I was largely right. The bit i wasnt right about was just how convoluted and bogged down in frivolous ideas it is. They obviously felt they needed to -try- and add something other than just new graphics, so kudos for trying, but the ideas themselves are lackluster afterthoughts that    I was worried that this would be just a graphical total conversion of Civ 5, and be me wasting my money.

    I was largely right. The bit i wasnt right about was just how convoluted and bogged down in frivolous ideas it is. They obviously felt they needed to -try- and add something other than just new graphics, so kudos for trying, but the ideas themselves are lackluster afterthoughts that feel pointless and meaningless.

    The developers would have been better served by thinking "lets not worry about keeping it SO close to the original Civ5 experience, and introduce some bold new ideas that may disgruntle 1 or 2, but make it more fresh for everyone else."

    Its game design by attempting add safe, little ideas that dont change it from being Civ5. But Civ5 was already at that point of being streamlined enough, but having enough features to keep it interesting.

    I felt bored. I felt bogged down, and like i was being asked to play Civ5, but with a lot more pointless-feeling tasks, and a tech tree that was counter intuitive and lacked playtesting.

    And because of all this, it still felt like just an expansion, and not worth the money of a new game in its own right. A large disappointment for me indeed.    … Expand
  30. Vagiclean
    Oct 26, 2014
    3
    Games I left not all that well, expectations were grandiose in connection with idea, and execution was poor. Concerning a gameplay, the branch of researches with sad badges simply kills, sad units look as a toy for children from 5 to 10 years, diplomacy didn't change in any way. Game needed to be let out as addon to Сivilization 5.
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Awards & Rankings

57
#57 Best PC Game of 2014
21
#21 Most Discussed PC Game of 2014
4
#4 Most Shared PC Game of 2014

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
81

Generally favorable reviews - based on 78 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 65 out of 78
  2. Mixed: 12 out of 78
  3. Negative: 1 out of 78
  1. CD-Action
    Jan 9, 2015
    90
    Cancel all your plans and fill up the fridge, because once you launch Beyond Earth you will not want to leave your home. [13/2014, p.46]
  2. Worth Playing
    Dec 23, 2014
    85
    Passive AI and lackluster online support from the community isn't enough to make Civilization: Beyond Earth a total wash. If you've enjoyed the series over the years, you'll likely spend many hours with this entry as well.
    Read full review
  3. Games Master UK
    Dec 21, 2014
    80
    Prepare for tech tree troubles, but the amount to discover and overall quality wins out. [Christmas 2014, p.64]
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