A little easy, a little simple, but shouldn't a sandbox title be easy? I love this game just as much as any of the civs
Control your empire from fledgling to galactic.
The Gameplay:
For those of you who don’t know this is basically regarded as the sequal bastard spin-off/cash-in on the beloved series, “Sid Meier’s Civilization”. You’d naturally figure that to be a bad thing but actually it’s quite good taken in its own way. Probably the reason most civ. fans hate it is it’s simplicity, not only that but it’s also relatively easy. The enemy AI is so bad that often times you can go to war with someone and leave your towns free of defenses because non-barbarian armies rarely bother to go into battle. Peace is pointless because even a small disadvantaged country can come in and just take cities without having to quiver in fear of being attacked in return.
City management and trade have also been overly simplified. In the Civ. Series you always had to worry about collecting resources, food, and money. In this game you have no real reason to worry, as long as you don’t use to many specialist civilians your workers will be able to produce enough food for themselves and usually more. Tradable resources aren’t needed but can provide you with some extra cash but money is not essential in any form. Happiness as well is mostly unimportant because it will take so much to irk your citizens into unhappiness; for example, my personal tactic is to give my citizens minimal wages, maximum working hours, while rationing their food as much as I can, what do they have to say about it? Meh, it’s a living.
As you can see if there is one thing that Call to Power is not, it’s complex and/or challenging. What CtP2 does well has a lot to do with features that the Civ. series mostly hasn’t bothered with. Future tech., for example, in Civ. Is good for points only. In CtP2, you can build future tech governments, units, as well as tile and city improvements. This means that the endgame results in something very different than the Civ. Series.
The Graphics:
Fairly good, makes Civ. 1 and 2 look like jokes of course.
The Sounds:
Same as other Civ. games, lots of world music. If there is one complaint though it’s that it stays the same throughout the ages and no matter which Civ. you’re playing as.
The Multiplay:
You can play online but good luck finding someone to play with.
The Replay:
Plenty, there’s nothing like staying up twelve hours past your bed time to invade you neighboring countries.
The Bottom Line:
So you see, this game is a lot like Civ., but without all the things that get in your way, like strategy. That way you can concentrate on what is the most fun, developing futuristic technology and crushing any feeble culture that stands in your way. Obviously this won’t go over well with strategy fans and players who want a challenge but if you think about it, if your going to play a God game, why should you have to try? So what if the enemy’s at the gates, I’m God, I’ll just open cheat mode and make fusion tanks appear out of thin air while nuking their cities. Sound fun? If it doesn’t, than stay with Civ., if it does than this games for you.