Just picked this up yesterday and its one of the few rare games which can make me stop playing my other game obssessions of FALLOUT 3, OBLIVION and SKYRIM.
Music captures the old feeling of previous CIVILIZATION games to a tee with plenty of classical and foreign songs to give a grand THIS IS YOUR DESTINY mood without being overwhelming. The ingame narrator and other voice actors/actresses play their parts splendidly with a very convincing air of realism without ever feeling like a rehash from previous games. Voice acting is high quality along with the intro movie which at first seems underwhelming but the more you see it the more the subtle naturalness of flawless execution comes out.
Combat is very exciting to watch thanks to the great visuals and the strategic choices available like long range assaults from more then a hex away. It gets the adrenaline going seeing an enemy nearing ones cities border and have the opportunity to bombard them into mince meat as red arrow markers pop up showing the direction of acttack and target. Naval to land acttacks are just as exciting as i was pounding barbarians from offshore without them being able to strike back due to being melee units. Patrolling the high seas is alot of fun and needed to protect ones shipping lanes from dasterdly riff rafs. Nothing like sinking a pirate ship after it has acttacked some of your defensless fishing boats.
One has to watch out to keep workers a safe distance when the enemy is near otherwise they may end up getting kidnapped with the player having to go hunt them down and free them.
Diplomacy brings ones possible allies and enemies to life with buetiful graphics and some nice ai behaviour giving them plenty of character. You can tell right away who you can trust that will be easy to get along with aswell as nice to and who is going to be stubborn with possible deviousness. One nation i can gift a huge sum of gold to and they'll reciprocate kindly with long lasting loyalty while another nation will be going negative on me by the next turn out of greedy snobbery :) Just like the good old days with CIVILIZATION II.
There is plenty of visual eye candy to reward the player when making new discoveries and completing wonders which capture the intense feeling of accomplishment i got playing CIVILIZATION II and ALPHA CENTAURI. Theres tons and tons of things to be discovered and many layers of research to explore and enjoy for micromanagement hungry players in CIVILIZATION V.
Another thing which i greatly enjoyed was discovering natural wonders in the world like a huge monstrous volcano on some isolated island. It gave a Columbus exploring the world mood to traveling which adds a very immersive fun quality when finding the unexpected.
So far i have only see only minor glitches like the intro animation taking a few seconds to disappear when first starting up the game and wanting to skip it. Also constantly having to click on which version to play before going into the game either the Direct X 11 or Direct X 9 version was a bit confusing at first which lead to crashing when loading up a previous save i guess from making the wrong choice. After fiddling with it a bit by selecting Direct X 9 and starting the game up with a new start while being online it seems to have fixed it self and i can play offline again. Theres already a patch released dealing with other crash issues so its just a matter of time when little things like this get tweaked out.
CIVILIZATION V continues to carry the bright torch of turn based strategy gaming into the 22nd century and i gladly plunk down my coin in thanks as am sure many already have and shall continue to do so for this completely satisfying instant classic.