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Civilization Revolution 2 brings with it a visual overhaul, new leaders and some new units, but ultimately, it’s largely the same game that suffers with the same issues of older Civ games.
There’s no denying that Civ Rev 2 is a much better looking game than its predecessor. Civ Rev was largely a simply-presented game in order to function on the devices available at the time. The sequel jumps to 3D, with a bunch of cool new animations and better looking terrain to make for a more engrossing experience. The only trouble is, having reviewed it on an iPad 2, I ran into a few crashes, with the game slowing to a crawl on occasion too. But for the most part, it worked fine.
Naturally, the flow of a game is much faster than traditional Civ, and with that the tropes of the series intensify. Civ Rev 2 is far too militaristic, with about 90 per cent of my playtime being at war with at least two nations – it’s pretty tricky trying to build cities and tech when constantly focussing on military units. It seems that, once again, increasing difficulty means increasing intensity and frequency of conflict. It also appears as if the AI has a tendency to gang up on the player, with a lack of on-screen notifications of battles between other nations.
Civ Rev fits the format it’s on perfectly, but because of its pugnacious style, feels as though it can only be approached in a certain way. Thankfully, playing as a warlord is fun, and you can still focus on achieving other victory methods than domination, but it would be nice to not feel forced to constantly negotiate the terms of battle with leaders every few turns.
Although, I don’t think going to war with Chairman Mao and Winston Churchill is a bad way to spend a train journey or two.
Game tested on an iPad 2.
