Dark Avatar--Short Positive Review

from GalCiv2 Forums
I've been playing Galactic Civilizations since the OS/2 version in 1994. It's one of a very few games, including Civilization and MOO2, that I've gone back to time and again. Played the heck out of the original GalCiv2. Eventually got the DreadLords expansion and played that an awful lot too. But I got bogged down halfway through the DreadLords campaign and never finished it. Although I've come back to GalCiv2/DreadLords many times, and have probably played 50 games to the end, I finally got kind of tired of it. There are certain settings and strategies that I favor, and I always win. And then along came Dark Avatar! I know I'm about a year late to the party, and a full expansion behind, but I just got DA a week ago, and I'm having a blast! I love the espionage feature. I love the space mining feature. And I REALLY love the campaign. In the fifth scenario, you encounter the DreadLords for the first time. Wow! When they first showed up, my best ship had an attack rating of 6. Up shows a tiny fighter with an attack rating of 188! Plus shields, so I couldn't even hit it at all. Then one of my planets with 6000 troops got invaded by TEN DreadLords. The advantage ratio was like 924:3! My tech was listed at something like 8,000. They were at 260,000! Amazing. In more than 20 years of playing computer games, that is one of my most memorable experiences. Eventually I figured it out. Guerrilla war. Post sentries. Pick off transports with fast fighters. Don't even think about grabbing galactic resources. Build up. . . . Oh...and stick 7 spies on their main planet. It took a long time, but it was VERY satisfying to put the last DreadLords to the sword. Now I'm playing the 7th (and last?) scenario. Huge map. Protect Drengi from the REALLY evil ones. Last night, after a couple of hours, I lost when Drengi was conquered by an army of just FOUR DreadLords against my remaining 5000. They overran me quicker than I thought possible. I'm thinking of skipping work today so I can have my revenge. Belated kudos to Stardock for a REALLY good game. I'll get Twilight of the Arnor, but I expect DA will keep me busy for a while first.
5,286 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
By the way, I had paragraph breaks when I wrote that. And I went back to Edit it and added DOUBLE paragraph breaks, but it still came out in a big block. ??
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
glad to see that you like DA you`ll like TA too when you get to it !!!

Nasty
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I am more or less in the same boat as the OP :) . My situation is I bought gciv 2 gold, played the dreadlords campaign, got owned repeatadly and gave up. I then months later decide I will buy TOTA so Im in a situation where I have yet to play DA and TOTA for the first time.

Heres the thing I hate how I buy games and finish them fast as hell so I decided I would go through all the gciv 2 installments from oldest to newest. Suffice to say I just finished the dreadlords campaign(On normal just) for the first time. Heck when I think of that Apocalypse mission that has got to have been one of the toughest missions ever in a game lol , total insane difficulty like games from the 8 bit days hehe (I know people say the DL are easy if you know how to deal with them but I still reckon they are tough, one wrong move and they will just keep owning your ships)

Anyway all things considered the DL campaign has given me a bit of a crash course and Im ready to try DA (I actually have the latest expansion so its dam tempting to jump on that but Its for the sake of giving the game some longevity and to be finding out new things here and there so I am doing it the long way)

Just reading your post , it sounds like you really like DA :) I only read the post about 50% because I dont want to spoil anything but cant wait to play DA now which I will do in 5 mins for the first time. (Just to finally say I was getting a bit frustrated with that DL mission but it forced me to try out differant techs and get my own strategy for optimum start, I must admit what worrys me in DA and above is any ecco changes because I was just getting a slight hang of DL ecco)
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I have a slightly different experience. I bought Dreadlords about a year ago. I got it mainly because it got such good reviews, and I have fond memories of MOO2. It sat on a shelf and collected dust. Never got installed or tested. Till now.

About 3 weeks ago, I loaded up the game. I was hooked within 10 mins. About 30 hours of game play later, I purchased and downloaded DA and started again. I got ToA last week and haven't slept since. Seriously, I find all of my free time just disapears into the machine. But I love it.

Thanks Star Doc!!