Review: Civilization Wars - Harness The Power
by Felix Xiao
November 11, 2010
Overview
There came a time ago when only one civilization existed and had control over the ancient forces that ultimately led to its destruction. Ages later, 3 civilizations have discovered the remains of this power and are greedy to get their hands on it. As the general of one of these empires, it's your goal to secure the crystal of the past at any cost in Chillingo's iOS port of the RPG strategy flash game.
Features
In order to find the ancient forces, you must defeat enemy armies in 33 locations on the world map. You can choose to fight for 3 races that each possess strengths and weaknesses. As you gain experience on the battlefield, you level up and can utilize skill points and gain runes. There are 18 skills that can be upgraded and downgraded to your advantage, as well as 150 runes that are awarded for certain accomplishments. Every map location can be customized with 8 options to be more or less difficult. The game has Game Center integration with leaderboards and 54 achievements as well.
The Good
Civilization Wars is a great strategy game that plays like Galcon with many additional features. At the start of every level, both you and your enemy have control over several buildings while the others are neutral. The number of soldiers stationed at each occupied location increases slowly, and you have to move troops from one building to another in order to eliminate the other civilization. There are special sites such as towers that shoot at enemies and mines that collect crystals that can also be taken over. The controls work smoothly and allow you to tap on one building and transport soldiers by dragging onto another location.
There is a massive amount of content available for you to enjoy, starting with the enormous map with 33 locations to attack. You can play these at any time, but later battles include armies that are much stronger than those in earlier ones. Chillingo does an excellent job of putting RPG elements to use by including skills that can be upgraded, spells that can be used during battle, and runes that provide incentive to play the game more. For some reason, 12 save slots are included, which allows you to preserve the state of your civilization in its full glory.
The level of customization available for every battle is truly impressive and adds to the insane amount of replay value. Some of these game modes are unlocked as you reach higher levels and can be combined to produce an entirely new experience. Besides the normal game mode, you can play in blind, twilight, blaster, mummy survival, sudden death, increased strength, and no magic modes. Most of these options make the game more challenging and pay with more experience points if you do succeed. This is a really nice feature that lets you enjoy Civilization Wars regardless of how good you are at strategy games.
The Bad
With so much gameplay available for cheaper than a pack of gum, there's not much to dislike about Civilization Wars. However, one major problem lies in that the font and images during battles are way too small. Unless you're playing in blind mode, every building is marked by the number of soldiers stationed there, which is crucial to know before attacking. This number is extremely difficult to read and you'll make mistakes because of it. The colors of the other civilizations sometime make it hard to tell whether a location is controlled by an enemy or neutral.
The Verdict
The ability to cast spells, upgrade skills, and fully customize levels help to give Civilization Wars a Galcon feel with much more content. The game will provide you with many guaranteed hours of play time unless you really dislike these types of titles. For only $0.99, Civilization Wars is a should buy that will have you developing military strategies to take over other empires.