Sid Meier's Civilization III: Complete, the latest offering in the Sid Meier's Civilization III franchise, provides gaming fans with Sid Meier's Civilization III, the highly-addictive journey of discovery, combined with the updated and enhanced multiplayer expansion pack Sid Meier's Civilization III: Play the World*, as well as all of the great new civilizations, scenarios, and features from Sid Meier's Civilization III: Conquests! Sid Meier's Civilization III: Complete provides more ways to explore, more strategies to employ, more modes of play, and more ways to win, all in one box!
Released on
Genres
Version
Complete
Reviews View More
My first Civ game, loved it as a kid. Not the most technically amazing game, and games can be very same-y, but I had a ton of fun with it.
Stack infinity spearmen.
You're not gonna get an unbiased comment on Civ III out of me. This is the game that got me into strategy games as a kid, I LOVED that you could play as Egypt but I HATED that the Egyptian leader wasn't Ramesses II, because I was that sort of nerd as a child.
It's pretty fun but the A.I. is mean to me :(
Not the best Civ, but a nostalgic one. Lots of late nights in high school playing this, listening to Rush, and absolutely not getting laid.
"A Mechanically Ancient Classic"
"Sid Meier's Civilization III: Complete" is not a welcoming addition to the Civilization franchise, certainly not with the way the franchise itself has evolved in more streamlined gameplay. All of the right pieces are there in order to make a compelling 4X strategy title, but the final product was too clunky, vague, and unintuitive for me to enjoy.
I normally do not knock older titles on presentation and visuals, but this title is a bit hard to look at. Not by any technical or graphical standard, but by a sheer lack of cohesion with the user interface. Menus feel bloated, clunky, and look drab. Character models and cities feel a bit washed out with the background environments, and the terrain itself has textures lower than you might expect. Granted this title came out twenty years ago, but it doesn't look very good nowadays.
However, my biggest issue with this game was its tutorial, or real lack of one. 4X strategy titles are generally complex in nature, and despite being an older title in the genre there are still loads of mechanics and details to become accustomed to. Yet "Civ III" decides to essentially throw you into the world with a bloated rulebook to take alongside you. There is an unhealthy amount of trial and error in this title, and most actions have confusing and uneventful consequences (at least, visually). I found myself confused as to how to play a Civ game, and I've played "Civ IV" and "Civ V" before!
Music is decent and has a nice, bouncy beat to it, but the overall presentation and gameplay package was too much of a headache to process. I didn't spend much time with this one, and I do Not Recommend you do either. This is a title that should be saved for older, more hardcore fans of the franchise that grew up with the game, but the newer titles do a much better job or translating Civ's classic gameplay loop to newer generations of gamers.
Final Verdict: 2/10 (Bad)
"Sid Meier's Civilization III: Complete" is not a welcoming addition to the Civilization franchise, certainly not with the way the franchise itself has evolved in more streamlined gameplay. All of the right pieces are there in order to make a compelling 4X strategy title, but the final product was too clunky, vague, and unintuitive for me to enjoy.
I normally do not knock older titles on presentation and visuals, but this title is a bit hard to look at. Not by any technical or graphical standard, but by a sheer lack of cohesion with the user interface. Menus feel bloated, clunky, and look drab. Character models and cities feel a bit washed out with the background environments, and the terrain itself has textures lower than you might expect. Granted this title came out twenty years ago, but it doesn't look very good nowadays.
However, my biggest issue with this game was its tutorial, or real lack of one. 4X strategy titles are generally complex in nature, and despite being an older title in the genre there are still loads of mechanics and details to become accustomed to. Yet "Civ III" decides to essentially throw you into the world with a bloated rulebook to take alongside you. There is an unhealthy amount of trial and error in this title, and most actions have confusing and uneventful consequences (at least, visually). I found myself confused as to how to play a Civ game, and I've played "Civ IV" and "Civ V" before!
Music is decent and has a nice, bouncy beat to it, but the overall presentation and gameplay package was too much of a headache to process. I didn't spend much time with this one, and I do Not Recommend you do either. This is a title that should be saved for older, more hardcore fans of the franchise that grew up with the game, but the newer titles do a much better job or translating Civ's classic gameplay loop to newer generations of gamers.
Final Verdict: 2/10 (Bad)