Ugh, forget I said that. This isn't a sales pitch.
You may have heard of Humble Bundle before. Maybe you've even partaken of their awesome "cheap bundles of digital content that also provide money to charity" in the past. If so, good on you! You're both contributing to a great cause and getting a great deal. I've personally been taking advantage of the service for a few years now, and I have a ton of awesome stuff to show for it.
Something that's relatively new to me, however, is Humble's monthly subscription service, aptly titled Humble Monthly. It's sort of like a digital Loot Crate kind of thing, where you pay $12 (USD) a month, and you get a whole slew of digital games delivered to your Humble account. Each game is attached to a code that you then redeem on Steam, and the game is added to your Steam library.
Now, I've known about the service for a few months now, but I had yet to see any major games on offer that really made me pull the trigger. Don't get me wrong, it's always great stuff, it's just so far been great stuff that I personally already own or am not interested in. This month, though, they finally hooked me.
I've been a big fan of the Civilization series ever since I first played Civ3 back in the day. I've never been great at strategy style games, but I still love to play them every now and then, and Civilization is pretty much my go-to. Civ5 was, unfortunately, not quite what I was hoping it would be. I didn't hate it, but it just didn't gel with me at the time for whatever reason.
Still, though, as soon as I heard about Civ6, I knew I would get it eventually. I was mainly just waiting for a good price to converge with a driving urge to play it. Well, imagine my excitement when I discovered that Civilization VI is the leading game in this month's Humble Monthly package.
Let me put that into clear terms. Up until February 1st, you can go to Humble Bundle, pay $12 (USD) to sign up for Humble Monthly, and get Civilization VI, plus two DLC packs for it (Australia Civlization & Scenario Pack and Vikings Scenario Pack), plus a whole host of other games that haven't been revealed yet. And just to top it off, you also get 10% off any purchases made in the Humble store, and that even applies to things that are already on sale.
So naturally, I jumped at the deal, and am now a Humble Monthly member. I can't say now whether I'll stay signed up permanently, but it's safe to say I'll hang around for at least a couple months.
But what about Civilization VI? Well, I blazed through that signup process and installed the game ASAP. According to my Steam page, I've already put 21 hours into it, and I've been having a blast. Before I get into my specific thoughts on the game, though, I'd like to take a second to address something up front.
See, here's the thing: there's this weird controversy surrounding the game that I genuinely don't understand, but it seems to orbit around the prospect of DLC for the game. Basically, the base game comes with 18 Civilizations (19 if you count the fact that Greece has two separate leaders, but we'll ignore that), and other Civs can be bought as DLC for between $4.99 and $8.99 USD (the more expensive ones come with two Civilizations).
If you go to the Steam store page for pretty much any piece of DLC for the game (and the game itself, to an extent), you'll see them awash with scathing reviews. These negative reviews are almost always centered around the fact that DLC exists for the game at all. People accuse 2K Games and Firaxis of cutting this content out of the base game just to charge more for it. They make the accusation that the base game is basically just a demo, and suggest you have to buy all of these Civilizations in order to actually own the "complete" game.
Now, let's ignore for a moment the fact that we live in a world in which EA Games bases their entire business model around "games as a service," squeezing every nickel they can out of every game they make for the smallest amount of effort possible, thus making these accusations comparatively laughable.
No, instead let's focus on the fact that, back in 2010, Civilization V also launched with 18 civilizations. Let's talk about the fact that Civilization V's store page also has extra Civilizations on sale as DLC and still charges a minimum of $4.99 USD for this DLC for an eight-year-old game. And let's talk about the fact that not a single damn review on the base game's store page has anything negative to say about this whatsoever.
Look, if you don't like DLC, that's fine. Personally I think the question of "yes" or "no" for DLC is a complicated one. It's difficult to get it right, but I love it when it happens (like Super Smash Bros.) because I always want more content in my games. But if you are the type of person that just rejects any DLC on principle, well, that's cool for you, and I honestly can't wholeheartedly disagree with you.
The issue here is the double standard. You have two games, six years apart, that do the exact same thing (something that has only become more common in those six years, and will continue to do so), and yet one is given a free pass. Why??? Admittedly, the one dual civilization pack for Civ5 is cheaper than the dual packs for Civ6 by about $1.50, but you're still talking about an eight-year-old game! And they still charge the exact same price for their major expansions as what Civ6 will be charging for the upcoming Rise and Fall expansion ($29.99 USD). The mind boggles.
But enough of that rant, because it went on for way too long. The game itself has so far definitely lived up to what I hoped it would be. It's not perfect, and some of the complaints on the Steam store page are legitimate, but overall I've really enjoyed myself. Like I said, I've only put about 21 hours into it across two campaigns, but I'll talk a bit about what I liked and disliked, based on my little bit of exposure.
First off, I absolutely love the character designs. I mean, I guess you'd call them character designs, even though the civilization leaders are real people. Either way, they look like something out of Disney's recent CG movies like Frozen or Big Hero 6, and I mean that in the best possible way. They're the perfect kind of cartoony: expressive and full of life, but not so over-the-top that you can't take them seriously.
I also really like that the research tree and the civics tree have been separated, thus allowing you to learn two things at once. This is, for me, a very welcome change, since I was always annoyed that I couldn't learn how to make a bow & arrow because I was too busy learning what a law is. Like, what? On a related note, I also like how easy it is to customize your government. You still pick an overall system of government, but now you acquire different "civics cards" as you progress through your Civics tree. These cards give you different bonuses or focuses in addition to what you get from your base government choice. And these bonuses can be swapped out for others at pretty much any time to focus on what you need at any given moment. It's a really cool system that gives you that extra bit of fluidity and adaptability.
And the last thing I want to focus on is the big one: districts. Basically, when building the area around your city, you can now add city districts. There's quite a few of these districts, such as a harbor, business district, theatre district, etc., and they all serve a different purpose. Each district takes up one of the hexes in your city's region, with each district getting certain bonuses from surrounding hexes. Now, on the one hand, this could cause you to have to give up a valuable food space or a productive mine, but these districts are crucial to the growth of your city. You can't have a school without a campus, you can't have boats without a harbor, and you can't have religion without a holy site.
The districts system is probably my favorite new feature of Civ6 because it's just so cool. Even just having played two campaigns, I've already had to make some serious decisions over whether or not a certain district is worth it to a certain city, and sometimes it's not. I found myself, more often than not, focusing each city on one or two particular districts (Boston, of course, focused on the campus), but if you learn the game and are pretty good with your ability to think ahead, I could easily see someone really getting as much benefit as possible out of each and every city. It's just a really great system, and I'd love to see it expanded even further in a future update or something.
Like I said before, though, Civ6 isn't perfect, and it definitely has some room for improvements. For one thing, I found myself clicking around the UI trying to find things a bit more often than I would like. For another, sometimes the game suffers from these really weird pauses. Like, not like the game itself will freeze, but you'll click "next turn" or whatever, and it just idles there for a while, and sometimes I have to click it three or four times to get it to go.
Also, as much as the DLC civs don't bother me on principle, there is one thing about it that irks me. The Greek civilization has two leaders, and neither one of them is Alexander the Great! Don't get me wrong, I fully understand that Alexander has had his time to shine, and at least it's still possible to get him as leader of the Macedon civilization. Still, I do really wish he were part of the base game, even if it meant just swapping him with someone else I'm not overly fond of. But hey, at least it helps me decide which DLC pack to buy first.
So far, I'm more than happy with Civilization VI, and what few complaints I have about it are pretty much a non-issue because of how cheaply I got it. Seriously, I plan to buy all the DLC civilizations over time, and I still won't have spent as much as the normal price for the base game. I'll also most likely buy the Rise and Fall expansion eventually, if for no other reason than to have even more civilizations because that's what I want! The game definitely needs a bit of work here and there, but I'm very excited to see where it goes.
Now here's the icky part, because this is where I ask you for a favor. See, yet another perk for being a member of Humble Monthly is that I now have a special referral link attached to my account. Basically, what that does is that whenever someone uses that link and signs up for Humble Monthly (up to 30 people), I get a kickback of a few dollars in my Humble wallet, to spend in their store.
Let me make a couple things very clear. First, Humble has not asked me to write this blog post. They have no idea who I am (outside of being a moderately recurring customer), and they haven't offered me any special incentive to convince you to sign up. This is the exact same referral program that you will have access to if you sign up yourself. No one pays me to type these words.
Secondly, I'm not writing this post because of the referral program. I was genuinely going to write all this before I even knew about it. I honestly, wholeheartedly, just want to share what I feel is a great deal for a great game, plus a bunch of extra stuff. I don't have many recurring readers, but I take my blog and my own sense of honesty very seriously. I hate deception, and I will never be deceitful for money or rewards. I say what I believe.
Lastly, and this is the thing I really want to stress, you don't get anything special out of my referral link. I'm not saying that to be an ass, because I honestly wish I could offer you some sort of special promo or exclusive deal. But no, outside of all of the regular perks of Humble Monthly (and there really are quite a few), I can't give you anything extra, except for my genuine appreciation.
So yeah, don't sign up for Humble Monthly to help me out. I'd appreciate it greatly, and I'd use the referral credit to get some new stuff to review. But don't let that be why you do or do not choose to sign up. If Humble Monthly doesn't interest you, that's totally cool, and thanks for taking the time to read all this. And hey, if you do decide to sign up but don't want to click my link just to spite me, well that's cool too. I won't hold it against you. Hell, I'll even provide the regular Humble Monthly link, and if you don't trust that, well it's just a quick google away.
My link is here, and the vanilla link is here.
Here's hoping that you have some serious fun, no matter what.
Until next time!
Current interests:
Listening - The Sickness (Disturbed, 2000)
Playing - The Ultimate DOOM (1995)
Reading - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (IDW, 2011)
Watching - The Toys That Made Us (2017)
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