Weregamer's Game Musings

I've put a little time into this this week, and although the changes seem like little tweaks, the sum is a huge change in how fun the game is. Except for a few buggy places which probably involve uniquely scripted objects, switching characters to use a skill has been smoothly automagicked, and during character generation and leveling up, tooltips and shading help you see which skills are already in the party at which levels. So while your party is still basically a bucket of skills, you spend so much less time tracking who has what that it doesn't break immersion. The traits and quirks don't have a huge effect, but they are sufficient that you can have two characters with the same weapon skill who feel distinct in a fight, and some pairings of skills (combat and non, in all three combinations) yield interesting synergies. A lot of tuning also shows. There are no longer runaway best and worst choices in NPC recruits, and some of the more tedious, less interesting "pu

Hmm. They are the last company that still has it, but with their last few releases, Firaxis has almost lost my unconditional buy-it flag. In particular, the wartime diplomacy system in Rising Tide is so restrictive of player choices that Sid Meier ought to be turning over in his chair. This, and the other ways in which the new diplomacy system removes player agency, are well covered in the RPS article (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/10/08/beyond-earth-rising-tide-review/) so I don't need to repeat them myself. (Although the actual bug involving allies and war declarations was patched almost immediately.) Overall, Rising Tide is a definite if not quite good enough improvement for BE, roughly like the first expansion to Civ5. It adds some important systems and addresses some balance issues, but is still not "done" yet. I hope the next expansion, like the second one for Civ5, will make it a complete and satisfying game. One of the biggest handicaps that BE has co