Sid Meier's Civilization II

The Good
This game is extremely fun. User must balance production vs. technological research. Gives a better perspective of history-- if I had any high school aged kids who didn't like history, I'd make them play this game.

The Bad
Higher difficulty settings mainly influenced "happiness" of citizens, rather than quality of AI. Too slow... I was playing it on ~ Pentium 90.

The Bottom Line
You try to conquer the world either techonologically or militarily, or both.

The Good
This game is VERY flexible! Whatever you don't like can be changed by editing Rules.txt, and other text files. The created worlds I don't like can be gotten around by creating my own stock of pre-made worlds using map editor and then selecting them at random. Scenarios can also be created and saved for re-use. the cheat mode is also useful for experimenting, instruction, and creating scenarios. Combat, movement, and cost properties of units can be changed if you wish. Reseach pattern can be changed, units can be made avalable with any advance you want, any wonder can be made non expiring or avalable sooner! New unit can be created, and given unique charactoristics. Can be run w/o the CD-ROM. Likes Win 3.1, 95 and 98 and probably all other Windows versions.

The Bad
The worlds it creates are too random, not enough variation, and have too many small islands and not enough water, even in the small land mass variation. High council advice sometimes is inapropriate.

The Bottom Line
The ultimate strategy game, with endless variations: you can make it what you want!

The Good

This game is great for someone without access to a PC, who has a deep longing to try out the Civilization series. It captures the basic gameplay elements of the PC version well, and may provide entertainment to die-hard strategy fans.

The Bad

Unfortunately, the Sony Playstation is not a PC, and this game does not translate well to a console system. The interface is clunky and awkward, with all interactions performed through the control pad. The graphics leave a lot to be desired. The Playstation is certainly capable of making things look nicer than this. The real killer of this game however, is the unbearably long amount of wait time between turns. Late in the game, on a large map with 5 opponents, you can find yourself sitting idle for literally minutes on end, while the opponent AI manages its empires.

The Bottom Line

'Civilization II' for the Playstation is not going to make very many people happy. Only fans of the Civ series who don't have access to a computer should try this one. And really, what fans of the Civ series don't have access to a computer?