Developed/Published by: Firaxis Games / 2K Games
Released: 13th June, 2008
Completed: 16th July, 2014
Completion: Beat it with every possible victory; once on Chieftain, twice on King and twice on Deity. Done with it.
Trophies / Achievements: 595/1000

I’ve written before about how important Civilization is to me, and—suddenly in the mood for the series—I decided to give Civilization Revolution another shot after hating the iOS version (mostly because it was so ugly I couldn’t get past the initial learning stage.)

I’m a huge fan of the original Civilization; it’s got what you could charitably describe as workmanlike pixel art, but within that it’s got bags and bags of charm. From the city view (nothing more thrilling than seeing a wonder appear) to touches such as the evolving styles of your advisors (modern despotism!) it’s wonderful. Just looking at some screenshots now make me casually debate stopping writing this and playing it for a while (I won’t.) 

Of course, it isn’t perfect (I remember Gary Penn complaining in Amiga Power about how prescriptive it was about the path of a civilisation; your story might include Greece conquering the English, but you can’t decide you’re not going to invent the wheel, something the series has never really felt comfortable messing with) and I’ve probably played Civilization II more (which more or less jettisons all the charm for just generally being a bit more polished.)

Anyway, I then didn’t like III, or IV; didn’t play the Call to Power side-stories, and while people do like Alpha Centauri, my ability to care if my space peoples have built a “hab complex” or not is zero.

Civilization V is great, though. Still lacking that original charm (though I do like the deco stylings) but actually fixing a ton of the problems that Civilization has had since the first one—stacking units tiresomely to make armies that bash against each other tediously, most importantly—the only issue being that dipping back into it now with all the expansions felt like a bit much for me. And so, as described above, I decided to go with Civilization Revolution.

So here’s the thing. When you get down to it, Civilization Revolution is a very slightly streamlined Civilization with modern-for-2008 graphics. That you don’t have to use settlers to upgrade the areas around your cities is about the biggest thing I can really note, to be honest. It adds some stuff from the later games—culture wars and great people—and adds some stuff that doesn’t seem to make a great deal of sense (like the ability to make armies of three units, which you can stack anyway.) 

So why don’t I like it? When I think about playing the original, doing my own version of the “one city challenge” without really knowing I was doing it—in fact, using it as a way to tutorialise the game—I wonder, would a new player be doing the same thing? Would they fondly remember the (in my mind) irritating Sim-like advisors after they’ve graduated to Civilization V? Would they thrill as they see their cities evolve directly in the game world rather than a few menu levels down?

Is it actually fairly successful at what it does, it’s just that I’ve been there, done that, and I like pixel art more?

Probably.

Will I ever play it again? I could hoover up the rest of the achievements easily but no.

Final Thought: Here’s something quite important, though. You don’t have access to any of the levers that allow you to endlessly generate new scenarios. While in big boy Civilization you can generate a small world made up of islands with seven opponents, or a massive world with just one, here you’re stuck with pre-made scenarios. And the AI, as far as I can tell, is terrible (it doesn’t actually seem to exist until you discover it, which makes winning even on Deity rather simplistic.) So you’re probably not going to want to return to this 23 years later just by seeing some screenshots.