Galactic Civilizations® II: Ultimate Edition Reviews

One of the best civ-esque 4X games in a space setting that in some aspects has still not been surpassed in 2025. Pros: + All 12 races have unique tech trees, AI personalities, diplomacy text and more. + Chess-engine type dynamic AI that has not been surpassed in any other 4X game and plays by the same rules as you. + Truly impactful galactic event system that keeps each game fresh. + Lots of different strategies to excel in, from influence, economy, diplomacy to war. + Actually really nice soundtrack for a 4X game. + Ability to create and download custom races and ship styles. (You can totally set up all Star Trek races). + A lot of content after 3 expansions, both in mechanics and in campaigns. + Well balanced and bug free after many years of community patches. + Runs on any computer and looks alright if you max everything out. Cons: - it's a game from 2008, expect some really shitty CGI and a lot of videos and UI elements to look a little low-res on modern resolutions. - No in-game encyclopedia leaves you looking through the included manual, "Community Edition Guide" and old forum threads to figure out the intricacies of gameplay mechanics as the game came out before community game wikis became commonplace. - Default ship designs are lacking, you are forced to use the ship builder to make optimized ship designs, this can be a chore and will lead to ugly designs if you can't bother to take the time to artfully place the modules. - Ship designer does not let you modify the auto-generated designs. - Suffers from the common "Space is empty" curse. No actual terrain, lots of uncolonizable planets and just deep space that is not fun or very distinctive either visually or strategically. - Compared to stuff like Stellaris, planets are mostly samey as well. - Civ4 style stacked combat system that does not really care for positioning outside of starbases. Overall I would recommend it just for the very tight gameplay loop and good AI leading to very interesting gameplay.