Reviewed: August 13, 2007
Reviewed by: Jeff Gedgaud
Publisher
2K Games
Developer
Firaxis
Released: July 23, 2007
Genre: Turn-Based Strategy
Players: 1-16
10
7
7
9
8.3
System Requirements
Recommended System
Screenshots (Click Image for Gallery)
Sid Meier’s Civilization IV has a new expansion pack with even more content and additions to make the best better. Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword adds new civilizations, buildings, scenarios, wonders, technologies and other content and even a new way to win the game.
Beyond the Sword includes 10 new civilizations, 16 new leaders, 5 new wonders, and a variety of new units that will offer even more fun and exciting ways for players to expand their civilization’s power as they strive for world domination. With all the new content added probably the most rewarding is a new way to win the game instead of either conquering the world or gaining the most advanced civilization. Using your corporation you can gain control of the world and other countries by undermining their economy and gaining control of their society. Beyond the Sword focuses on the later periods after the invention of gunpowder and even includes several scenarios to start at this period.
The gameplay for the Beyond the Sword expansion pack is pretty much the same as the Civilization IV core game with the added units, technologies and a great espionage system. They have kept the core games style and fun and added a lot to the gameplay and content with the new units types but more so with the scenarios and mods.
Building your society up from a later period and building your cities up from that point is equally challenging and fun when you have such a variety of ways to try your hand at world domination. Not only can you rule the world through military might, religious conquest or financial gain but now you can do it through corporate takeover.
The game plays the same with building your cities, then adding onto your empire however you like. You can stress the military strength and move into other countries to take them over or you can use stealth and guile to win the hearts of the world by religion. Using the corporations you can infiltrate your way into all the countries and use your corporate influences to win over the other countries.
The expansion pack Beyond the Sword adds new leaders and countries you can start out as with a wide variety of strengths and weaknesses. With the new countries also comes a new leader choice, you can now lead using any leader from any country.
Along with the new leaders you also have some new world wonders like the Cristo Redentor or Statue of Zeus. These new wonders are the same as the others with only one being able to be built by one civilization but with their own special abilities.
They have also added some new units that are more interesting for the later period that the expansion pack is created for. The units like the military mech assault or cyborgs have the obvious military advantages but the ones like the zeppelin airship is a good recon and aerial detection aircraft that is good for several uses.
Beyond the Sword includes some new technologies that sort of fill in between some of the previous ones to make a more reasonable timeline of the technology. The technology still has quite a few gaps and odd branches but they have tried to make it reasonable for gaining the different levels and how it all should make sense.
You also have a new way to start playing called the advanced start where players are given some money and you can purchase the cities, technologies, units and buildings for their country. For ten rounds you are not allowed to attack to give each player a chance to stabilize their country and then regular play commences. In the advanced start you can choose how much money all the players start out with from the Custom Game menu.
Random events have also been added that add a real world feel to the game such as natural disasters and influential weddings can take place with some having choices on how to deal with them. Events can be turned on and off in the Custom Game or the multiplayer options screen.
Some great new additions are the mods and scenarios that have been added to change or alter the gameplay. With some mods you are given different rules or unit abilities that are not normal such as better movement scores or fantastical things like mind control. There are several mods that come with the expansion pack and others can be created using the Create your own mods/scenarios section. Some of the new content is great but some of it is just not that great. I guess I was a little disapointed in the expansion due to a part of it being player mods and not the companies.
Scenarios are preset challenges that you have try to beat that start out the same way when entering the game. These play out differently but you can enter each scenario to try your hand at defeating them in various methods and try a different tactic or method from the same starting point.
Scenarios are both real and made up from many different perspectives such as the World War II: Road to War or Final Frontier. The Road to War is a scenario from the Europe perspective and you choose a nation and fight your side the way you want. Final Frontier is a futuristic fight for space and mans survival in the universe.
There are other scenarios made up for you to jump into and then you can also create your own in an editor type mod and scenario creator. The Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword expansion pack has added a lot of content and several new ways to start off your conquest but the additional mods and scenarios are where the game really shines and not the additional units or other add on parts.
The graphics and the general scheme of what you see is pretty much the same as with the core game. The world map and the closer up views of your units, the cities and everything else are about the same in the expansion and have not been changed. One issue with the graphics is they clump everything into the city that you put in and it just looks too cluttered, and much of it you can't recognize when you zoom in on the city because the individual units are layered on top of each other.
They are all still the nice high quality graphics that the Civilization IV game is famous for and the expansion pack continues with this but there is no overall improvement in the graphics. The graphics as well as the sound has been kept the same high quality standard.
The sound and music like the graphics has been kept at its great quality but there has not been any improvement or additions in these areas. They have kept the great musical themes and sounds for the events and such but the game does not include all that much in the way of sound improvements.
With the addition of the great mods and scenarios you will definitely get some more value and gameplay time out of the Civilization game with the expansion pack Beyond the Sword. There are a great deal of enhancements but most of them are not that great as there was already so much to choose from but the additions of the later units and higher tech stuff is appreciated.
The main aspects of the expansion pack that add so much to the game are the futuristic scenarios like the Afterworld where man has almost total control over his environment and yet still fights against one another, just not the way you are used to.
These additions are more than enough to justify the cost of the expansion and the new scenario and mods creator are just the icing on the cake for this newest Civilization IV expansion. Civilization IV continues to keep the interest up and move forward where many games have a hard enough time keeping up.
Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword is a great expansion pack and very much a welcome addition to the Civilization IV universe. The addition of new units and other things is not so great but the new ways to start out your game and change the style and tempo create a whole new interest to the core game. Sadly, Firaxis didn't improve the graphics or sound that much in this latest expansion and they should have, at least for some of it
Beyond the Sword has added to an already great game and the people at 2K Games and Firaxis continue to amaze with their attention to detail and forward thinking in video game creation. Despite a lack of any forward progress in presentaiton, Civilization IV Beyond the Sword is still a definite must for world building fans.