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[Fikes]

I am sorry, but GalCiv and GalCiv 2 are not enough to save Stardock from the other shit that has happened over the past couple of years. EWOM and Demigod were both terrible at release and both times Stardock refused to accept it was their fault until AFTER public break downs of the CEO.

EWOM went wrong is so very many ways. The graphics were shit AND the game ran poorly. Constant crashes on Nvidia cards (I think it was Nvidia, I swapped between Nvidia and ATI just so I could play). There were also so many bugs you couldn't tell if the game was broken or if you were doing it wrong. There were only two races that didn't differ from eachother hardly at all. Magic was boring.

Finally, there was the issue of balance. My memory is a bit fuzzy so this probably isn't exactly right, but when you started the game you had a hero. He started with 10 mana. Most early spells took between 3 and 5 and he recharged 1 point per turn. However, if you got married and had a child they could get an ability that recharged two mana per combat round. COMBAT ROUND! Or maybe that was for health... anyways, it didn't matter, a level 1 offspring was far and away more powerful than the leader of your people. The game was full of this crap.

[SeaBee]

Brad Wardell's hubris prevents me from caring about anything Star Dock does ever again. The last few games have been terrible. Then he sells Impulse to Game Stop, so I clearly don't need to have that installed anymore.

EWoM was a buggy tech demo of a terrible university project gone wrong ... at best. What a tremendous waste of money. His meltdowns, however, were very entertaining. The passive-aggressive vacillations, random accusations, forum bans, threats, "Y U NO UNDERSTAND ME" tears ... all fond memories.

Much like parking his Porsche diagonally across two handicap parking spaces, Brad Wardell represents the things I admire least about the undeserved success of the hypocritical and unbalanced.

[hemmingjay]

I am personally waiting for the deathmatch between Brad Wardell and Derek Smart.

[Soulwynd]

Quoting myself from nearly 4 years ago for personal gain and fame:

I can understand the hate for GalCiv2, it's not for everybody.  But hating Stardock?  Who the hell hates Stardock!?

It's not for anybody if you ask me. My experience with galciv2 was sad to say the least. Even Stars! appealed me more than it did. I guess it's just my opinion. Stardock happens to make games which get me excited about them, then utterly bored and disappointed a couple game plays later. It's like this sexy girl who feels like a plain blowup doll when you manage to screw her. Kind of like when you manage to push a whale back to the ocean and it swims right back onto the beach.

Right, I think those analogies are enough. =p

Reason why I don't want to try Demigod, even if I'm really tempted to.

So, did that unconditional Stardock love finally die out?

[Levi]

It's not for anybody if you ask me. My experience with galciv2 was sad to say the least. Even Stars! appealed me more than it did. I guess it's just my opinion. Stardock happens to make games which get me excited about them, then utterly bored and disappointed a couple game plays later. It's like this sexy girl who feels like a plain blowup doll when you manage to screw her. Kind of like when you manage to push a whale back to the ocean and it swims right back onto the beach.

As an unrelated post:  Stars! was awesome. 

[forsaken1111]

Stardock doesn't suck, they made both GalCivs. They just had a good idea that was poorly executed. I guess I was expecting Ice Cream and got a non-dairy confection.

Both Galcivs were pretty terrible as well honestly.

[Aklyon]

GalCiv2 was Ok. The first one sucked, though.

[forsaken1111]

GalCiv2 was Ok. The first one sucked, though.

I disagree, but that's why we have opinions.

[nenjin]

The Fallen Enchantress expansion and selling off Impulse to the Video Game Great Satan pretty much put the nail in the coffin of the game for me. WoM isn't going to get much love ever again, SD is off in search of more money through more promises and I could honestly care less what FE shapes up to be like. In two years I may reinstall WoM to see what they've had the guy who gets coffee work on.

That's not very fair to Derek and everyone else who worked their ass off on the game, but they can thank Brad for it.

[Fikes]

Inspite of my desire to generally remain on topic, I would like to say that I, too, disliked GalCiv very deeply. Much like WoM it suffered form game designers throwing out perfectly good standards for no apparent reason. The way food and population always worked in their games confused me. You use food to build houses? saywut!?

It was very similar in GalCiv. Increasing your population (iirc) was in some ways a bad thing, where-as in Master of Orion (and most other 4x) it is a good thing. I did not understand GalCiv at all and did ever manage to find a reason TO understand it (other than ship design seemed cool).

[Sowelu]

GalCiv 2 was a very average game.  It would have compared a little bit below the Master of Orion games if it was released as their contemporary.  Stardock has always had sub-par writers, or at least, sub-par writing /direction/...  I didn't like their humor, but I might have enjoyed it if they had even bothered to do it right.

Stardock is very good at having great ideas and then half-assing them.  They are the stereotypical indie company, and the reason that indies fared so badly for so long.  It's a good thing that /real/ indie companies are rising above their level, now.

[Gantolandon]

I must say that I liked GalCiv2. The fluff was atrocious, but it was the only really serious flaw in the game I could find. It offered some depth while being easily accessible and its AI, though not the miracle everyone claimed it to be, was pretty advanced. And, until some problems with Twilight of Arnor, it was pretty much polished.

There are not many 4X strategy games out there and this one shined compared to many other titles.

[Deon]

GalCiv was okay for me, but very primitive. There were many great ideas, but they felt unfinished or poorly executed. With time in GalCivII it was patched to a normal state, but still it's quite primitive after some good 4x strategies.

I still wait something from Elemental. I've just reinstalled it to check what's up, and yeah, it's the SAME game after so many promises and so much time. Now it's PLAYABLE, how sweet... But still the lack of content, lore and good scenarios which are important for me in fantasy games made me to uninstall it after 4 hours of play :/.

So yeah, I want Elemental to be a great game, but I can't get the stuff I want from it. I think the main problem was the "oh look now this unit can shoot fireballs out of his arm, let's make 10 videos and tell the world about it" approach to the development. Basically they developed some really nice elements and focused on them while totally ignoring other key elements.

[Sowelu]

I must say that I liked GalCiv2. The fluff was atrocious, but it was the only really serious flaw in the game I could find. It offered some depth while being easily accessible and its AI, though not the miracle everyone claimed it to be, was pretty advanced. And, until some problems with Twilight of Arnor, it was pretty much polished.

There are not many 4X strategy games out there and this one shined compared to many other titles.

True.  If you grade on a curve, GalCiv II is solidly in B- to B+ territory in my book, which is really quite playable.  When I compare it with Malkari (A- for concept, C+ for story, D+ for execution) or Maelstrom (B for concept, A for story, D+ for execution), I gotta admit that it was executed a lot better than a lot of other stuff.  Personally I thought it got horribly imbalanced late-game when you had a bajillion engines.  I was also disappointed at the way they dealt with a common TBS trope.  Lots of players of other games complain how whenever you're doing well, suddenly the whole galaxy swarms in to team up against you.  Well...They don't seem to do that in GalCiv II, and you learn pretty quickly why it's a valid and necessary trope.  "Lolz, I'll just be over here building up massive power and godlike missile tech, while pretending to be nice to you all and trading piddly little technologies to EVERYONE to get even more power.  Isn't it funny how you keep fighting each other, and only develop laser shields since that's all each other uses?"

In my opinion, Stardock could redeem themselves utterly if they made a GalCiv III that fixed all of II's issues.  That could be a solid grade-A title, in the range of MOO II.  A real contender for the throne of "best space-based 4x TBS ever".

[Jehdin]

Stardock died for me the second they decided to sell Impulse to Gamestop and remain exclusive to it.

Not that they were high on my list before.

I even e-mailed them and had them delete my account.

Elemental needed at least twice the content to be called anything close to complete, and that's disregarding how bug-ridden the game was at release.

As for GalCiv II, influence was always very imbalanced and the game was fairly simplistic.