Price: $39.99 + $19.99



Introduction:

It has almost been a year since I reviewed the turn-based 4X Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade, the first expansion to Galactic Civilizations III, and now I am happy to be back to review the second expansion, Intrigue. Intrigue brings many changes with it, but along with the expansion is the release of update 3.0 for GalCiv3 and its own changes. While some of the changes GalCiv3 has just seen do come from separate sources, I am going to treat it all as one in this review. After all, you are not going to play Intrigue without these changes, though I will try to discuss the changes separately.

I do also want to point out that I have been rather busy lately, and that has impacted my ability to work on this review. Because it can actually be faster to record myself playing a game and talk about the changes than write it all out, I have made a video review for the game as well. My video editing skills are not very advanced, so you are stuck with the full length of the recording, but here it is, if you wish to watch it:

By the way, as I mention twice in the video, the key for the Intrigue expansion was provided to me by Stardock, the developer and publisher. (The keys for the base game and Crusade expansion also were provided.) Unfortunately I do not have many screenshots to share because, well, I like playing the game so much I focus on that and not hitting F12 occasionally. The graphics do not appear to have changed much since Crusade, and the game still runs very well, so I am not going to do a Graphics section.

Time to get to the review!