14 DAY TRIAL // 
I have been a fan of city building games ever since they were almost in the top. Nowadays they have become a long forgotten genre that is not even worthy of much attention. The gamers' focus has changed from long, laborious games to fast, bloody shooters and freaking elves that are devilishly handsome and small dwarves with huge axes. The big picture coincides with one known maxim: "The earth population is growing but the IQ coefficient remains the same". The same principle applies to the games industry: the number of players is rising (and of the games released), but the actual number of intelligent games remains the same. The general image of a gamer can be identified with one of a dork playing WOW until he dies displaying a dumb face.
City building games have always had a certain appeal because they gave us a glimpse of the ancient world, either serious like Caesar, Pharaoh, Cleopatra or a more amusing one like Zeus and Poseidon. All these titles had something that made us finish them one time after another and the sandbox maps were actually used until every possible scenario had been resolved. This kind of gameplay is not found anymore in today's games and I'm pretty sure that Caesar IV will follow a more commercial direction than its predecessors.
Story In this case, we can't really talk about an epic tale of bravery and adventure in some faraway land and to be franc no self respecting city builder had one. In this particular case, we take the roll of a Quaestor. I don't think they read too much about roman public function, but Quaestor used to be a magistrate responsible for civil and military finances. In CivCity: Rome the role is more like a modern mayor but this is beside the point. The ultimate goal is to rule Rome in all its glory.
Concept I have to say this kind of games is not nearly exploited enough. After playing relentlessly most of the important titles with this kind of gameplay I could have made a smashing builder. Unfortunately, Firefly used only some of the ideas implemented in the past and didn't come with anything new besides a full 3D perspective. I'm not accusing them of cloning any existent games and as I said many times before, it's not a shame to use a proven recipe, but come on people, use your imagination.
Caesar 3 seems to be the closest title I can think of as the next of kin for CivCity but I have to say that an eight year old game could teach this one a few tricks.
Gameplay I know I'm boring you with this 'city builder' expression all over, but the essence cannot be avoided, the game is what it is, but is not as good as we want it to be. The mission's structure is pretty straight forward, with some easy, accommodating goals that make the player more familiar with the mechanics. I would have enjoyed a full tutorial, because some of the aspects are not clearly defined, like immigration for instance.
One of the major concerns is the happiness level of the city, much like a tycoon or the sims franchise, with a big smiley face and a 100 cap for perfect. This variable can be influenced by a lot of factors like housing, food, unemployment, wars, disease etc. Some of them can be modified: the wagers can be changed, work hours and food rations (let's not forget that Rome used slaves, even if they are sometimes referred as citizens - it would be a lot easier to become an US citizen today than 2000 years ago a citizen of Rome.) The most enervating aspect of this system is the unemployment. The immigrants are always and I mean always a lot more numerous than the jobs I can offer them. In Zeus for example, erecting a house and developing it fully, gave me 60 workers or something. In here, I don't have the slightest idea of how many, a certain level of development can hold and it's very easy to enter a vicious circle. The people that don't have any jobs are labeled as vagrants and some of the working people (usually a lot) don't have a place to stay.) The lack of employment brings down the happiness coefficient and the vagrants start to leave. After all of the vagrants leave, the happiness levels return to normal only to encourage the immigration of vagrants, hence the headache.
Another bothersome mistake, something that I couldn't have left out in a million years is the UNDO button which has a clear function: auto correction in case the human in me takes a bad decision. I strolled around in the interface for some time only to get to the obvious conclusion; some aspect of the game have been totally ignored, probably because they had a tied launch date with the add-on of Civilization 4, Warlords. I think there isn't anything more harmful for a game than a fixed date for marketing reasons.
In other manners, the building part of the game is extremely reduced to a bare minimum and the management part has to be very well thought before starting to slap resident houses all over. I even had to demolish an entire residential area because I was unable to fit the new requirement for house development. Every house has certain needs so it can pass from level to level and every requirement means larger and larger buildings like temples and taverns so in the end, supporting a number of ten, twelve homes will become a really difficult challenge.
A nice touch in this kind of strategies is the implementations of a research tree, borrowed from the turn based Civilization 4. Unfortunately, the research is not kept from one developed town to another so after every successful mission we have to get start all over again. The tree is not that big to begin with but it presents some very useful upgrades to farms, tax collectors, road and many more. In time they get to be a lot more varied so it would be impossible to research them all.
I think I have presented a lot more negative parts than positive, but it's only because I was forced by their frequency within the game. Every time I was getting something right and I thought I achieved some form off balance something bad happened: bugs, misusing of the demolish tool and then more bugs. I began by having a lot of expectations and I ended up putting the game on the bottom shelf. The history and architecture lessons are simply not enough when you implement diagonal roads (I know it's not a big deal but believe a lot of people will agree) but don't stop to think that maybe all the buildings in the game could have had a 45 degree placement angle.
Graphics I have been fooled once again by the accountants. I fall for this trick every single time. Before the launch of every game and during its development time we, as buyers, are served tons of beautiful rendered screenshots with no other purpose in mind than to steal our hard earned money. I've played this game with everything maxed out and it looked nothing like what were they playing in the "labs". Everyone would raise an eyebrow after taking a look at the setup menu. Let me just enumerate some options for you: "particle systems", "multipass shaders", "bump mapping", "enhanced water", "bloom", "real time shadows" and so on. Before launching it, I stopped to wonder if I'll be able to play it at all. If all these options were implemented somewhere I couldn't see them anywhere. The water is just water (and not even a good one at that), no bump mapping and the particle systems must have been a reference at the flying pigeons that are all over the place. The result is just an average looking game with nothing special in particular.
Sound I don't have anything on sounds and music except that it's there. There's nothing to hold against it or maybe is just that. The people speak with a strange roman accent but will never know because the languages are too far apart in the time stream.
Multiplayer There is no multiplayer and I would have said it could have been nice to have one if it weren't for the multiple lacunas already present. I think a multiplayer would have added to the existent problems.
Conclusion I liked this game more when it was just an announced game. After I've played it, and believe me it took a lot of self convincing, I can only say it could have been more but instead it ended up less then what is already out there for years. Many games launched years ago are still playable today but this one will be remembered only by the hardcore fans and maybe not even by them. We still have to give them credit though because all the other competitors had years to refine a proven recipe for success so I think we'll just have to wait a few more years until we'll get a title to remember from the Civilization franchise.
