I caved and bought the game. I came to this decision when buying a Wii U Pro Controller at Futureshop and went "... I have 2-3 weeks where I can work on a backlog until COD AW releases." and then bought Civ BE as soon as I got home.
Played 2 hours. This so far is a REALLY good Civ game. I miss this feeling, the same one I get everytime I play a new Civ game for the first game (specifically the vanilla games from Civ 3 to Civ 5) aka "What the fuck am I doing." That tech tree from the get go is seemingly overwhelming with choices even as a long time Civ player. But the potential is fantastic. Also the presentation is great. The music, the aesthetic of the game, the environments, the units, they all look and mesh really well together.
The only two things I dislike so far are mainly the Civs themselves and the UI. The 'civs' have almost no personality at all, unless they do have one and I'm just missing something here. A huge step back from the traditional Civ games where certain Civs acted in specific ways. Aka if you started next to Rome, Spain, Greece or the Huns you're gonna have a bad time (FUCK ISABELLA FUCK). In BE they all seem to act the same...?
I'm not a huge fan of the UI either. The UI in Civ 5 was pretty good, and was even better with mods. The UI in BE kinda makes me wish they just made it the Civ 5 UI but in a different colour with different logos and such.
That aside, I'm really interested in figuring out the game. There's a lot of really cool stuff in this game, and I want to keep playing.
Also like Civ 5, Civ BE blacks out my second monitor and I can't watch Extra Life streams while playing. What gives?