Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor [PC]

Brad Wardell and his Stardock team had an impossible challenge when they decided to create a second expansion pack for Galactic Civilizations II. Dark Avatar, the game's first expansion, was everything an expansion pack should be, adding an insane amount of new features and significantly deepening the basic gameplay, vaulting an already-stellar title into the realm of strategy-game classic. We loved it so much, in fact, that we placed Dark Avatar at number six on our overall Top Ten games of 2007. Fortunately for strategy-game lovers, the Stardock team seems to thrive on impossible challenges. The result of this drive for strategy game greatness is Twilight of the Arnor, a second expansion pack for Galactic Civilizations II that manages to outshine the first.

Twilight of the Arnor picks up directly after the end of Dark Avatar. The universe is still on fire with the Drengin/Korath civil war spinning out of control. Most of the other races of the galaxy, save the humans, are either beaten to exhaustion or are trying to avoid becoming collateral damage in the Drengin's destructive feud. Earth remains safely hidden behind an impenetrable force shield but the price of the Terran's security is being unable to impact galactic events. Things begin to change when a deep space Terran Alliance task force discovers the last surviving Arnor, a member of the galaxy's first sentient race, who offers the Terrans and their allies a slim chance to defeat the Korath and their unseen Dread Lord puppet masters.

The game's storyline is a cheesy pastiche of sci-fi cliches liberally borrowed from sources ranging from "Babylon 5" to "Star Trek" to the old "Star Control" games. Fortunately, the game's cornball storyline isn't the only reason to play through the well-constructed eight mission campaign. Each of the campaign's missions is built around fun strategic challenge very different from the game's main "sandbox" mode. Particular standouts include "Of the Arnor" where players must figure out how to crack the nut of a single Dread Lord planet while being continually harassed by the Korath. Players who pride themselves on their diplomatic skills will enjoy "Rock and Hard Place," a test of battlefield diplomacy that's the turn-based strategy game equivalent of yelling "Can't we all just get along?" while standing between trenches during WWI.

The true standout feature that makes Twilight of the Arnor special are the racially unique technology trees. The idea behind them is fairly simple. Alien races and alien cultures view the universe in radically different ways. These differing perspectives will dictate the ways their technology develops as each culture creates tech to complement and support their moral and cultural outlooks. The Drengin, for example, have an entire culture built around slavery and the aesthetic appreciation of other peoples' pain. The Yor, on the other hand, are a race of sentient machines determined to rid the universe of organic intelligences while the Korx are a mercantilist species willing to sell their own mothers for a decent profit. Twilight of the Arnor swaps out the fairly generic tech tree of Dark Avatar and gives each of the game's 12 pre-made races their own upgrade paths as well as race-specific discoveries.

The unique techs are a real game-changer. What was once a fairly generic upgrade path followed by every race becomes a radically different strategic experience every game. Choosing to play as the genocidal Korath will give an insanely aggressive game: the cheapness of their planet-destroying spore ships, the versatility of their weapons research tree and their host of diplomatic penalties guarantee it. On the other hand, playing as the religiously minded Krynn offers a choice of powerful cultural enhancements that can flip enemy worlds without firing a shot or a more violent path designed to create fleets of tiny suicide-bombing vessels that spread the Krynn faith by the sword.