Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth - Rising Tide Reviews
A mostly successful step out of Civilization V's shadow, Rising Tide is a fine strategy game that only suffers in comparison to its truly great predecessors.
Given the cost of this expansion I find it hard to recommend. £24.99 is simply too much to ask for the changes and I can't, in any good faith, recommend that. The highest praise I can offer Rising Tide is that it's finally moving Beyond Earth in the right direction. The inevitable Game of the Year Edition (maybe after more patches and another expansion) will no doubt bring many people back; but until then I'd wait for a price drop.
It's a hard balance to strike, thematic purity with mechanical accessibility, and for what it's worth I think Rising Tide does the best that any game could hope to do with those two opposing forces as stated goals.
At the end of the day, Rising Tide accomplishes precisely what it needed to for the Civilization franchise: it provides a good reason for those players who drifted away to potentially jump back into Beyond Earth, and it provides a timely injection of new content for those players who needed something more to continue sticking around. There are still flaws with the overall experience, but based on this reasoning alone, Rising Tide must be considered a success.
'Civilization: Beyond Earth - Rising Tide ' includes a lot of great new content that fleshes out the existing mechanics of 'Beyond Earth.' While this expansion doesn't take any big risks, and some new research or victory conditions would not have been remiss, it is a shot in the arm for the already excellent 'Beyond Earth'.