When comparing Crypt of the NecroDancer vs Civilization V, the Slant community recommends Crypt of the NecroDancer for most people. In the question“What are the best Top-Down games on Steam?” Crypt of the NecroDancer is ranked 12th while Civilization V is ranked 15th. The most important reason people chose Crypt of the NecroDancer is:
Crypt of the NecroDancer is a dungeon crawler that is also a rhythm game. Your character can move, attack, and use special abilities only to the beat of a level's music. This means you have to split your attention between listening to the music and watching enemy movements. If you miss a beat your character won't do anything, but your enemies still get to move and attack. While the enemies are bound by the same rules as you, they won't ever miss the beat. Fortunately enough, they're always bound to a rhythm, so learning an enemy's rhythm is the key to defeating them. As a result, the gameplay stands out in both the roguelike and rhythm game genre.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Unique gameplay
Crypt of the NecroDancer is a dungeon crawler that is also a rhythm game. Your character can move, attack, and use special abilities only to the beat of a level's music. This means you have to split your attention between listening to the music and watching enemy movements. If you miss a beat your character won't do anything, but your enemies still get to move and attack. While the enemies are bound by the same rules as you, they won't ever miss the beat. Fortunately enough, they're always bound to a rhythm, so learning an enemy's rhythm is the key to defeating them. As a result, the gameplay stands out in both the roguelike and rhythm game genre.
Pro Fantastic soundtrack
Crypt of the NecroDancer has one of the best soundtracks you'll hear in a video game, featuring EDM, synthwave, and even heavy metal music. Each song has a unique tempo, rhythm, and feel to it, so you'll never get tired of listening to them.
Pro Beautiful graphics
From the players cities and armies to the lush landscape, Civilization is quite a beautiful game for those with systems powerful enough to push the graphics to the limit. Even when on lower graphical settings the game looks lush and well animated.
Pro Endless scenarios and replayability
Civilization V has a large assortment of nation leaders to choose from that have an even bigger assortment of scenarios that are able to play out for said leaders. Each game can be quite unique in this way as each leader allows for a different nation to be controlled.
Pro Customization through policies
Policies are used as a tool to gain a variety of customizations that benefit ones society. There is a branching tree of policies that will allow the user to pick certain aspects that will suit them best such as adding law or religion to ones society which will give gains in certain aspects.
Pro Fantastic tactical combat
Civilization V has a great combat system that feels very tactical over previous versions as there is no stacking of troops, but with the new hexagonal grid players can surround enemies as well as allow for better tactics when planning attacks.
Cons
Con Extremely hard
The combat in this game has an insanely fast tempo, requiring you to split your attention between the music and the on-screen enemies. Losing focus even for a split-second means you'll probably die, so you'll have to restart the level. At times this will feel really overwhelming, especially if there are many enemies around.
Con Co-op can make the game a lot harder
While Co-op in most games makes a game easier, Crypt of the Necrodancer is the opposite. This boils down to three main reasons.
First, you and your co-op partner have to share money and items. This can lead to two under-equipped characters that struggle with killing enemies and surviving their blows.
Second, there's no splitscreen, meaning your movements need to be in sync with your partners. If you happen to go in the opposite directions, you can get stuck or attract multiple groups of enemies, causing you to get overwhelmed.
Third, you share one beat counter with your co-op partner. So if one if you misses a beat, that's the end of a combo for the both of you. Not keeping up a combo means you'll have less gold and consequently less gear.
Con One unit per tile
Civ 5 restricts you to having one unit per tile, but has an AI unable to handle that restriction well, and doesn't even have decent pathing for units. Late game becomes a slog of ordering each unit individually due to poor pathing.
Con Most victories won by timed or military victory
It can be pretty difficult to win by diplomacy or culture which does add some challenge to the game but it can get tiresome if one keeps winning by only military or timed victories.
Con No stats on other Civ attitudes
Unlike past Civilization games there are no longer stats on the attitudes of the players surrounding Civilizations. This allowed one to see how each other nation felt about the player, but now that it is gone one has to guess, which is definitely not as helpful.
Con No steam workshop support on Linux
The Linux port currently does not support steam workshop, and as the mac port made by the same developers has not received workshop support despite having been out for several years, it is unlikely that it ever will.
Though there are unofficial workarounds to get the mods working.