I have to admit, I use metacritic as a base filter for games. I look at the ones that are critical, but mostly those on the border. I ignore ones that throw out zeroes because that is a  rage fest. I also ignore the highest ones because those are fan boys. 

Those that criticize because it plays like another game they don't like, but I do, become a favorable review to me.

Those that say it is too hard also become favorable to me.

It better damn well have replayability. Something that has 30 hours of content or less I will only pick up on a step sale.

Have I ever been let down by a game? YES! CA usually has a boom/bust release cycle, but they usually get things better. While maybe not as fast as I like, they get to at least decent. I have some games I have played very little of. 

Stardock is the one company I KNOW will go out of there way to make things better. Amplitude also does a nice job. Firaxis is slow, like CA, but they improve their games as well.

I honestly don't understand the rage of most users. I understand frustration, especially if it crashes. However, I go nuts checking drivers and other things before I go bother to post. 

These "Good old days" of "perfect games" out of the box never existed. There were several games I bought that stunk to high heaven and there were no patches or maybe one to two, but nothing even on the level of what Stardock has already released. That said, there were a few companies that did make sure it was close to being as good as possible. Microprose comes to mind. 

Really developers can't win today. If they waited until it was perfect, people would say it was vaporware. If they release it and have an update or two in a couple of weeks, it was released too soon. 

I feel that if a developer released a game in "perfect" condition, then people would complain there weren't any updates and they are abandoning the users. Especially if DLC comes out.

How much did they spend on WoW for the game, expansions AND a monthly charge?

Also, realize that these games released 15-20 years ago would cost more now than they were then. $50 in 1995 is $77.62 now. 1990 just over $90. So people want all that older games had, plus more, for less.   Imagine what would happen if they released the game at those prices! 

Life is too short to get worked up over a game.

I have to agree with the OP, official game reviewers tend to be more honest than the average player, despite the stereotype that all gaming reviewing sites are buy outs.

But I'm still VERY concerned with those negative Steam reviews. I have developed a love towards GalCiv III and its devs, so I obviously don't want the game to fail. I've already made my positive review here, but still.

However, there was still a lot of early access positive reviews and on opening week the reviews were at 91% for a little bit.  Now however, in the two weeks or so after they have fallen to 74% (last time I checked).  That's why in my other post I asked what can Stardock do to change your mind to positive?  A lot of the negative reviews I've read are crashing or AI related, so once those issues are resolved change your review to positive.  The bad thing is most of those won't change it even if they end up loving the game.

Every game has things that people dislike, there is always something.  If it's features I can and always will look past them (unless I just simply don't like the game.)  If the game is physically unplayable, crashing or horribly unbalanced, small then I blame the company and rate poorly.

Galactic Civilizations III is not broken, it's not horribly unbalanced, and fits along with the rest of the Galactic Civilizations games.  So all in all I may have my complaints which have already been discussed but, I enjoy the game and appreciate everything Frogboy and Stardock do for there customers.

First off I'd ask that you please remove profanities from your post.  Second SimCity 2013 doesn't compare.  SimCity 2013 was poorly handled from the beginning with lies coming from the designers about online only and why it's needed as well as the fact that cities couldn't be bigger.  They had poor design forcing traffic bottlenecks and poor planning.

Galactic Civilizations III the designers have always been upfront about everything and don't have any huge bottleneck issues nor is the game unplayable.

The PC is great because of the vast range of customization  possible (hardware and software - wise).   The thing that is horrible about the PC is... the same thing.   With any complex software release you aren't going to see a lot of the game breaking problems (crashes, etc.) until you get a lot of people using it.   100,000 user = 100,000 different computers.   PC development is not for the faint of heart.  

Which is why EA for something like GC3 is a good idea; get as many hard core testers helping as you can.   But it still is dwarfed by the release crowd.   So the argument to just wait until it is perfectly stable is an impossible request.    The developer has to bite it and respond as best they can.   The difference between good and so-so or bad companies is not whether users will have problems with their software on release, it's how dedicated they are to addressing it.    As has been said, some are good at this, some not so good.   Stardock is in the top 10%.   I say that after gaming for 45 years, but it's just my 3c.  (I notice  that inflation has affected other things.)

The problem is that our review community, professional and amateur, as far as I see for the most part don't get it.

The game isn't crash happy for everyone, odds are there is something you could do to clean them up.  It's probably going to be something simple, like an anti-virus running, or a bad graphics driver.

I also think the game needed a bit more time in the oven. I don't have any experience running a game studio, but I do know my own expectations. I couldn't care less about what is missing from GalCiv 2. What is more concerning is the lack of attention to basic gameplay balance. The fact that major balance changes (1.02) are being made just a few weeks after release speaks for itself - and there is still a long way to go. In addition, I think there are is a lack of significant innovations over the GalCiv 2 format. For example, there could have been more effort to reduce micro. Stardock could have implemented a new system to make constructors less time consuming, or implement smarter, more customizable governors. I really see nothing new for the 4X genre in this game as it stands. The only thing that I find a significant improvement is starbases, but their usefulness is limited due to the 1 ship/turn limit. I have no problem that the game does not have all the features of GalCiv 2, but there are not many significant changes, and the gameplay lacks depth due to poor balancing. Personally, I will be more cautious about buying Stardock products in the future. I already avoided the GalCiv 3 beta due to my experience with Elemental, so this is a bit of second strike for me. Although the game is no where near as bad as Elemental, I didn't get much mileage out of it as a GalCiv 2 vet. Of course, if this is a successful strategy for Stardock, I do not expect them to change anything just to cater towards me, or other forum goers. Ultimately, we are a small minority. I will be back in a month or two to see how the game shapes up with post-release support.

The correct answer is it isn't I was just having a ... moment...

They were at 81%.  They were in the high 60s until Beta 5.

The ball is in Stardock's court really. 

(1) The game needs to perform better on low end hardware

(2) The game needs to be stable across a wider range of systems

(3) The game needs to evolve more of the kind of refinment players are looking for

Those 3 things should take care of much of it.  Civilization V, today, has a >90% steam review score.

Sorry, I was remembering wrong, sorry thinking positive

I am a cynical guy so it would be out of character for me to come to the defense of professional reviewers , but it is entirely in character for me to declare that most of the egotistical, self appointed guru gamers are also full of shit even more. Most are just venting about personal experience that has zero to do with producing and marketing a PC game.

The problem with many game reviewers is they never really get into the game, which was SimCity 2013's major flaw.  The game wasn't noticed as broken because if you only play the game for 30-60-120 minutes it played fairly well.  (Even with EA's beta process limiting server load and 30 minute play times.) This caused many people not to see the major flaws until after release and noticing most players actually play the game for several hours at a sitting instead of 30 minutes at a time.

Some of this is the same issues with Galactic Civilizations III, most of the issues are popping up in games that are taking many hours, in some cases 40+ hours of game play.  The fact of the matter is reviewers and internal QA doesn't have the time to sit down and play a full game of this scope so they don't catch all these.  Then when players do report them, it's to late as a new patch is out and their current game is outdated so they say it was fixed start over with new patch.  

The good thing as said before is Galactic Civilizations III issues are mostly minor and relatively easy fixes, without changing the whole concept of the game.  These issues will be fixed and the reviews will be dead on at that time.  Now on the other hand if we're still having these discussions a year from now, then you can tell me I told you so.  SimCity 2013 was broken, they couldn't fix it without completely changing the game which EA wasn't willing to budget for, and unfortunately SimCity is now dead along with Maxis.  The good thing with that is it opened the door for many other City Builder games out there to show EA what they did horribly wrong.  

Simcity has a 64 metacritic.  While I'm sure there are people,who trust user reviews, I doubt they're in the majority. Too often user reviews are basically people unleashing their baggage on everyone.  The steam reviews are the best user review system out there but most people still refer to the professionals.

Based on our metrics and research two things matter: >80 metacritic and >=mostly positive steam reviews.

If I had used user reviews, I would have passed on Civilization V, Starcraft 2, and Diablo 3 (to name just a few examples of the quality of early player reviews).