Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth Rising Tide is a well developed, superbly balanced, and refined evolution of the original.

That old Civilization mantra still echoes, just like it used to: One more turn.

Rising Tide is an overhauled look at the core experience, and it would be difficult to go back to Beyond Earth without the myriad enhancements the expansion offers. As with Civilization V before it, Beyond Earth looks like it’s becoming all it can be as it evolves with these upgrades.

So much new content, and quality content too. Some problems are left unanswered, but, overall, Beyond Earth has gained a great boost in personality and uniqueness.

Fans of CivBE will want to pick this one up. While nothing groundbreaking has been added, the new features flesh out some gameplay from the original, and add the new frontier of aquatic colonization. Perhaps a little heavy on the micromanagement, the overall pace of the game retains that “one more turn” quality.

This is an expansion like those we used to get. Tons of content, fresh and creative additions and, above all, more Civilization.

Good to see that Firaxis Games is following its tradition in optimizing core-game-features, that could have been worked out in a better way. So Beyond Earth’s diplomacy is much more entertaining now, the aquatic gameplay and the hybrid-affinities now offers much more strategical depth. The new artifact-system is a lot of fun to experiment with and there are many improvements in feature-details. But still it’s not the same overall fantastic game experience, that Civilization stands for. Even with the add-on improvements, Beyond Earth appears like a little sci-fi-brother to Civ 5.

I didn’t know exactly what I was missing until Rising Tide filled in the blanks, but now Beyond Earth is more engaging than ever as a Civilization sci-fi experience.

This Beyond Earth expansion offers many more hours of rebalanced gameplay to the saga's fans.

Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth – Rising Tide isn’t an entirely new game, but it’s not far off. It gives fans of the original game plenty of reason to dive back in for not just one, but hundreds or thousands more turns.

There’s no single feature that will revolutionise Beyond Earth’s fairly conventional approach to strategy, but as a complete package this expansion does a great job of fleshing out the game’s mechanics and giving it a sense of identity that previously was sorely missing.

The first expansion for Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth is a step forward, but not without its problems. While new concepts are many, and some of them also daring, they are far from perfect and still need work and balance. If you loved the basic Beyond Earth, then it's highly probable you'll love Rising Tide too, otherwise it could be better to wait for further expansions.

The huge amount of improvements are fitting well. It's no Alpha Centauri 2 yet - but it's getting closer.

Civilization: Beyond Earth - Rising Tide is a mixed bag: it is an expansion that fails to meet the standards of its classic counterpart; however, it adds much needed improvements to water combat and diplomacy. Recommended for completionists more than for newcomers, who should stick with Civilization V and its expansions.

A good expansion, which should be owned by all Beyond Earth players. While adding only a water-based building and artifacts, it improves all the mechanics of the original game. [Issue#258]

To use a Civilization V metaphor, this is "Beyond Earth: Gods and Kings,": it adds a few new things, adjusts a few others, but overall doesn't really have much impact on the core game. The mechanics are still there, but it's sort of ironic that this expansion adds in aquatic combat, since the thing it seems to lack most is depth. It's a coat of paint, not a deep fix.

Rising Tide "Civ" add-on offers the great maritime scenery and new gaming opportunities. Look forward to the new power challenges, more realistic political relations and also a lot of new units and buildings. Drastically modified diplomacy might not be to everyone's taste though.

Firaxis Games manages to pull out a nearly flawless balance between complexity and simplicity. It adds more levels of gameplay and a greater variety of paths to choose from, but at the same time it becomes more intuitive and easy to understand.

Rising Tide makes Civilization:BE better in almost every possible way. Besides an alien sea to colonize, this add-on develops the diplomatic system and Affinities into something new.

Sid Meier's Civilization Beyond Earth Rising Tide isn't a perfect piece of software, but adds some great feature in the vanilla game. The diplomacy system could be in the future the standard for 4x genre, but it needs some more tweaks. But you can't play Beyond Earth without Rising Tide.

The artifact descriptions are another example of the way Rising Tide layers new, compelling content onto the framework of Civilization: Beyond Earth.

Rising Tide enhances Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth to the point that it's difficult to imagine the game without it; in fact, the regular Civilization series should take a few cues from Rising Tide.

A solid expansion pack. Water cities can diversifying the gameplay and the new diplomacy system is finally the one we've been waiting for. Other major and minor additions keep you engaged and satisfied while conquering new worlds.

All in all, Rising Tide is a decent addition to Beyond Earth, and yes, it finally feels like a game that has achieved escape velocity and left the atmosphere and gravitational pull of planet Civ 5.

Rising Tide is a substantial step forward in Civilization.

Rising Tides is a milestone on the road to making Civilization Beyond Earth the game we all wanted it to become.

Civilization Beyond Earth: Rising Tide is a good expansion for the fanbase.

Civilization: Beyond Earth - Rising Tide is a solid package, and in many ways, this is how the game should have been delivered when it first arrived last year.

The new content in Rising Tide is something Beyond Earth desperately needed. Paired with a solid new diplomacy system and the concept of ´water cities´, Rising Tide is an expansion every Civilization Beyond Earth fan has to have.

A solid expansion addressing the right problems, but still shackled by its core game’s choices.

Rising Tide's great new diplomacy and artifacts can't quite fix Civ: Beyond Earth's replayability problems.

While the overhaul of the diplomatic system is a very welcome feature delivered by Rising Tide, the uselessness of the hybrid affinities, the tediousness of moving aquatic cities and the quite impressive price tag of the extension only restricts it to the most hardcore fans.

Civilization: Beyond Earth - Rising Tide is an enjoyable expansion pack that offers numerous new features and improvements. However, it's not quite the leap forward that some Civilization fans are hoping for.

A useful expansion that unlike most doesn’t ignore the failings of the original, although even with the improvements Beyond Earth still isn’t as engrossing as the real Civilization.

The new content is undeniably great; the new units add depth and strategy and taking control of aliens gives you a fresh way to play the game militarily, which is quite interesting and fun.

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.

Rising Tide only looks like a hefty expansion because it fails to breathe life into Beyond Earth.

Rising Tide didn’t even try to reignite my faded interest in Beyond Earth. [12/2015, p.71]

Rising Tide sometimes feels all wet, but Civilization’s ship can still be righted.