Alright, so I'm 27 hours in, and while I am enjoying myself, I really don't think I can give this a recommendation.

PROS:
-Dota Theme

-Card Collection Tab

-Three Lanes Make For Unique Gameplay

-'Free' Draft Mode


CONS:
-Monetization Model

-A SEVERE Lack of Features:
--No Replays or Spectating
--No Match History or Game Play Statistics
--No Chatting or Emotes
--No Ladder/MMR or Leaderboards

-RNG

-Overpowered and Underpowered Heroes

-No Foils, Cosmetics, or Special Cards (Lack of Customization)


Underneath these problems there is a great game dying for an expansion or two and some minor tweaks to OP cards.

I love this game. It's a fun TBS-esque game that really deftly combines resource management, real time strategy, and tower defense mechanics.

It's easily worth $9.99, and considering it's on sale often for under $5... Well buy it and try it.

TL;DR it's not a bad game, but Civ V is superior. DLC might fix it, but it's not worth playing until then.




Why don't we have a "Neutral" recommendation button? We need it for Civ VI, because while this is an acceptable entry into the series, I can't ever see any reason to play it over Civ V.

There are a bunch of great new features (Districts make you feel more like you're playing Endless Legend, though that game still does tile based city building better imo), but they're all held back by some really awful design choices, a few bugs, and horrible AI.

Pros:
The foundation is clearly here. With 2 or 3 big expansions (DLC's bleh), it could easily be a great game.
The inspiration system, makes the science and new civic tech trees feel fresh and exciting without feeling overly powerful.
Natural wonders feel far better than they did in Civ V (They now tend to give bonuses to tiles around them, making controlling them far more beneficial).
Global happiness is no longer a horrible limiter in the mid game.
City-States no longer require massive sinks of gold to get small perks, rather you complete quests and are granted envoys who give you bonuses.

Cons:
Art style is awful compared to Civ V, personal preference obviously, but Civ V was a beautiful game. This feels too cartoony and isn't whimsical enough to warrant it.
AI is atrocious. We're talking absolutely worse than Civ V. They'll make wars with you they can't win for no reason, will build cities in horrible spots, build districts poorly, and even get destroyed by barbarians near the start of the game. As someone who played on immortal difficulty in Civ V and really wanted better AI this is quite possibly the most disappointing thing about the whole game.
Movement and combat of units is tedious due to how the system of movement has been changed. You will not catch a scout unless they corner themselves. The actual combat hasn't changed, but the changes to movement and how impactful rough terrain can be makes it all so much slower and less engaging.
The UI is bad. Menus don't pop up when you click the city, but rather you need to click other buttons while the city is selected to see actual details. There's no game log of any kind so if you miss the fast messages telling you what just happened you'll never see it again. The UI also seems to be hard to directly interact with. The amount of times I try to view a notification only to select the ground beneath said notification is too high.
Lastly bugs. There are tons of them. Bugs with the steam overlay, with not being able to name cities, issues with loading saves, and even a strange issue where I kept getting notified stonehenge was built, 300 turns after it'd been built.

Okay so I just finished my first "session" with Battle Dome.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ was everyone who suggested it to me right. This is a great game, that more so than most other titles, feels like a proper game. The Vive is currently experiencing a derth of unique barely-game-esque releases that while they may be great and fun experiences on their own, don't fit in nicely with the games so many of us have been playing for years now.

Battle Dome is something else. A strange hybrid of real life laser tag, your old flat screen FPS games, and a healthy sprinkling of roomscale amazement and dashes of hilariously strange painting. It is the first game where I played it and knew near instantly that it'd be a game I'd come back to over and over again.

Don't get me wrong, other games exist in a similar way (Hover Junkers being a great example), but while those games are fun... Battle Dome really got me wanting to play more. If my face wasn't so sore from the mixture of sweat (damn you 108 degree heat!) and my already sensitive cheeks;

Well I'd still be playing and not writing this review.

Battle Dome needs some polish for sure, but what's here now is a great (and nice working) show of just how fun and amazing VR multiplayer games can be.

9/10 easily.

This game is expensive for what it is, but the sheer amount of joy (And arm pain) I've had from it...

Well that gives it a pass in my book.

Wait for a sale, but make sure you get it at some point.