Since I've only just gotten it, I'll play further at a later point and edit this review as needed. For now, I will say that I enjoyed my time with Killers and Thieves, and while it has issues(Mainly the lack of tutorial, questionable controls, and civilian/guards being incredibly simple), it is still decent, though very much overpriced for what it does at this point.
Edit: Further playing reveals a much greater problem still- A complete lack of replayability. Once you've seen one or two randomly generated maps, you've seen it all. There doesn't seem to be much more than that, not even story wise.
After a few more hours of trying, it feels very much like a flash game with a great concept and no substance. it's neat and has potential, but it will never realize that potential and become great. Quite sad, but that's how many great concepts go.
My time with it is best summed up by analogy;
You get yourself a new bathtub installed, paid for it and finally want to use it to relax. You step in and the bathtub is too small for you to fit in it, so you awkwardly stand in it trying to take a shower. Then you get a phonecall. The shower was nice, but it only just started and now you're interupted. The phone call was someone trying to order a pizza with the wrong number. You go back to your shower and try to enjoy it when you get called again. someone else trying to order a pizza. This repeats for a few hours and you never get the water to heat up so you have to just take a cold shower and then you turn it off and go do something else. All the while you're left thinking about the wonderful warm bath you've been promised.
Original review follows;
Killers and Thieves puts the player in control of a medieval thieves' guild, an interesting idea that might have needed a bit more explaining and working out. As it stands, it is still worth looking at, but it does feel like it could have used a bit more thought at a lot of points.
The story seems pretty good, but the day to day business of robbing places, training your thieves and selling loot feels like it is lacking a bit and often feels clumsy and obtuse. The controls for your thieves are not very intuitive, and the stealth system not regenerating any points once you've lost them makes it impossible to enter stealth again after being spotted.
But that is just one of the systems that feels too simple to me. Perhaps I just expected too much, but so far I've not yet found any unique looking maps. Everything appears to be randomised, even the story missions I've found thus far. While it seems like a lot of effort was put in the presentation, into looks and mood, into the story itself and the concept, it doesn't seem like this effort was placed on connecting the story to the game. An early example is a story mission telling me to rob a place to put pressure on someone, the map was randomly generated, so I just went in and stole a bunch of stuff. With multiple houses there, I had no idea where I was supposed to go. But it turned out the answer was "Anywhere", as stealing from any of the houses counted. Then in a the story afterward the man's house was robbed, yet I couldn't picture the house as everything seemed to just be randomly generated.
While the graphics are good with a consistent, pleasant to look at style that isn't difficult to tell guards and loot apart from the background, the sound is maybe a bit too simple, with music and soundbites seemingly repeated over and over. This got a bit annoying after a while, which I found to detract from the general experience. They can certainly use more variety for the audio.
Guard AI, for a stealth based game, is fairly important. It is then sad that it is so simplistic. Guards seem to move at random, and stand still at random. This means that if you're unlucky, you're going to be stuck in a room for a long time waiting for the guards to move away. They often patrol in buildings randomly, wandering through bedrooms of slums and standing at random staircases in the middle of a house. There doesn't seem to be any sense, which leads me to believe the guard patrols are probably also randomly generated.
The RPG elements are slow, and you will need to level up a lot in order to get the training points needed to make your thieves capable of doing their job properly, and even then there are often not many ways you can use the skills in the maps as they are, even if you actively look for them. I like the idea of growing my band of thieves from poorly skilled randoms from the street to a group of elite heisters, but the leveling up, learning of skills and trying to make thieves better just doesn't seem to matter most of the time. Not to mention that it takes forever to get even the slightest upgrade.
It feels like they've had a great idea, but didn't really know how to turn it into a great game. So they got a story that seems good so far, and they've made some gameplay for it. But they don't seem to have really made it fit well together with the story, and the gameplay elements often appear to conflict in their goals. The numerous flaws in the game seem to break immersion quite often, and the sheer randomness of everything makes planning impossible. Controlling four thieves at the same time with the clumsy controls means you're likely to just leave three outside and use one at a time.
I like the idea, I like the art, and it seems like a lot of work went into the story. But the gameplay feels lacking in many ways. It is essentially the looting and exploration part of This War of Mine with slight changes to it, randomly generated every time and with an overworld system that doesn't seem to really do much anyway. Many things regarding the gameplay feel like they've not been thought about, leading to what feels like a patchwork of mechanics and systems that interact at times, but never truly work together to provide a great immersive and challenging experience.
It is worth getting and playing at some point, and you may very well end up enjoying it like I do. But I can see that it has big issues that would make it a frustrating and poor experience for many, so definitely do not get it at full price.
24 May, 2017
12 May, 2017
Battle Brothers Review
Battle Brothers puts you in command of a small mercenary band seeking to make a name for itself, and to earn money.
You control individual soldiers, their loadout, their skill growth, and their moves in battle. It is a pretty interesting tactical game, but it quickly gets repetitive as there isn't a lot of variation to be had and most of your experience will be walking around and occasional bandit fights. That said, what content is there works well and is enjoyable.
Your loadout matters most of the time, with different weapons giving different options in battle, leading to easy to understand choices that you can easily see impact your battles along with most of the time it being easy to see where and how you made mistakes.
A lot of Battle Brothers is about survival, as the real enemy isn't the bandits, greenskins or undead, though they all provide a different challenge, but attrition. As you need to level up your mercenaries, you'll end up having to protect them. And it then feels unfair when you have to level up every one of your brothers from nearly nothing while the game generates enemies for you at higher levels with the idea that you should be able to take them by then. Once you fall behind on the curve and lose a few more fights to now-superior opponents there is no real coming back as there is practically nothing left to fight that won't just murder everyone in your group. If you did not earn enough money to buy good equipment, or you couldn't find the better equipment, you just fell behind on the curve and it will be more and more difficult to catch back up. Assuming it is at all possible.
For a game that seems to take hints from X-com and similar hard games, it feels arbitrary. You are always limited to at most 12 men in your combat formation, while you will quickly find enemies do not have such a limit. Enemies do not need to worry about losing their highly trained men, so they just throw themselves at you- After all, they just get generated from nothing to give you a fight and they don't care if they survive. Then you notice the world feels empty and artificial, as things are generated just to fight you and nothing else seems to happen without you explicitly making it happen by accepting a contract. The fact that the world is randomly generated and seems to not be too interested in making roads and villages fit the terrain doesn't help it either. While I like the idea of the map being randomly generated and it occasionally seems to come up with a good map, it feels like the majority of them are pretty poor in many aspects, though thankfully no map seed is terrible to the point it can't be dealt with by a tactics and strategy change.
There are no fights outside of nature, even if you accept a contract to fight in a siege and the text says you push through the gate of the citadel, only to find it is a grassy plain just like every other plain out there. You may be asked to enter a mausoleum for an artifact, or a graveyard to get rid of grave robbers, but these too are just empty grassy plains and maybe hills.
Without a doubt, it feels like they did not pay attention to the details, and things weren't really worked out that well, leading to it feeling frustrating and what should have been a climax- A siege on a stone citadel during a war between noble houses- Instead just became a disappointment as it was just another fight on a field of grass.
But all that said, it remains a positive experience. being able to name your mercenaries and build them in the way you like(Though most of them will be pretty standard simply because the reality of combat makes some things highly impractical), the flavour text and random events are amusing and interesting. Armour and weapons can be looted from the enemy after combat, and the looks of your men change with their injuries and equipment.
Battle Brothers is a flawed but still enjoyable game, if you are okay with being frustrated often and a lot of doing battles that feel the same over and over. What is there is pretty good, but it feels like there is definitely too much of the same and it never seems to go anywhere. It's worth getting if you are interested in team management and fighting against attrition, but for everyone that isn't a big fan of turn based tactical combat I'd say wait for a sale. Or you're just going to end up frustrated and annoyed.
You control individual soldiers, their loadout, their skill growth, and their moves in battle. It is a pretty interesting tactical game, but it quickly gets repetitive as there isn't a lot of variation to be had and most of your experience will be walking around and occasional bandit fights. That said, what content is there works well and is enjoyable.
Your loadout matters most of the time, with different weapons giving different options in battle, leading to easy to understand choices that you can easily see impact your battles along with most of the time it being easy to see where and how you made mistakes.
A lot of Battle Brothers is about survival, as the real enemy isn't the bandits, greenskins or undead, though they all provide a different challenge, but attrition. As you need to level up your mercenaries, you'll end up having to protect them. And it then feels unfair when you have to level up every one of your brothers from nearly nothing while the game generates enemies for you at higher levels with the idea that you should be able to take them by then. Once you fall behind on the curve and lose a few more fights to now-superior opponents there is no real coming back as there is practically nothing left to fight that won't just murder everyone in your group. If you did not earn enough money to buy good equipment, or you couldn't find the better equipment, you just fell behind on the curve and it will be more and more difficult to catch back up. Assuming it is at all possible.
For a game that seems to take hints from X-com and similar hard games, it feels arbitrary. You are always limited to at most 12 men in your combat formation, while you will quickly find enemies do not have such a limit. Enemies do not need to worry about losing their highly trained men, so they just throw themselves at you- After all, they just get generated from nothing to give you a fight and they don't care if they survive. Then you notice the world feels empty and artificial, as things are generated just to fight you and nothing else seems to happen without you explicitly making it happen by accepting a contract. The fact that the world is randomly generated and seems to not be too interested in making roads and villages fit the terrain doesn't help it either. While I like the idea of the map being randomly generated and it occasionally seems to come up with a good map, it feels like the majority of them are pretty poor in many aspects, though thankfully no map seed is terrible to the point it can't be dealt with by a tactics and strategy change.
There are no fights outside of nature, even if you accept a contract to fight in a siege and the text says you push through the gate of the citadel, only to find it is a grassy plain just like every other plain out there. You may be asked to enter a mausoleum for an artifact, or a graveyard to get rid of grave robbers, but these too are just empty grassy plains and maybe hills.
Without a doubt, it feels like they did not pay attention to the details, and things weren't really worked out that well, leading to it feeling frustrating and what should have been a climax- A siege on a stone citadel during a war between noble houses- Instead just became a disappointment as it was just another fight on a field of grass.
But all that said, it remains a positive experience. being able to name your mercenaries and build them in the way you like(Though most of them will be pretty standard simply because the reality of combat makes some things highly impractical), the flavour text and random events are amusing and interesting. Armour and weapons can be looted from the enemy after combat, and the looks of your men change with their injuries and equipment.
Battle Brothers is a flawed but still enjoyable game, if you are okay with being frustrated often and a lot of doing battles that feel the same over and over. What is there is pretty good, but it feels like there is definitely too much of the same and it never seems to go anywhere. It's worth getting if you are interested in team management and fighting against attrition, but for everyone that isn't a big fan of turn based tactical combat I'd say wait for a sale. Or you're just going to end up frustrated and annoyed.
10 May, 2017
PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS Review
ALL CAPITAL LETTERS GAME is about landing on an island with up to 99 other people and being the last team(Or person) standing. If that interests you, you're probably going to enjoy this game. I was somewhat surprised to find this to be an entire subgenre of FPS (And third person shooters too), and from what I can tell it seems to be the best in it at the moment.
For everyone who hasn't been convinced yet or doesn't know anything about it, I would say it's...Alright, I suppose.
I'm not really impressed by it, but it certainly does what it says it will. A typical round lasts at most about 25 minutes and starts with you jumping out of a plane over the island. You then land and you have to find gear for yourself- Which essentially means guns, ammo and medical supplies. Technically melee weaponry exists but unless you and someone else are in the same building in the first minute of the game you're going to not use anything except guns.
Once everyone has landed the playable area starts becoming smaller, forcing players into conflict as the playable area reduces in size until the game ends with a winner.
There is no penalty for losing or leaving the game, matches are quick to hop in and quick to leave, and it has a very quick format for those who are low on time. It does get somewhat repetitive, and most rounds go roughly the same in my experience, you get your stuff, you try to not die, and then either you end up killing the other people or you get shot and die.
The actual gunplay is solid enough, and aiming with a scope is not unpleasant. A large amount of the tactics involved are about flanking your opponent. As almost everything is very powerful and capable of killing someone in just a few good shots you will want to use cover to your advantage and deny it for your opponents. The controls are sometimes a bit rough, with some odd input lag for things like entering vehicles or opening doors, but this is probably because it is still early access.
Sound design seems good, and you can often hear someone before you see them.
You may have noticed the 'survival' tag on the steam store. The goal is survival, I suppose. But you're in the wrong place if you're looking for somewhere that you'll need to find food and drink, build shelter, and similar things to actually survive in the long term. There is no long term in this game, for better or worse. In the same way, I suppose it is technically an open world, you can go anywhere you want. But you're going to take damage and get limited to a smaller area really quickly.
I'm having trouble finding other things to say about it. I am not really impressed by it, it does what it says it does, and it does them pretty well. But it doesnt say it will do much either. It had its origins as a mod for an other game, and it still feels like it is just that right now- A mod for some other game. A good mod, for sure. Enjoyable for a while, certainly. But not what I'd call a full game worth 30€
At least not in its current state. Unless you are really into this kind of game, in which case you're going to probably spend over 100 hours in it as it is the best one of its kind at the moment
For everyone who hasn't been convinced yet or doesn't know anything about it, I would say it's...Alright, I suppose.
I'm not really impressed by it, but it certainly does what it says it will. A typical round lasts at most about 25 minutes and starts with you jumping out of a plane over the island. You then land and you have to find gear for yourself- Which essentially means guns, ammo and medical supplies. Technically melee weaponry exists but unless you and someone else are in the same building in the first minute of the game you're going to not use anything except guns.
Once everyone has landed the playable area starts becoming smaller, forcing players into conflict as the playable area reduces in size until the game ends with a winner.
There is no penalty for losing or leaving the game, matches are quick to hop in and quick to leave, and it has a very quick format for those who are low on time. It does get somewhat repetitive, and most rounds go roughly the same in my experience, you get your stuff, you try to not die, and then either you end up killing the other people or you get shot and die.
The actual gunplay is solid enough, and aiming with a scope is not unpleasant. A large amount of the tactics involved are about flanking your opponent. As almost everything is very powerful and capable of killing someone in just a few good shots you will want to use cover to your advantage and deny it for your opponents. The controls are sometimes a bit rough, with some odd input lag for things like entering vehicles or opening doors, but this is probably because it is still early access.
Sound design seems good, and you can often hear someone before you see them.
You may have noticed the 'survival' tag on the steam store. The goal is survival, I suppose. But you're in the wrong place if you're looking for somewhere that you'll need to find food and drink, build shelter, and similar things to actually survive in the long term. There is no long term in this game, for better or worse. In the same way, I suppose it is technically an open world, you can go anywhere you want. But you're going to take damage and get limited to a smaller area really quickly.
I'm having trouble finding other things to say about it. I am not really impressed by it, it does what it says it does, and it does them pretty well. But it doesnt say it will do much either. It had its origins as a mod for an other game, and it still feels like it is just that right now- A mod for some other game. A good mod, for sure. Enjoyable for a while, certainly. But not what I'd call a full game worth 30€
At least not in its current state. Unless you are really into this kind of game, in which case you're going to probably spend over 100 hours in it as it is the best one of its kind at the moment
30 April, 2017
Grand Theft Auto V Review
GTA V is two games in one- A single player game with a storyline and GTA online, named so for reasons one may assume to be obvious. As such, this review will mainly focus on the online, as that is what I have mostly played, and why I purchased it. With that said, there are obvious similarities in it, and many of the things I will mention apply to both.
In Grand Theft Auto you mainly start the game small- Whether homeless or with just a small house, there is very little you can lose. And from there you begin your adventure in crime and moneymaking. With what appears to be an anarchocapitalist society filled with well-made backstory and world complete with multiple full series of cartoons, mock TV channels(Better than real TV!) and radio stations. There is an internet ingame with plenty of often humour-filled websites, along with useful ones that you will find to be genuinely interesting on their own.
In short- The worldbuilding is top quality, there is a lot of effort and attention in it and it shows that it was a great priority when it was made
In contrast, the controls are not very well thought through. Aside from the car and boat controls they are very clunky and questionable, with movement being difficult to get right and taking cover means you will stick to the wall too long when you want to get going to other cover, and you will not stick to cover when you actually want to stay in it. I've found the movement and cover to be questionable at best. Switching weapon is a massive pain and will generally not be viable unless you are not actively in combat. For airplanes and helicopters there is no joystick support at all.
Following what they did right with vehicles is the damage model for cars. As may be expected from a GTA game, the cars can be damaged, destroyed, and otherwise have their function impeded. Though it isn't massively realistic, it is good enough to give you natural damage effects such as veering to the left or right or the engine beginning to break and give less power. It is then a shame that this will almost never show up in multiplayer unless you are a terrible driver, because a thing that they clearly did not think about for the multiplayer
Namely, the balance. Everyone gets a homing rocket launcher, no matter their level. This rocket launcher will destroy most cars in one hit and blows anything flying out of the air with a little aim and luck. This means that while you can put armour on your car to protect it from bullets, your vehicle's function is more along the lines of "Has it exploded? Yes or no" than anything else. Similar for non-vehicle pvp. You will be either dead in seconds or your enemy is dead, no long firefights with players here.
Much like this, the rest of the online balance is out the window- with many things costing a large amount of money and income being generally very low even for things with several millions of input needed to set them up. If you want anything more than just a gun and a random car you can still from the street, you are going to have to actively grind for money, or play for a very long time without spending on anything.
The loading, and in general connecting to the online servers for a first time in a session(Or when switching session) takes a truly massive amount of time, though I have been told it is much less in single player, I will still say it is unreasonably long- You can go do the dishes and return in time to catch the end of the loading screen. Something I know because I've done that. I have no idea how they thought this was acceptable.
With that said, the rest of it is mostly good- Sound and looks are pretty decent, the map seems very nicely made with lots of interesting details and plenty of hidden spots. Someone seems to have thought about everything on the map
In the end, what really sells GTA isn't the pvp and fighting other people online. What is good about it is the single player, the missions, and the world. For online the one thing that is much more interesting than any of the official selling points is the fact that it is a world you can hop into with your friends and drive around together, do a few missions, or just decide to take everyone on a race, go parachuting, or even just play a round of golf. There may not be a real grouping up mechanic and there are a large amount of flaws in multiplayer, but as just a world for you and your friends to hang out in and do whatever you want to do it does incredibly well.
Worth full price? It's a rare moment when I say it is for something this expensive. But I certainly got my money worth and do not regret it. It has a fair amount of technical issues with it, but the design is great for many things and there is almost always something to do- So I would say it is.
In Grand Theft Auto you mainly start the game small- Whether homeless or with just a small house, there is very little you can lose. And from there you begin your adventure in crime and moneymaking. With what appears to be an anarchocapitalist society filled with well-made backstory and world complete with multiple full series of cartoons, mock TV channels(Better than real TV!) and radio stations. There is an internet ingame with plenty of often humour-filled websites, along with useful ones that you will find to be genuinely interesting on their own.
In short- The worldbuilding is top quality, there is a lot of effort and attention in it and it shows that it was a great priority when it was made
In contrast, the controls are not very well thought through. Aside from the car and boat controls they are very clunky and questionable, with movement being difficult to get right and taking cover means you will stick to the wall too long when you want to get going to other cover, and you will not stick to cover when you actually want to stay in it. I've found the movement and cover to be questionable at best. Switching weapon is a massive pain and will generally not be viable unless you are not actively in combat. For airplanes and helicopters there is no joystick support at all.
Following what they did right with vehicles is the damage model for cars. As may be expected from a GTA game, the cars can be damaged, destroyed, and otherwise have their function impeded. Though it isn't massively realistic, it is good enough to give you natural damage effects such as veering to the left or right or the engine beginning to break and give less power. It is then a shame that this will almost never show up in multiplayer unless you are a terrible driver, because a thing that they clearly did not think about for the multiplayer
Namely, the balance. Everyone gets a homing rocket launcher, no matter their level. This rocket launcher will destroy most cars in one hit and blows anything flying out of the air with a little aim and luck. This means that while you can put armour on your car to protect it from bullets, your vehicle's function is more along the lines of "Has it exploded? Yes or no" than anything else. Similar for non-vehicle pvp. You will be either dead in seconds or your enemy is dead, no long firefights with players here.
Much like this, the rest of the online balance is out the window- with many things costing a large amount of money and income being generally very low even for things with several millions of input needed to set them up. If you want anything more than just a gun and a random car you can still from the street, you are going to have to actively grind for money, or play for a very long time without spending on anything.
The loading, and in general connecting to the online servers for a first time in a session(Or when switching session) takes a truly massive amount of time, though I have been told it is much less in single player, I will still say it is unreasonably long- You can go do the dishes and return in time to catch the end of the loading screen. Something I know because I've done that. I have no idea how they thought this was acceptable.
With that said, the rest of it is mostly good- Sound and looks are pretty decent, the map seems very nicely made with lots of interesting details and plenty of hidden spots. Someone seems to have thought about everything on the map
In the end, what really sells GTA isn't the pvp and fighting other people online. What is good about it is the single player, the missions, and the world. For online the one thing that is much more interesting than any of the official selling points is the fact that it is a world you can hop into with your friends and drive around together, do a few missions, or just decide to take everyone on a race, go parachuting, or even just play a round of golf. There may not be a real grouping up mechanic and there are a large amount of flaws in multiplayer, but as just a world for you and your friends to hang out in and do whatever you want to do it does incredibly well.
Worth full price? It's a rare moment when I say it is for something this expensive. But I certainly got my money worth and do not regret it. It has a fair amount of technical issues with it, but the design is great for many things and there is almost always something to do- So I would say it is.
15 April, 2017
Stellaris Review
Stellaris is an early alpha game that is to be finished in DLC. If you
buy it now, you get to enjoy all the placeholder mechanics that they
will ask you money for to replace with something resembling an actually
thought out game. And even then it will be half-assed and with minimum
effort because you're already invested (See also the Sunk Cost Fallacy).
You'll have to buy it or be stuck with an unfinished version that isn't
really good at anything.
And it's that version I will review here. Stellaris attempts to merge Grand Strategy games and 4X games, managing to take only the worst of both worlds in a nice looking jacket to hide the lack of things to do. To begin, the early game plays much like a 4X game. You explore, you look for places to expand and colonize, and you work on your planets. After everything is mostly claimed and you've met a fair amount of alien empires the grand strategy game is supposed to take over, but it never does. This leaves you with a rather poorly done 4X game that has no real mid or late game. Once you've finished exploring, you build up a military until it's bigger than your neighbour and throw it at them until you have no more neighbours.
To begin with the good things about it, it looks pretty decent, as screenshots will show you. And the events have decent flavour to them, and a few stories that actually made me want to follow up on them only to be disappointed when it results in an anticlimactic "+500 energy credits" for finishing the entire storyline. Many events and anomalies imply you'll be able to do great things once you end up with highly advanced technology, but you never do, and the simple events and anomalies start repeating before you're even done with one game. Most of these storylines and events do not seem to matter whatsoever, with all of them being self-contained minor effects that do not interact with anything outside of them.
Nearly everything in the game is, I would hope, a placeholder mechanic- Technology ends in the mid game and you research repeatable technologies that give you a slight numbers bonus, military matters are simple with no debt to them whatsoever, species are all interchangeable except for a few fringe cases, diplomacy doesn't really exist, just like many options to control your empire don't seem to exist and there is no real grand strategy part of this. It offers you three ways to travel the stars with FTL technology, yet two of these are completely useless.
The AI, in all ways, is completely incapable. Diplomatically it doesn't do anything of real note, often remaining passive until a certain value just happens to rise by coincidence and triggers it to do something. Militarily it doesn't do anything- It makes ships that are poorly planned and optimized by just putting on whatever seems like the latest technology, even if it's terrible. It develops its lands randomly, completely ignoring any sort of planning or goals it may be able to do, and in general feels much less like it's trying to emulate an opponent and more like they just hooked up an RNG to the controls.
The military and combat stuff is, in one word, bad. While there is a minimum of customization to try to counter your opponent, in the end everything comes down to who just has the bigger stack. The entire military game is essentially a dick measuring content. If yours is bigger then you win, take your opponent's stuff and move on to measure against the next guy. There is no strategy, no tactics, and no maneuvering. You do not even get to control what your ships do and do not engage. Planetary invasions are a joke- You leave some ships above the place and then bring in a big stack of armies to wipe out the defenders. It's more of a formality at that point, because you have the bigger naval dick from the earlier measuring contest so it's not like you can't just wait a few years to bring in more armies
As mentioned earlier, technology is a joke past the early game, but even at the early game you will find a large amount of completely useless technologies that will never be even a little bit useful. You get a choice of a few randomly selected technologies to research, and while I like the idea of it, all it really means is that you're going to just research the cheapest technology of the set until something actually useful comes up.
Most of Stellaris is set up to be pretty and to pretend it has depth, but if you look even a little bit at it you will find that most of it is empty and flat. Past the initial experience of the early game and expanding there is nothing to do except waiting or continued dick measuring competition with your neighbours, and then moving on to measure against the next guy.
Is it worth getting? Maybe if you can get it really cheap on sale. Maybe in a few years when they've finished it.
At release, I'd have called Stellaris a technically playable tech demo. At the least with the latest DLC(Utopia) it is now a barely playable early alpha game. So hey, there's some progress here.
Shame it's going to take another 200€ of DLC and several years for it to be finished
And it's that version I will review here. Stellaris attempts to merge Grand Strategy games and 4X games, managing to take only the worst of both worlds in a nice looking jacket to hide the lack of things to do. To begin, the early game plays much like a 4X game. You explore, you look for places to expand and colonize, and you work on your planets. After everything is mostly claimed and you've met a fair amount of alien empires the grand strategy game is supposed to take over, but it never does. This leaves you with a rather poorly done 4X game that has no real mid or late game. Once you've finished exploring, you build up a military until it's bigger than your neighbour and throw it at them until you have no more neighbours.
To begin with the good things about it, it looks pretty decent, as screenshots will show you. And the events have decent flavour to them, and a few stories that actually made me want to follow up on them only to be disappointed when it results in an anticlimactic "+500 energy credits" for finishing the entire storyline. Many events and anomalies imply you'll be able to do great things once you end up with highly advanced technology, but you never do, and the simple events and anomalies start repeating before you're even done with one game. Most of these storylines and events do not seem to matter whatsoever, with all of them being self-contained minor effects that do not interact with anything outside of them.
Nearly everything in the game is, I would hope, a placeholder mechanic- Technology ends in the mid game and you research repeatable technologies that give you a slight numbers bonus, military matters are simple with no debt to them whatsoever, species are all interchangeable except for a few fringe cases, diplomacy doesn't really exist, just like many options to control your empire don't seem to exist and there is no real grand strategy part of this. It offers you three ways to travel the stars with FTL technology, yet two of these are completely useless.
The AI, in all ways, is completely incapable. Diplomatically it doesn't do anything of real note, often remaining passive until a certain value just happens to rise by coincidence and triggers it to do something. Militarily it doesn't do anything- It makes ships that are poorly planned and optimized by just putting on whatever seems like the latest technology, even if it's terrible. It develops its lands randomly, completely ignoring any sort of planning or goals it may be able to do, and in general feels much less like it's trying to emulate an opponent and more like they just hooked up an RNG to the controls.
The military and combat stuff is, in one word, bad. While there is a minimum of customization to try to counter your opponent, in the end everything comes down to who just has the bigger stack. The entire military game is essentially a dick measuring content. If yours is bigger then you win, take your opponent's stuff and move on to measure against the next guy. There is no strategy, no tactics, and no maneuvering. You do not even get to control what your ships do and do not engage. Planetary invasions are a joke- You leave some ships above the place and then bring in a big stack of armies to wipe out the defenders. It's more of a formality at that point, because you have the bigger naval dick from the earlier measuring contest so it's not like you can't just wait a few years to bring in more armies
As mentioned earlier, technology is a joke past the early game, but even at the early game you will find a large amount of completely useless technologies that will never be even a little bit useful. You get a choice of a few randomly selected technologies to research, and while I like the idea of it, all it really means is that you're going to just research the cheapest technology of the set until something actually useful comes up.
Most of Stellaris is set up to be pretty and to pretend it has depth, but if you look even a little bit at it you will find that most of it is empty and flat. Past the initial experience of the early game and expanding there is nothing to do except waiting or continued dick measuring competition with your neighbours, and then moving on to measure against the next guy.
Is it worth getting? Maybe if you can get it really cheap on sale. Maybe in a few years when they've finished it.
At release, I'd have called Stellaris a technically playable tech demo. At the least with the latest DLC(Utopia) it is now a barely playable early alpha game. So hey, there's some progress here.
Shame it's going to take another 200€ of DLC and several years for it to be finished
13 April, 2017
Stellaris Utopia DLC Review
Small review because I may as well share my experiences on it
Instead of writing a whole analysis, I'll just go through the feature list and comment on it. I know this will be unpopular among the hype, but I'm still going to say it-
It's not that good
"Megastructures"
It's a shame they come too late to be of any real use in single player, by the time you get to unlock these through researching several rare technologies(So it's possible you won't ever get to anyway even if you made it your goal for the game) you'll be able to steamroll the galaxy with minimal effort.
They're shiny, but aside from the sensor array they don't actually do anything that you could actually reliably want at that stage of the game without being able to already get it elsewhere.
"Habitat Stations"
Actually works somewhat decently, though with how more planets increases the cost of research and the unity needed for the civ 5 tradition copy. You may want to make a few because they're roughly equal to a decently managed planet per tile, but since they are small and have some very strong drawbacks they will never be amazing. You will not 'go tall' with these as the feature blurb says, If you're in a confined empire you won't have the resources for them. And if you're not confined, you're going to still want them anyway because they're decent to have. They're just something everyone is going to end up getting. Costs one of the ascension perks, but it's not like those perk slots have any serious competition going for them.
"Ascension Perks"
This is the main thing for this DLC and it's actually pretty good. The sad thing is that there is a clear "Good" and "Awful" collection of perks for this that makes it clear that you will likely pick the exact same thing every game with the exception of the actual ascension path. You're going to just get the same things because the alternatives are just not useful.
"Indoctrination"
Curious to see this listed as a feature, since it's just a single button for something that is a very minor part of the game. You can take a planet with people who don't have space tech and indoctrinate them into your ethics.
I'm having trouble figuring out any point at which this may matter, so I'll just move on.
"Advanced Slavery"
In this paid DLC, we get tools for things that really should be in the base game. I'd like to ask Paradox for other useful DLC next, perhaps a management window for a planet's build-queue, a functional military that isn't just throwing everything at the enemy stack, different FTL methods that aren't just limiting yourself for the sake of it, or making it so slavery is actually useful for something other than encouraging rebellion on your own planets.
"Advanced Governments"
Support for the things people were doing already, now with small bonuses and made official. Most of it is of questionable use, but there is no denying that hive minds are pretty nice to have and a few of the things are nice and flavourful.
In the end, is it worth 20€?
I highly doubt it. You're going to have to get it eventually because it's essentially content missing from the base game and some small flavour things. But when you do, make sure it's on sale
Instead of writing a whole analysis, I'll just go through the feature list and comment on it. I know this will be unpopular among the hype, but I'm still going to say it-
It's not that good
"Megastructures"
It's a shame they come too late to be of any real use in single player, by the time you get to unlock these through researching several rare technologies(So it's possible you won't ever get to anyway even if you made it your goal for the game) you'll be able to steamroll the galaxy with minimal effort.
They're shiny, but aside from the sensor array they don't actually do anything that you could actually reliably want at that stage of the game without being able to already get it elsewhere.
"Habitat Stations"
Actually works somewhat decently, though with how more planets increases the cost of research and the unity needed for the civ 5 tradition copy. You may want to make a few because they're roughly equal to a decently managed planet per tile, but since they are small and have some very strong drawbacks they will never be amazing. You will not 'go tall' with these as the feature blurb says, If you're in a confined empire you won't have the resources for them. And if you're not confined, you're going to still want them anyway because they're decent to have. They're just something everyone is going to end up getting. Costs one of the ascension perks, but it's not like those perk slots have any serious competition going for them.
"Ascension Perks"
This is the main thing for this DLC and it's actually pretty good. The sad thing is that there is a clear "Good" and "Awful" collection of perks for this that makes it clear that you will likely pick the exact same thing every game with the exception of the actual ascension path. You're going to just get the same things because the alternatives are just not useful.
"Indoctrination"
Curious to see this listed as a feature, since it's just a single button for something that is a very minor part of the game. You can take a planet with people who don't have space tech and indoctrinate them into your ethics.
I'm having trouble figuring out any point at which this may matter, so I'll just move on.
"Advanced Slavery"
In this paid DLC, we get tools for things that really should be in the base game. I'd like to ask Paradox for other useful DLC next, perhaps a management window for a planet's build-queue, a functional military that isn't just throwing everything at the enemy stack, different FTL methods that aren't just limiting yourself for the sake of it, or making it so slavery is actually useful for something other than encouraging rebellion on your own planets.
"Advanced Governments"
Support for the things people were doing already, now with small bonuses and made official. Most of it is of questionable use, but there is no denying that hive minds are pretty nice to have and a few of the things are nice and flavourful.
In the end, is it worth 20€?
I highly doubt it. You're going to have to get it eventually because it's essentially content missing from the base game and some small flavour things. But when you do, make sure it's on sale
07 April, 2017
Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide Schluesselschlos Review
For Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide, the DLC of Schluesselschloss gives you a single map for the last stand mode, the Schluesselschloss.
Your first task and challenge will be to pronounce it, then after that you will need to motivate 3 people to play it with you as the rewards for this, and indeed the entire last stand mode are at best mediocre and at worst nonexistent.
Luckily for them, they do not need to own it to play with you- As long as the host owns the DLC it is available to anyone who joins them.
The map itself is well made, with just enough supplies unlocking over time and many potentially great places to hold out, all of them flawed just enough to be a challenge. It looks pretty well, has a great view and is not too big or too small.
The price is a bit much for a single map, so I recommend only buying it if you want to support the game and developer. Otherwise, you will probably be able to find better value elsewhere
Your first task and challenge will be to pronounce it, then after that you will need to motivate 3 people to play it with you as the rewards for this, and indeed the entire last stand mode are at best mediocre and at worst nonexistent.
Luckily for them, they do not need to own it to play with you- As long as the host owns the DLC it is available to anyone who joins them.
The map itself is well made, with just enough supplies unlocking over time and many potentially great places to hold out, all of them flawed just enough to be a challenge. It looks pretty well, has a great view and is not too big or too small.
The price is a bit much for a single map, so I recommend only buying it if you want to support the game and developer. Otherwise, you will probably be able to find better value elsewhere
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