Odintheprole
2022
Loses a star because some of the games systems can get tedious and dull rather quick. However it is still A tier in my book. The core game play loop of building a more and more efficient and functional restaurant while also trying to balance difficulty and income is a blast.
2017
Robot Dinosaurs, Interesting Story, Pretty Good Gameplay
2006
This game had such serious performance issues across the OG xbox and Xbox 360 that I cannot recommend you event try to play it. Unfortunately this game also had one of my favorite COD campaigns to date because it felt like you were playing through saving private ryan or Band of brothers both of which it clearly took inspiration from.
This game seems like a dumb movie adaptation on the surface but it manages to be one of the most fun Star wars Games out there. If you can give it a play then do it!
Quick Edit: I was very negative in the original review but I want to reinforce the good parts of the game really fast. The Fleet battles are fun and interesting (up until you get titan) where positioning of your ship relative to enemies really matters. In addition the grind up to a point is actually enjoyable because the core gameplay loop is relatively enjoyable. Flying around doing repetetive missions and killing the same sets of enemies is fun purely because the combat and ship variety are what carry the game.
Welp. I finally purchased this game. I would give it a Meh. To sum it up this game has a decent single player campaign that is definetly worth 8 - 10 bucks but past that there is really no reason to keep playing. The "4x" elements are insanely barebones and the game is rife with issues from high levels of micromanagment to broken fleet ai.
You will spend most of your time enjoying the grind to get to the Dreadnaught ships or the TITAN ships but in all honesty the Titan was the least satisfying ship to fly. It felt like it was a poor community made mod and did not feel satisfying when I unlocked it. It is so broken as a ship that you won't even be able to hear your light weapons firing because the ship is too large for the camera to be close enough for the sounds to actually be processed. In addition all of the other ships in the game have actual turret mounts that give you an idea of the firing arcs of your turrets but the Titan just doesn't. It is just flat textures with bullets and missiles appearing out of nowhere. The upside of this is that the ship is so powerful that it doesn't matter if you cannot figure out what is going on because you will hardly ever have your shields penetrated. Essentially the last 5 or so hours of the storyline I was just cruising around in this massive ship just melting any foes that got in my way.
Unfortunately the game is mechanically barebones and really doesn't make for an enjoyable strategy game. I recommend playing this as an RPG first and foremost and then expand your territories in between missions for fun little fights that you can enjoy doing before you get to the point of being OP.
I don't really see myself returning to this title ever for the freeroam modes, to purchase the DLC or for the post campaign "conquer the map" scenario. The grind just is too much for that. Every planet you conquer has a massive fleet battle that you have to participate in where the AI factions bring in roughly 100k worth of fleet power to counter your conquering while you are stuck with a measly 40k for most of the game due to the crazy low fleet capacity. You are only allowed to have about 35k max fleet cap without conquering stations which would be fine if the stations actually gave you more than just 2k fleet capacity. For reference the mainline cruisers are about 2.3k fleet capacity so what ends up happening is you just hit a softcap for fleet cap where you can only field 2 24k fleets while all the other AI factions on the map seemingly have an unlimited number of fleet cap so they will have 3-4 15k patrol stacks that are just a headache to kill more than anything else. The grind is there for the grinds sake.
Welp. I finally purchased this game. I would give it a Meh. To sum it up this game has a decent single player campaign that is definetly worth 8 - 10 bucks but past that there is really no reason to keep playing. The "4x" elements are insanely barebones and the game is rife with issues from high levels of micromanagment to broken fleet ai.
You will spend most of your time enjoying the grind to get to the Dreadnaught ships or the TITAN ships but in all honesty the Titan was the least satisfying ship to fly. It felt like it was a poor community made mod and did not feel satisfying when I unlocked it. It is so broken as a ship that you won't even be able to hear your light weapons firing because the ship is too large for the camera to be close enough for the sounds to actually be processed. In addition all of the other ships in the game have actual turret mounts that give you an idea of the firing arcs of your turrets but the Titan just doesn't. It is just flat textures with bullets and missiles appearing out of nowhere. The upside of this is that the ship is so powerful that it doesn't matter if you cannot figure out what is going on because you will hardly ever have your shields penetrated. Essentially the last 5 or so hours of the storyline I was just cruising around in this massive ship just melting any foes that got in my way.
Unfortunately the game is mechanically barebones and really doesn't make for an enjoyable strategy game. I recommend playing this as an RPG first and foremost and then expand your territories in between missions for fun little fights that you can enjoy doing before you get to the point of being OP.
I don't really see myself returning to this title ever for the freeroam modes, to purchase the DLC or for the post campaign "conquer the map" scenario. The grind just is too much for that. Every planet you conquer has a massive fleet battle that you have to participate in where the AI factions bring in roughly 100k worth of fleet power to counter your conquering while you are stuck with a measly 40k for most of the game due to the crazy low fleet capacity. You are only allowed to have about 35k max fleet cap without conquering stations which would be fine if the stations actually gave you more than just 2k fleet capacity. For reference the mainline cruisers are about 2.3k fleet capacity so what ends up happening is you just hit a softcap for fleet cap where you can only field 2 24k fleets while all the other AI factions on the map seemingly have an unlimited number of fleet cap so they will have 3-4 15k patrol stacks that are just a headache to kill more than anything else. The grind is there for the grinds sake.
2015
This game could have been so much more if given to a different studio. But Avalanche really did do a good job of making a formulaic open world action 'rpg' that fans of Mad Max could appreciate. I got it for $5 and found it to be totally worth the money!
2008
Only way I could get this game running was to play it on Steam Deck but oh man this is a masterpiece. Absolutely amazing game.
They struck gold with SOASE:Rebellion and they are on track to strike gold with the sequel. The tech demo has only been out for a few months but I can already say it absolutely knocks it out of the park. I am very excited to watch this games development.
PSA: Tech Demo/Early Access is only available on the Epic Games Store.
PSA: Tech Demo/Early Access is only available on the Epic Games Store.
2016
I understand that this is a game well loved by everybody but it just didn't click with me. It was truly a slog to play through the 12 hours that I did where I would play an hour or two once every month or so until I finally realized I am never going to enjoy the game.
Movement feels floaty. Guns aren't really satisfying. Enemy types are REALLY boring despite being so varied. The first 2 or so hours rocked until I realized the entire game was going to just be Enter room -> clear room -> kill boss (or miniboss) on repeat forever
Movement feels floaty. Guns aren't really satisfying. Enemy types are REALLY boring despite being so varied. The first 2 or so hours rocked until I realized the entire game was going to just be Enter room -> clear room -> kill boss (or miniboss) on repeat forever
2022
Short, Charming, and most of all FREE. Great tech demo to accompany a great device!
2011
ooga booga Che Guevara is coming for you el presidente
My personal favorite Tycoon game ever made. You take control of a dictator in a newly liberated/colonized/invaded (whatever you are RPing as) island and are tasked with taking an incredibly poor and run down town into a prosperous and wealthy nation state in the carribean.
All the while you are tasked with juggling foreign relations, faction relations at home, and managing everything from wages to the cost of living of your citizens.
I think that every Tropico game after this one fails to capture the charm this game has and it is very clearly the best game in the series. Unfortunately that means that we will likely never see improvements directly on this games systems.
A few things I would have liked to see expanded on/fixed
- More difficult political relations. As long as your econ is going well you can easily make 80% relations or higher with every faction.
- More in depth supply chain managment or trade managment. The current weakest part of this game is how simple the economy is to manage. You just plop down buildings and everything is handled for you which by ittself is great for simplicity but it also makes it incredibly easy to just fall into the Meta on each new character you create where you just min max rum/cigars/etc.
- Finally... More random story events. I would love for there to be cases where the UN would come 'observe' elections and stage a coup if you are too socialist. Or for the KGB to attempt to assassinate you if you become too capitalist. There was so much potential for future titles to really dive into the political simulation but instead we got T5 and T6 :(
My personal favorite Tycoon game ever made. You take control of a dictator in a newly liberated/colonized/invaded (whatever you are RPing as) island and are tasked with taking an incredibly poor and run down town into a prosperous and wealthy nation state in the carribean.
All the while you are tasked with juggling foreign relations, faction relations at home, and managing everything from wages to the cost of living of your citizens.
I think that every Tropico game after this one fails to capture the charm this game has and it is very clearly the best game in the series. Unfortunately that means that we will likely never see improvements directly on this games systems.
A few things I would have liked to see expanded on/fixed
- More difficult political relations. As long as your econ is going well you can easily make 80% relations or higher with every faction.
- More in depth supply chain managment or trade managment. The current weakest part of this game is how simple the economy is to manage. You just plop down buildings and everything is handled for you which by ittself is great for simplicity but it also makes it incredibly easy to just fall into the Meta on each new character you create where you just min max rum/cigars/etc.
- Finally... More random story events. I would love for there to be cases where the UN would come 'observe' elections and stage a coup if you are too socialist. Or for the KGB to attempt to assassinate you if you become too capitalist. There was so much potential for future titles to really dive into the political simulation but instead we got T5 and T6 :(
This game is the best narrative experience I have ever had no holds barred. The characters and world are a treasure and the games industry has been blessed by Lenny our god-king.
They released this game in an even more unfinished state than Warband. Wait for the modding community to take off before you really dive into it because it seems that the devs have no passion to make their game a compelling experience past the midgame.
2018
Kenshi is a really good base building strategy RPG. IMO it doesn't do a lot more than that. I have a lot of personal gripes with the game but none of them are particularly relevant because it is clear that the devs and I would disagree on the direction we would want to take this game. I would recommend this game to people who like big sandboxes with a lot of grind. The lore and worldbuilding the game does is probably the best part and I cannot wait to see what they improve on with Kenshi 2.
Highly recommend this game. Since the positive reviews already outline what I love about it I will let you know some of my personal gripes.
1. Holy ♥♥♥♥ can small pointless battles get annoying. Sometimes when you are at war with another faction you find yourself cleaning up groups of 30-50 enemies with your band of 120 instead of actually besieging any castles or attacking any territory.
2. Swadians are underpowered in the hands of the ai
3. The whole point of this game is the grind from being basically a peasant all the way to being a king/lord/vassal with an army+garrisons numbering in the 900+ if you do not enjoy that aspect of it you will not like this game. However my gripe is that some of the grind feels like it takes way longer than it should. Main point being relations with towns/villages. When trying to boost your relation with both it takes around 50 points for the benefits to start paying off which can easily take 50 hours depending on if the village has actual quests to offer you. The main point being that most of the time you end up trying to grind a relation with a village only for them to almost never offer any quests. I understand the idea behind this but when you are on your 3rd+ village I think that this aspect of the grind is just too much.
1. Holy ♥♥♥♥ can small pointless battles get annoying. Sometimes when you are at war with another faction you find yourself cleaning up groups of 30-50 enemies with your band of 120 instead of actually besieging any castles or attacking any territory.
2. Swadians are underpowered in the hands of the ai
3. The whole point of this game is the grind from being basically a peasant all the way to being a king/lord/vassal with an army+garrisons numbering in the 900+ if you do not enjoy that aspect of it you will not like this game. However my gripe is that some of the grind feels like it takes way longer than it should. Main point being relations with towns/villages. When trying to boost your relation with both it takes around 50 points for the benefits to start paying off which can easily take 50 hours depending on if the village has actual quests to offer you. The main point being that most of the time you end up trying to grind a relation with a village only for them to almost never offer any quests. I understand the idea behind this but when you are on your 3rd+ village I think that this aspect of the grind is just too much.