Unfinished and abandoned.

Been playing since early backing in November 2023, so I have more hours off-steam.

In short: do not buy this game. Absolutely do not recommend in its current or projected future state. The devs and development have ceased to exist, and before then it was proceeding rather poorly. It's over, and truly; this game is a waste of your money, time, or energy. Go buy Scourge of War, or Ultimate Admiral Age of Sail, or Ultimate General Civil War. It's over.

What a shame. The developer Game-Labs no longer exists, and while there remains a chance someone might purchase the IP, I'm not hopeful. I won't waste time musing on the ways the developers failed to listen to community feedback; there are other reviews that mention it.

Frankly, this game just isn't good. The battles, which in Ultimate General: Civil War, were superior to those in Total War, are simultaneously overly-frantic and just not engaging. The screenshots, such as screenshot 1 & 3, show battlefields that are filled with action; troops in line, slugging it out. You see them and imagine the excitement of planning a grand assault, stacking reserves on one side of the line, or using skirmishers to probe the enemies line; that's what you did in the previous entries, after all. But in this game, the AI either throws troops at you, or they move around in a huddled, blobby mass. It feels like you're fighting a computer, just a boring computer, not an opponent. There's no tension, no dramatic loss and recovery, just an opponent too stupid to do anything different. Your battles won't look like that, and they surely won't be so smooth, either.

That also applies to the campaign. There is no tension, outside of the aggravation introduced by poorly explained mechanics that aren't nearly as impactful or malleable as you're lead to believe. It's just not fun. It can absorb your time and energy, but at the end of my most recent session I just asked myself; why am I doing this?

It's sad. I had such high hopes. I hoped for a Napoleonic Wars release, or another 18th-19th century conflict. I remember playing Ultimate General Gettysburg on summer break in my old bedroom in 2015, being amazed by the system, and thrilled at the promise. The battles rivaled Total War; if there were a campaign to match... wouldn't that be a sight? I think it would've been.

But now, ten years later, it's clear that this series just didn't have a chance. The second the devs were bought out by a mobile game studio, they were living on borrowed time. How much blame is theirs is impossible to determine; what's easy to determine is that this game was never ready for public release, especially compared to what was promised and what was advertised.

Anyway, don't buy this game. Go buy paint, paintbrushes, and minis and make the game you want at home. Get a nice dinner. Buy a loved one something special, like flowers, or a book, or fine stationary to write them a letter with. Go buy as many chicken wings as you can. Go get gas, or pay a bill, or buy season 7 of Family Guy on DVD. But don't buy this game. I wish I hadn't.

It's sad, but what more is there to say?

If it had not been abandoned, this would've been a masterpiece. All the bones are there. Unfortunately it just wasn't properly fleshed out. This is a PAINFUL thumbs down. I wanted so badly to love this.