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Wargame was a title which had brought Wargamming to the masses. However with Red Dragon, countless issues with the franchise started to accumulate. Game has a lot of variety and factions, but sadly a lot of it is poorly balanced. Wide scope fail to simulate combat. Flawed and superficial in-game mechanics fail to properly represent real world. Game was great at its time, but it was simply abandoned despite franchise's popularity.

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This game suffers from poor balancing and developer bias. Throughout lifespan of this franchise, game had suffered wide disparities between factions.

Historical Balancing
• This games lacks any sort of historical balancing. Historically speaking, Warsaw Pact armor was a lot better than Nato alternatives. It is not until 80s when Nato had deployed their Abrams and Leopards 2 which had a significant quality advantage over most Soviet armor. However, this is in no way represented in this game. Developers disregard historical balance sometimes seemingly even with disdain. USSR had the best anti-air equipment during cold war as it invested heavily to counter Nato air superiority. Despite this fact, it is USA who receives the best AA unit in the game. To put salt to injury, this unit is a Patriot system. An unit which literally could not function in a game! It would never be commanded in a brigade level structure nor it could physically fire without myriad of supporting system. Even more, even if it would fire, its minimum range is pretty much the whole of Wargame map which would make this unit completely useless in this game. Eugen would constantly put units like this which simply does not work from any point, even from gameplay one as it introduces difficult to balance units which then receive countless nerfs as was with Buratino.
  
  Bias Balancing
  
• Game has a bias balancing towards Nato factions. In this game, Nato factions are simply better. This is due to developers having no clue about balancing a game. They balance simply around win rates without any understanding that more experienced players will actively choose to play with Warsaw Pact and thus would win over less experienced players. As it is, Warsaw Pact was an unplayable faction for most of its time unless you were a hardcore enthusiast which could stomach playing an underdog in multiplayer matches and still emerge victorious.

Eugen had fired its best developers for them standing up for themselves, their pay and their rights. As a result, only mediocre and incompetent developers had remained in the company. New talent which they had brought up is not up to par. Quality of their titles had seen a sharp decline and they had never managed to create anything remotely as good since Airland Battles.

Pay to Win DLC
• As developers continued developing games which nobody want to play, they started to run out of money. At that point they started to introduce paid DLC. In order to get people excited and enthusiastic, they made all of the factions in those DLC really powerful. If anyone wishes to know which factions are the best in this game, just take a look at paid content. Chances are that you will be playing A tier faction if not an overpowered one.
  
  Bias Developer
  
• Developer in this game is bias towards Nato. I had compiled factual evidence to that fact. During transition from Airland Battles to Red Dragon, each faction integer based accuracy system were converted to percentage based with 1 point equalling 5%. This transition went correctly for Nato units. However, Warsaw Pact units had seen a very significant deviation in this regard. They were all nerfed in Red Dragon for no apparent reason. When confronted with this fact, developers responded with an outrage and silence.
  
  Same bias continues with other historical units. Abram tanks for example receives massive gains in statistics without any historical reason for such an upgrade. Some units like T-62 significantly under-perform for no reason, its stats seemingly attached to long debunked myths about its rate of fire and accuracy. Similar thing had happened with BMPs and their GROM smooth-bore cannon and Malyutka missiles which were dead-accurate and very advanced weapons for their time. Similar thing is seen with bore-launched missiles with its statistics and missiles being full of historical inaccuracies.
  
  Delusional Developers
  
• All of those issues were raised in their forums. They seemingly have no understanding that better win rate is a result of better players playing weaker faction than it being otherwise:
  https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2927379321
  
  Trying to point out inconsistencies in their balance and inconsistencies in their reasoning:
  https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2927380071
  
  I was only met with arrogance and dismissal. If you ever saw someone talking how Eugen hates their community, point out to this post. It is a perfect example of what happens when you bother talking with a developer about their game:
  https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2927379571

Eugen was a great developer once, but they had threw everything away. They had fired their top talent. Incompetent leadership had undertook projects which are of little interests to the community. Incompetent developers are making atrocious decisions (just look at GUI in Warno). They try new ideas and then quickly abandon them like with the whole naval aspect in this game. Developer has no clue of what its target audience is. Do they want to create Wargamming title or an RTS one?

Eugen was once a good company which turned bad over time. I simply adored their Ruse series. Act of War was great too. I loved previous two Wargame titles. However, look at their developmental history post Red Dragon. It is nothing, but failures and disappointments.

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This is the best game Eugen ever made. It is vastly improved experience from European Escalation without all the bad things in Red Dragon. It features CO-OP campaign and is historically balanced, something which Red Dragon sorely lacks.

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Wargame Airland Battle is the best game developed by Eugen entertainment. It was sharpest improvement from European Escalation in quality and it is missing all the bad things which they had added in Red Dragon. This is the best game this studio had ever created before they lost all of its talent from internal problems.

CO-OP
• The greatest strength of this game is that it has a CO-OP campaign. Why developers had scaled back and removed such an easy and yet, great feature is beyond me. All it takes is to allow a second player into a single player match, but Eugen simply could not be bothered to keep their game great...
  
  Historical balance
  
• Eugen does not understand what wargamming is. They balance their games like it would be an RTS. They do it around win rates and nerf vehicle's characteristics. This is absolutely terrible idea. If vehicle was amazing historically, it must remain amazing and in this game. Eugen however completely lacks any understanding of that. They then proceed to add unhistorical vehicles like Patriot or Buratino. Vehicles which would never be deployed at a scale which we are fighting in this game. These are strategic level assets and Eugen had a lot of trouble balancing them out. In general, developer is clueless about history, about correct weapon types, about historic strengths and weaknesses in this game. This is the game where USA has the best AA weaponary and USSR is the weakest in armor department... They are utterly clueless.
  
  Lack of Bias
  
• Developers have bias towards Nato side. Their units are simply better. This is a result of lack of historical understanding. They do not understand history, more particularly, how good or bad were Warsaw Pact vehicles. Developers thus solely balance through their impressions. This has an impact where Warsaw Pact vehicles are unreasonably inaccurate for no reason. Tanks have unhistorical reload rates stemming from debunked myths. This bias also manifests in certain vehicles like Leclerc MBT being unreasonably too good. Another issue is that when developers converted accuracy from Airland Battles to Red Dragon, Warsaw Pact vehicles received less accuracy than Nato vehicles. Developers were caught by the hand by me for being bias and they only could provide an outrage on the forums.
  
  Realistic maps
  
• Another fundamental problem with Red Dragon is that it does not put much effort in their maps. Those maps are plain bad as they are filled with choke points and vegetation. Red Dragon is simply not realistic and do not represent actual maps on which armies would clash. Even more, due to how badly they are designed, Red Dragon heavily empowers infantry which can hide in vegetation. While in Airland Battle you can employ full set of tactics. You can encircle the town. Fight with armor formations on open field. Use armor to outflank the enemy. In Red Dragon however none of these things are true. Maps are small. They are full of choke points and infantry can hide anywhere and everywhere.
  
  Perfect Organism
  
• This game is an outright improvement over European Escalation. However, Red Dragon is a stagnation. It introduced poor naval fighting and developers instantly backed away from it. Everyone just ignore naval warfare while it pollutes maps and GUI. Furthermore, there are no concerns about P2W DLCs, factions are not over-tuned, game is more realistic. It is lean and healthy game without all of the BS which is present in Red Dragon.

This is the high point of Eugen Studios. Later they had created still popular, but flawed Red Dragon. Afterwards, they started doing nonsense. They created Steel Division which nobody liked. Instead of developing Wargame further, they started work on Steel Division 2 for some reason. Then they realised that they have to pay the bills and they made a lot of too powerful paid factions for Red Dragon, a game which people actually want to play. Then they proceeded to rush Warno launch, because they wasted all this time doing nothing and competitors started to release their products. Warno itself has lower production values than Wargame. Airland Battles was their last truly great game. From that point onward, it was just downwards journey with them.

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Company of Heroes 2 came in tumultuous period for a developer. Game was a far cry from what Relic had produced previously and it was a sign to what is to come. Never again they had managed to create game as great as Company of Heroes or Dawn of War. In this reviews I want to express my dislike of what Relic had become.

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This game had one of their worst releases. Due to problems with their publisher, THQ, game was pushed out of the door way too quickly. It came at half baked state which ruined first impression of many people. Game lacked content, was buggy and was unfinished. Relic had left bad taste in people mouths from a get go.

Company of Heroes 2 had signified everything bad about new Relic style. It is stylised and more arcade like. From this point onward, there was no game as deep or as good looking as previous Relic titles.

Graphics
• Relic had decided to take more cartoonish look on its visuals. Colours were saturated. Models lost texture details. This had resulted in tanks looking like made out of plastic. There is no other Relic game from this point onward which would look as good as Dawn of War 2 or Company of Heroes. Dawn of War 3, Company of heroes 2/3, Age of Empires 4. They all have heavily stylised, cartoonish take on its aesthetics. There are no realistic details on models. Textures are clean. Characters lack details. Game lacks weather effects. Environments are clean. Overall, Company of Heroes only went down visually with its two sequels.
  
  Take a look at this example:
  https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2922599251
  
  There is a stark decline in graphical quality between two games. In a first, you have a realistic command HQ which is located in a large building. Building has walls, windows, doors, supplies, vehicles, sandbags, flag pole, flags, lamps. There are so many little details which make it look realistic and good. On the right you see stylised graphics of a second game. There is just a tent and sandbags. Model is a lot simpler and whole scene has over saturated colours. This choice was made solely to make game easier to develop, but by doing so they regressed back in visual quality and they arguably did not recovered from it even in Company of Heroes 3.
  
  Mechanics
  
• Mechanics in this game were also simplified. While first game tried to appear realistic and was innovative in a lot of its mechanics. The second one regressed in them. It focused on adding gimmicks like cold mechanics which went nowhere. Weather effects never played a significant part in a gameplay. Its penetration and armor mechanics were simplified. No longer you had thick armor of German tanks which could resist the penetration. Game became more about two HP bars fighting each other. Even fundamental mechanics like suppression were heavily nerfed in post development and as result, the most effective tactic is blobbing in this game. Game went away from its soft wargamming routes into an RTS. It is a touch which I so loved in the original game and it is something which drove me away from this title.

The most egregious problem with this game is that it is a filthy propaganda game. It heavily distorts reality and it is disrespectful towards several nationalities. Developers had to go on and silence and criticism which their decision to crap on war veterans and people who had suffered through war. They were using distorted, propaganda sources to back up their historic validity. To this day this game stands as a testament to the ugliness and disrespect Relic has for history, for veterans who fought and died in a war. It shows how little they regard their audience and what filth they are more than happy to push upon people.

This video goes into details why this game is filled with despicable propaganda. Developers should be ashamed for their involvement with Company of Heroes 2.

https://youtu.be/2m4SCUaBHS8

The last, but not least is filthy monetisation this game had received. It was spammed with various DLC, often with dubious quality. Game lacked content, but developers had focused on making paid content. Even its co-op content is a paid DLC. Some of its DLC are even their own games which are horribly received. Its commanders also were lazily done and often had similar abilities to free commanders. This game has one of the worst monetisation systems seen in such games.

This product is at the end of its lifecycle. It was broken at the beginning, it is broken now as people cannot log in into the game due to bugs. Company of Heroes 2 stands as a first bad game from legendary developer. It contains all the bad practices which company had continued with its other games. To make matters worse, it is also morally bankrupt game from gross historical propaganda and greedy monetisation methods.

Company of Heroes 2 marked the death of legendary developer. What Relic became from this point onwards was just an empty shell of its former self.

me a écrit :

You say "I proved this to be wrong" but, you didn't?

I cannot find or remember when I had said that.

Unless you mean in arena, scarlet crusader was never a crazy popular card (core in zoolock to be fair but that's it) and yeti was verifiably mostly played in druid.

What this has to do with anything? I was saying that in Hearthstone lower tier minions would trade upwards favourably. You however seem to talk about unrelated stuff.

me a écrit :

regardless, let's assume you are in that matchup of zoo vs. druid. Dark iron dwarf is a great play to swing it back and there is nothing wrong with that but that is specifically not what you said. The warlock is using 2 cards to get rid of your one then.

This is exactly what I had said in my last post. Cards like Dark Iron Dwarf would buff minions to make them trade upwards. It is also wrong since Dark Iron Dwarf is not a spell. You have a minion on a board. Jeez.

And even then when the turn passes back the druid will usually be at 6 on 5 because of wild growth so he can do something like hero power the crusader and play another yeti to threaten trading favorably into the dwarf or even swipe targeting the dwarf for a HUGE swing to his favor leaving you 2 mana to wild growth and set up a ragnaros for the next turn or do something else.

What any of this has to do with discussions at hand? You invent scenarios which has no relevance to what we are talking.

The deck that won one of the qualifiers for the last major tournament was 2 cov/1 fd burn aggro and 3p overseers (which is an aggro deck) was also very popular (just barely losing to the cov deck).

I'm sorry, but I'm not in a competitive scene. All I know is what I encounter on a ladder and I do not see many aggro decks there.

We are already at a risk of that, since the last major tournament was 3p dod vs. 2p cov/1 pr factionless for the finals. That's right, some of the best decks in the game can be single faction (although the factionless aspect of that deck has since be nerfed).

That is a good thing, but even in your quote, you do not address what I had said about mix-match of various factions and lack of power for higher purity cards.

I have given you proof after proof after proof of why the statements you make about infinity wars are just straight up wrong and all you do is claim I am "not reading your arguments" or am otherwise making things up. I have nearly 500 hours in this game, man. Just try to take my word (and also my factual evidence) there rather than the knee jerk reactions you get when your unpolished 3 fd lists lose.

You are straight up making nonsense. I only made one response, it is your second comment and you already are lying to me. Where was this "I have given proof after proof after proof"? You made just one comment with which I had disagreed? Then you arrogantly claim that you had played more Hearthstone than I did and that I should not discuss you anything about it...

THEN you proceed to make nonsensical statements about Hearthstone. Dark Iron Dwarf is a spell card for you. It is a good thing to Shapeshift on turn 3/4 into Scarlet Crusader. Like jeez, after being a self declared pro, you seem to have no clue of how that game was played.

me a écrit :

I would like to not continue this argument because you don't seem to be arguing in good faith. Unless you want to continue talking about the hearthstone scenario which is fine, I have given you proof after proof after proof of why the statements you make about infinity wars are just straight up wrong and all you do is claim I am "not reading your arguments" or am otherwise making things up. I have nearly 500 hours in this game, man. Just try to take my word (and also my factual evidence) there rather than the knee jerk reactions you get when your unpolished 3 fd lists lose.

Feel free to delete this. It's not a big deal I just can't respond on that other page. me4 minutes ago And then onto infinity wars. The deck that won one of the qualifiers for the last major tournament was 2 cov/1 fd burn aggro and 3p overseers (which is an aggro deck) was also very popular (just barely losing to the cov deck). 3p decks are good, and flamedawn has even seen some small buffs to it's higher purity cards since you've made this review, but the game wants to encourage you to be creative and try different combinations of factions. It just isn't super interesting when all of the best decks are 3p and do the same thing every game. We are already at a risk of that, since the last major tournament was 3p dod vs. 2p cov/1 pr factionless for the finals. That's right, some of the best decks in the game can be single faction (although the factionless aspect of that deck has since be nerfed).

You say "I proved this to be wrong" but, you didn't? Unless you mean in arena, scarlet crusader was never a crazy popular card (core in zoolock to be fair but that's it) and yeti was verifiably mostly played in druid. Even back then decks had archetypes, and I can name a plethora off the top of my head that didn't have room for either of those. Regardless, let's assume you are in that matchup of zoo vs. druid. Dark iron dwarf is a great play to swing it back and there is nothing wrong with that but that is specifically not what you said. The warlock is using 2 cards to get rid of your one then. And even then when the turn passes back the druid will usually be at 6 on 5 because of wild growth so he can do something like hero power the crusader and play another yeti to threaten trading favorably into the dwarf or even swipe targeting the dwarf for a HUGE swing to his favor leaving you 2 mana to wild growth and set up a ragnaros for the next turn or do something else.

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This seemingly pretty looking game hides its ugly educational nature. Its mechanics are knee deep. It is barely runs. It is missing basic functions which you would expect from every game like fullscreen. This is a product which reeks of a minimum viable product mentality where a contractor got a job and he did as much as he had to fulfil that contract.

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Game is simple and there is little to talk about it. This is often a bad sign when reviewing a game, because a game which can be completed so quickly rarely has anything worthwhile about it.

Click mode and Strategy mode
• Game has two modes. One which runs in real time and you have to click on parts of a plant. Other one is supposedly harder, strategy mode which is measured in turns. The truth is that strategy mode is easier. In real time you lose resources if you do not click fast enough on a leaf or a root. In addition, since clicking on leafs takes away resources, you can easily play sub-optimally. In addition, you have to deal with various effects like frostbites and insects. It is a cool feature, but it makes game into two separate mini-games.
  
  Upgrades
  
• This game has several upgrades to unlock. They are helpful, but it makes already easy game even easier. It also just outright removes various in-game mechanics in a game which severely lacks content as it is. It is literally upgrade to play less of this game.
  
  Lack of Content
  
• The biggest issue this game has that it severely lacks content. Both in terms of gameplay and educational. I would be fine with gameplay being as simple as it is. However, there is just next to none information on plants. I learned next to nothing, I had only refreshed what I already knew. I understand that original audience for this game is supposed to be kids. However, since when you can say that you literally know all the facts in school's textbooks? This lack of educational content, lack of interesting information makes this game truly a disappointment.
  
  From gameplay side, I was missing more and more meaningful mechanics. Frostbites are random. Why there isn't any draughts? Why you do not have varying season lengths? Why temperature does not go lower or higher with accompanying bonuses? There is ton of real life effects on plants which this game misses and it just shows how little effort developer had put into making this a good product to play.
  
  Technical Problems
  
• Last, but not least are game's technical problems. This game does not have something as simple as full screen view. Game lacks animations or slows to the crawl in certain places. When I played this title, I felt exactly why it has mixed ratings on Steam. I thought that it was merely because people purchased a simple game and they were disappointed by a simple game. However, that is not the case. Game looks great only in screenshots while in reality it just barely works on computers.

This game is so basic that it has content only for an hour or two of play. It is good game for children to play throughout a lesson in school. However, it fails as a proper game due to lack of gameplay mechanics. It also fails as an educational game, because all educational content is basic and sparse. It is not a game to play if you wish to learn more about plants. A product fails on both accounts and has no use outside of very limited scenarios. You will learn more from watching a documentary on plants.

I rarely seen an aggro deck in this game lately. I had encountered various combo decks. Angels for example with their ascension mechanics or a deck which recycles cards. I was the only one playing an aggro deck which focused on early game aggression. Every other deck ignored stuff from 1-3 mana essentially and their units came from 4+ points or they buffed something extremely heavily.

How do you know how much Hearthstone I had played? First you make a dishonest statement that lower tier stuff does not trade upwards in Hearthstone. I proved that to be wrong even when you specifically took the Yeti. An exception to the rule. Now you ignore most of the classes and talk about Druid. Most classes played Yeti, because it was so good. A lot of classes could hero power the Crusader. However, that did not mattered much. If you play Crusader on turn 3 and your opponent goes to turn 4 and plays Yeti. You attack with a Crusader Yeti and use something to finish him off. Dark Iron Dwarf was popular exactly of this reason. You will use it on turn 4 to buff Crusader and to keep on tempo advantage. If Druid used hero power to remove Crusader from the board, he was at a disadvantage, because at turn 5 he used 2 mana for hero power and can only play 3 mana minion. He would lose a lot of tempo and would only be put at further disadvantage.


My point was specifically that game does not encourage going for full purity and that is bad. I think, you do not know what you are disagreeing against.


People are supposed to play base cards. If faction defining cards are trash, balance is also trash. Game does not have many cards to balance. However, we are seeing same issues emerge as in Hearthstone, MTG or any other card game. Most cards are trash and only specific few cards are good. This is what I was talking about this game and why I did not liked it. I want game to be balanced and not to follow the pitfalls or all the other titles. If I would want to play horribly balanced, combo hell of a game, I would play Magic the Gathering rather than this title.

me a écrit :

"2) Hearthstone has a better balance when it comes to keeping aggro competitive."

But aggro is so good in this game? You need to provide specific examples. Aggro is amazing, just specifically flame dawn 3 purity is bad.

Scrarlet crusader very rarely traded into yeti. Especially if the yeti came from druid (Which was the deck that played it the most) Druid can just hero power the crusader. You have not played more hearthstone than me so maybe this isnt a good line to go down.

Flame dawn is not weaker. 2 cov 1 fd is like the very best aggro deck you can play and incredibly unfair feeling in some matchups. 1 or 2 fd + os is also a super strong deck. The game tends to curb you away from playing 3 purity decks tbh. They are a good starting place but you are supposed to want to explore a bit. So maybe try that?

(Continued) Combo decks barely exist in this game. Especially after some of the recent nerfs, there are very few actual "combo" decks you can play. Most decks in the game are aggro, control, or midrange. And aggro is easily one of the best. You are struggling because you are playing aspirants for no reason but realistically there are tons of well statted things you can put in the command zone and just walk over people.

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Dangerously cute. Story with a twist. Novel, simple, but addicting gameplay. World of Goo symbolises the best qualities of original indie games. It is a really good game and one of the classics.

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It is difficult to review such games, because they are small, focused and polished. You either like what this game is trying to do or this game isn't for you. There are no complex systems which would not function as advertised. There are no over-ambitious marketing. There is no confusion in a game genre and on what aspects game should focus and to what game's sub-audience it should appeal. You either like what you see from trailer or you do not as you had seen the whole game at that point.

Gameplay
• Gameplay had charmed me back in a day. It was simple, addictive and surprisingly deep. You can use various building blocks to attach them to each other. As your structure grows, you have to balance its weight not to tip over your structure. Likewise, your GooBalls are alive. They constantly move around the structure and in their excitement they can tip your beautiful tower down. Game also tests your knowledge fully in free build mode where you collect gooballs from all the levels and build them into a massive tower or in epilogue with last three hardest levels of a game.
  
  Aesthetics
  
• To me this game is beautiful. I love such simple, cute looking games. Nothing what isn't supposed to be here is here. Your building blocks are personified and part of living world. Levels represent part of a greater world. Something as mundane as a gap to sewer system is a level in this game. It is not stated as obviously, but a lot of levels do take mundane things and make them into oversized obstacles. This gives game a strong narrative feel. You are not simply doing random things. You are part of a living world. World which is tied to the story. To motivation of your GooBalls. This simplicity of design and adorable artwork is something which I really love seeing in games.
  
  Story
  
• Story is minimal, clever and with a twist. I do love how it manages to be a meta commentary without feeling forced. I love humour in it. I love how this twist is always hinted through environment, but it is never told you directly. Game does not try to force itself upon you. This is why I had enjoyed this game for what it was.
  
  There is also a sign. It is a small background element which gives usually a short message. It sits in a background and if you want to press it, you can. As level progresses, you might eventually see more of them scattered across the level. It is a clever way to add developer commentary. I liked humour in it. I liked how story was portrayed through them. I liked consciousness which post sign had ironically tried to portray.

To me this game represents what a lot of games should be. They should try to accomplish one simple thing. They should not be overloaded with unnecessary mechanics. This game is simple. It is as long as it has to be. It does not overstay its welcome. Each design element which is in this game is part of core gameplay. Everything is polished to the mirror finish. It is a game which I'm glad that I came back to play again. I started from start and finished it. It was fun little game to play in short bursts. I'm glad that I came back to play this game.

Calicifer's Reviews

If you are interested reading full review or want to discuss something with me, please follow the provided link. I do not allow endless discussions under my reviews, because it rarely ends well.

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It is a game with few redeeming qualities. It is a functional game, but it lacks personality. Even factions themselves have same capital ships and planet annihilators. Due to that, there is nothing unique about the game and it is easily replaced by any other game. Speaking of it, just play sequel instead as there is nothing worthwhile seeing here.

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The twist in this game is that it is traditionally 4x game, but in real time. As a result, everything is slow. Ships move slowly and everyone is very durable. The problem which this creates is that it is difficult to issue precise commands to your units. There is very little impact to be had in maneuvering your ships. They do not do damage. Abilities are designed for your units to be blobbed into one massive formation. It is a type of game where you and your friends log in, play same session for 10 hours and then proceed to smash two giant fleets together.

Limited Strategies
• Game actively discourages different playstyles due to how easy it is to rush to flagships. This concentration of force discourages various non-combat types of flagships. Why would you use support ship early on when combat ship would bully you away from colonizing planets? In addition, dormant pirates and ease of digging in, discourages early rushes or aggressive gameplay. It is too hard to do mass expand strategy and simultanously too hard to take colonies away from enemy player, because you need specialized ships to destroy a colony and gameplay is so slow that they literally can build up defenses when you are atacking planet.
  
  Tech Tree
  
• Tech tree is nothing more than uninspired +% bonuses to your ships. Getting cheaper costs, faster research, more resources or better ships. It is kind of upgrades when you wonder if it even have any impact on your gameplay. It makes impact only in accumulative fashion when you research bunch of upgrades or start spamming only one type of ships since more often than not, research is tied to only one specific kind of ship.
  
  Economy Management
  
• Economy system in this game is uninspired and boring. It does not feature anything special. Expanding is boring as you only get flat -X% of your income for more supply. This creates a lot of problems, because if you invest huge lump of sum, you get more supply with a permament negative economic multiplier. This is a huge design flaw, because it always makes you feel bad. You never appreciate permament -10% bonus to your income for 100 supply. This also creates a very swingy gameplay. In better games, you get taxed as you increase your army. In this game tax is permament. This means if you lose your fleet, you still be crippled economically. You will never be able to produce ships at a greater pace than your enemy and since it will have more ships in every further encounter, you will be losing more. Game is designed with no comeback mechanics. When you start losing, you start losing very slowly and for very long if there are no other players to backstab your opponent.
  
  Game tries to have some more interactive elements like galactic trade. However, this does not add anything meaningful to gameplay. There are far too few ships and their impact is neglible of overall economy. Most resources are generated and added to your pool instantly. Having some small part being carried through ships as a trade is completely meaningless. It does not create supply lines which you could intercept. Combat system is not set up for raiding. Economy as a whole does not simulate resource movement. It would make game more interesting, but how it is applied in this game feels so tacked on.

The key problem with this game is that it has no personality. Factions are all the same. Their flagship units are just re-skinned copies of each other. Their superweapons do the exact same thing, but with different names. There is no depth in economy or buildings you construct. There is only slight difference in defensive structures, but it is very minimal difference.

Gameplay has no difference between factions. Influence victory is only possible if another player does not built any influence related structures. Diplomacy victory is impossible, because AI will betray you for absolutely no reason. Every match is fight to the death. This game pretends to be bigger than it is.

It is also incredibly dated. It falls where it looks older than it is, because advances which this game had a time are not sufficient in making this game look that much better. Combine all what I had said with the fact that a sequel is coming and there will be no reason for you to play this game.

Overall, gameplay feels shallow. It is functional, but there is so little special about it. It is not tactical as there is next to none tactical possibilities. It is not strategic as gameplay discourages various types of play. As a grand strategy it is boring. Tech tree is uninspired. There is nothing in this game which would be interesting or worthwhile to try it out. There are plenty of other games which did one or the other aspect better. As a final nail, sequel is right around the corner which promises to be just a straight up upgrade to this game. As it stands, it is just an outdated experience which no one new should bother investigating.

Calicifer's Reviews

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