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This game is just another copy of Vampire Survivor. It tries to be unique, but ultimately it doesn't deliver on anything and ends up just as worse version of an original. Combine it with performance issues on weaker systems and lack of refined gameplay, there is little reason to play this over something else.

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Game was advertised about fuel management and pulling of enemies to get fuel and to progress. There was supposed to be risk/reward factor involved. Upgrades and running of your bot were ought to be an important factor. However, there isn't any of this here. Systems are in place, but they are not balanced to matter.

Pull of enemy cells
• This game is unique that enemies do not come at you, but you come at them. This should had been something which would make it different compared to Vampire Survivors, but in reality it doesn't achieve anything. You still have to rush through the map, because enemies scale with levels. Game is designed around going to digsites to which you want to get as fast as possible. So, where is exactly the difference? You can stop and deal with existing enemies, however that is when you are start falling behind. You always want to be moving forwards, circling excisting enemies once or twice and then do all that again. Cell mechanics have no relevance on actual gameplay.
  
  How to Improve it?
  There should be different types of cells. There should be some paths devoid of enemies while most direct one would have more and more powerful enemies. This would allow you to make some decisions about how you are going to approach the point. Then you could improve the system by making more meaningful objectives. Rather than going to all drill sites, a player would only need to harvest X amount of stuff which would equate to most, but not all drillsites. That would allow him to skip points which happens to be too much trouble. A heat map would also be nice for you to plan your approaches.
  
  Grinded Dinosours
  
• Game has a fuel system where you need to replenish your mech timer with drops from enemies. You get them by activating pods and killing them. That gives you your fuel back. The more upgrades you get, the more fuel you consumer per second. However, in reality you rarely will run out of fuel. When you run out of it, nothing happens. There are upgrades to make fuel management inconsequential even if it was a consideration before.
  
  How to Improve it?
  Your mech should only use fuel when fighting. This would allow careful planning of your next steps, provided with previous changes. It should also have power levels and lack of fuel should be a death sentence. Now it doesn't matter. I would run out of fuel multiple times and then would just get some. What is the point of making a system and then rendering it useless? Game should be around managing your fuel. To help you do that, your systems should have power settings. These settings give 30% to 100% of your abilities at increasingly steep energy cost. That would help you to save energy in downtime and activate burst when you really need peak performance.
  
  Game also should have better screen to track how much fuel each system would use up. Combined with slower pace of a game, it would allow RPG elements where you could take powerful abilities and upgrades which would annihilate enemies and your fuel reserves. Likewise, you could modify your mech in a way where you could carry a lot more fuel, allowing you to harvest a large fuel reserve before commiting to a big fight OR building your mech around efficiency in order to maintain a steady DPS. Even better, you could spend upgrade points on building internal reactor which would generate power, allowing use of more demanding weapons without a risk of them blowing up your energy reserves and killing you in the process. Imagine that! Having a weapon which is super powerful, but each shot could deplete your fuel reserves if you are not careful and then end you a game!

What puts me over the edge is that this simple game is at its core flawed. It runs badly on older systems. Some enemies are badly designed, abilities, progression and weapons balance is lacking. There are many small issues which add up.

Performance issues
• First of all, games doesn't run well on older systems. I mostly played with my old computer back at home. This game had 1% drops to 1 FPS. I can see same tendency and here with system maxing out game's engine framerate, but something keeps on driving framerate down hard.
  https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3267737835
  Design issues
  
• What annoys me is how this game is designed. It has little content, but it is drawn out. Most people quit few hours in, accomplishing very little. Part of this is that unlocks are slow. You keep on grinding through missions with too little of variety.
  
  Then the little there is in this game, it's badly designed. For example, boss has an underground attack which simply means that he goes away for a little and appears in a red circle. First versions of it are harmless. However, at later evolutions this circle is bigger and faster. It is impossible to evade it and developer clearly intended for player to use dash ability. However, dash is a special ability which you can take or choose any other one like poison. This then creates a design issue where you cannot play this game properly, because you are missing crucial mobility options.
  
  In the end, all of those abilities are poorly balanced and thought out. In a game which is all about speed and not being overwhelmed, dash is crucial. All the other upgrades are too weak anyways and will never be as good as a base ability. Same balancing issues apply to weapons. Trying mortar run ends your match, because you cannot complete it on second evolution phase, because how weak it is while blade build slices through enemies with ease.
  
  Needless baggage
  
• Game is a Vampire Survivors clone and thus it carries needless stuff around which is here just because it copied that game. First there are meta upgrades. They are upgrades in menu screen which makes your mech stronger. However, such systems prevents you from actually playing this game properly the first time, especially when crucial upgrades in this game give a lot of power and are very cheap. Furthermore, getting resources for it is directly at odds of completing missions. It drops a small crystal which is easy to miss and comes from cocoons which are annoying to kill. And what it all adds to a gameplay? Absolutely nothing. It serves only to make it incredibly grindy while it is already struggling with content and player engagement. It is a system which adds nothing to gameplay and serves just to prolong the playtime.
  
  You would think that indie developers would have at least some creativity and would not copy entire systems just because, but here we are. How about adding more weapons, more mechs, more enemies? In few hours I had played, I was already missing content, the little additional content this game had is stretched so incredibly thin. For context, only 9,1% of players had won this game 10 times. For a game where a single mission lasts about 15 minutes, these are incredibly low statistics. It highlights the fundamental problem here. Game is already boring and developer brutally tries to stretch playtime of this title for no reason just because Vampire Survivors did it.

My ideas just highlight how lacking this game is. It doesn't have unique features on its own. It is an attempt to make a copy of a Vampire Survivors. While it is a good effort from what is probably one person which can't even sustain itself as a full-time developer, it is however not as good as other games. Lets not delude ourselves and waste precious time playing games which are just average at best. Life is short, there are plenty of other, bigger and better games out there. If you want to try out for some reason, go ahead. It is competent enough of a game, but it has no redeeming qualities.

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.

Gargoyles
Blacksmith
Dark Spirit (Kirk)

Clumsy controls/camera
Poor placement of enemies and bosses
Unexplained gameplay
Badly design souls system

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This game knows where it's at. It doesn't try to do something which it shouldn't. It does not have unnecessary bloat and its core gameplay is solid. Story is interesting. There is plenty of content in a campaign and newgame+. Combat is exciting and deep enough to remain interesting. Game runs well and it does something unique. While some people might not like it, because it isn't a game which they want, it's their problem for trying to project what this game should be rather than what it is. And it's great for what it is.

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When I was a child, we went to resort where there arcade machines. You could hop into one and play with giant mechs. It was a game in an arena, fighting other mechs. It was a fast paced game where you could fly, dodge missiles and had a lot of weapons to choose from. From that day onwards I kept looking what this game was, but I couldn't ever find it. However, this is the next best thing. It plays exactly like I remember with my nostalgia glasses and is everything what a newly made game should be. When a game manages to meet expectations of your nostalgia warped brain, you know it's good.

Game has few things which I wished that it would be better. Mostly it stems from it being a simple game, not trying to do anything fancy. Simple is good, it gets a job done, but it doesn't excite you. By not reaching for the stars, you never get into being something special for gamers. Something like Half Life, Supreme Commander, Warcraft 3, they all tried to do something very ambitious and succeeded in that. This game lacks that ambition to try and to fail and thus merely settles with being good at what it does.

Utilitarian Graphics
• Graphics in this game does the job. They are simple and can effortessly draw long distances without any frame drops. However, game is stuck at around 90 FPS while I believe 120 FPS is an engine limit. If you look up close, models are simple and nothing in it look really good. They are very practical. They don't look ugly and run great. It perfectly fits what this game tries to accomplish. However, it left me wanting a better engine. Since this game is very fast paced, you really want a lot more FPS. When in close quarters fighting, your skill is hardcapped by 120 FPS which this game gives you and image tends to blur during quick movement. In addition, some high and demanding quality settings would be nice. Demanding AA models, RT effects, higher quality, less grainy textures would be nice. Sadly, Christmas is already over.
  
  Lack of Scale
  
• What developers failed to do is to impart sense of scale. You are commanding a giant mech, but you don't feel the scale of it. It could be just a regular dude in an undersized environment for all what matters. This problem happens, because game struggles to establish relative environmental clues to help ground the player to the scale of an entire thing. Here is a nice example, can you tell how big those trucks are from this video? These trucks can be remotely controlled, but how can you tell if they are real or not?
  
  https://youtube.com/shorts/sdzMCJuQVV4?si=wrbHRKu8k_ZW4CsG
  
  This is the effect this game suffers from. Since developers just oversized everything around you, you don't feel any bigger, because environments are massive. The scale of normal objects are out of whack and you struggle to imagine what a normal sized human would do in an environment like this. It doesn't seem at all designed for their use. This issue is purely one born out of lack of talent as developers needed to keep into account scale at every stage of development. To construct environments first in mind of a normal human which you don't see and then add mechs on top of it. However, they focused on gameplay first and as a result, while gameplay is great, immersion suffers. It doesn't feel like a real world. Some jank in the game is necessary in order to establish some greater things like atmosphere and immersion.
  https://youtu.be/sBzXzlvonWQ
  Technical Issues
  
• I'm mister fancy pants and in those pants I have 7800X3D. Sadly, AMD processors have or had a flaw which would cause game to freeze up while main processor gets overloaded with work. This would happen randomly and only its main core would get to 100% usage. Strangely, it would happen only once per game launch and you could wait it out in a menu and it will be a smooth sailing afterwards. It would also never crash the game no matter how unresponsive it would get.

The oxymoron here is trying to improve what you already consider as a perfect game. To me, a perfect game is something which knows where it's at. It's a product which sets up to do 1 thing and does that one thing really well. It isn't about how many features it has, how big its budget is, how many flashy things developers can give you. Everything works within limitations of its budget, time, talent. Even the best games in existence are not perfect. Nothing ever is perfect, that is inherent humankind flaw. We have words with meanings which have no real practical application. To many "Perfect" is something which can never be achieved nor exists.

Philosophical lecturing aside, what would make this game even better for me is more depth. Game melts like a candy in your mouth when you play it. However, there isn't a lot of motivation to replay it. Sure, there are different builds to try it out and you can pick few different missions for different endings. All those things are good, but they don't make me want to replay the whole thing again. I want an expansion which would add variety in replaying campaign. New lines, new 'mutators' for enemies. I also want more in depth customization. I want to see more stats in character creation screen, more in depth meta. I also want a new game mode which would focus on replayability where all new items could me unlocked via grinding and challenges. In other words, for this game to really reach my all time classic status, it needs to dig deep and make its existing pool a lot deeper with the emphasis on replayability. As it stands now, it was a nice candy while you were eating it, but you don't want to go for seconds. Campaign is rather lengthy and grindy without providing narrative rich experience of classical single player games. It also doesn't provide enough of a challenge and depth for you to repeat everything over and over again. This is why it never got huge player counts like a Dark Souls game. Players would complete the campaign and be done with it as there is very little that makes people want to replay it.

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...and now I'm sad. It was a great game while it lasted. However, it's a game which doesn't do enough to incentivise me playing it again. It stands in an awkard area where it isn't exactly a classical single player campaign like Max Payne 2 with high concentration of narrative driven content nor it's a grind, lifestyle type games like Elden Ring where you are expected to spend dozens of hours just grinding. It's a dragged out single player game with light story elements most of the time. It would be perfect for replaying multiple times, but game doesn't offer you enough for you to want to replay it.

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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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The Battle of Polytopia might appear entertaining game at first, but it falls steeply after just few hours as game lacks any refinement or substance. This explains its good ratings on Steam. The other half are coming from people who played it on mobile where it is a good game and rates it the same on desktop.

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This game has that addictive mobile quality. It is easy to start. It gives you accessible satisfaction as you click, upgrade and conquer. It is visually attractive. Progress is rapid and you are bound to always win. Game is designed around three-staring every nation which gives you immense amount of gameplay trying to perfect your playstyle. Challenge in this game stems not from strategy or tactics, but from perfecting your gameplay.

This is mobile game mascarading as a desktop video game. It simply doesn't hold up as mobile games are inherently inferior. Gameplay cannot keep people playing for long. Its systems are not working. Content is sparse and expensive. Besides nice visual style and easy to get into nature, this game offers nothing and earns to take away from you everything in form of microtransactions.

Here are just few systems which do not work in this game:

• Brain Dead AI
  AI in this game runs via a poorly built script. This script is incapable of anything more complex than manufacturing troops and sending them your way. It never even bothers to improve their own tiles.
  https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3203160325
  
• Economic clickfest
  Every tile needs to be clicked on in order to be improved. It becomes just tedious over time.
  
  
• Disbalanced
  Something like super-soldiers make everything else obsolete. Game encourages steamrolling everyone else which is not surprising since entire gameplay revolves around high scores. Some nations can also access late game units from the get go. Balance is non-existent even for such a simple game.
  
  
• High Price
  This game is expensive for what it offers. Then there are even more expensive microtransactions. For a nation which is nothing more than a same generic nation with different picture and different tech unlocked at the start. The value is simply not here. It would be fine on mobile, but not on desktop.

People compare this game to Civilization series. However, this comparison holds up only in most superficial way. What is grand strategy? It is plans which you set into motions. Strategies which you decide to execute. Epic wars which you fight during those periods. Diplomacy and espionage to influence global stage. Achieving dominance through finances and technology. Does this game has any of that? No. Its gameplay might as well be replaced by Microsoft Paint as all you do is painting map with your colors. The only actual gameplay comes from trying to paint map quicker. Sure, it is the end goal of other grand strategy games too, but it is missing all the steps which makes those games meaningful. It is like making an FPS game where you all keep respawning in the same room and shooting each other. It would miss all the points which makes game actually meaningful. Sure, a lot of those games do not execute those things well, but at least they try to do that. Trying is by far better than giving up and degrading to lowest common denominator.

At its core it is an over-priced mobile game. It seems entertaining for first few hours, but that is it. It lacks any features to make it entertaining in the long run. Its style, easy to get nature creates a dopamine rush into the brain not too dissimilar from found in mobile games. Half of its systems simply doesn't work. The point of this game is trying to perfect your run, but with child-like ease of the runs, what is the point? Difficulty is based on ever more ridiculous multipliers for an AI and equally cheesy strategies from people. Be my guest if this sounds like a game for you.

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 widespread belief that games made by Hi-rez are destined to fail. Companies who are doing promotions for it are bound to go bankrupt. I can personally count two companies who promoted Paladins and went bankrupt. Same Hi-Rez curse hangs over all of their projects, ever counting down time until they pull the switch.

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I cannot say that game had a lot of potential, because there was a time when it lived up to its potential. It was fun, balanced and deep. However, Hi-Rez managed ever elusive achievement - to decrease game quality with their continuous efforts. It is a rare case where we should be buying lootboxes in order to keep Hi-Rez from developing this game. Most of what was done after release was mostly either neutral or negative. I highlighted few of those cases in a video:
https://youtu.be/kvYQPJqxL8M

Outaded
• Game maps look horrible. They lack details and seem more like early versions maps meant for testing rather than play. Environment lacks textures as there often just some blur put on them. Then it is simply bland as it lacks elements to make environment lively. Maps are one of the worst I had seen.
  https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3173750683
  This picture illustrates what I'm talking about. Look how washed out colors are even for death screen. Then at bottom right look how text, picture and border overlaps and conflicts with each other. Now look at the terrain, falls. Only most basic texture is applied to them and as a result, game looks horribly outdated.
  
  Even more, all modern maps seem to be badly designed. You want map to have direct progression where enemy can form a frontline and enemy flanks flank you. However, newer maps do not have solid frontline as enemy can easily come over top of your team all of the sudden or approach from every direction without having to spend much time flanking. This creates a terrible feeling of an arcade game where a solid frontline never develops and it feels like Deathmatch with quick respawns as everyone runs around them map. Any effort to push objective gets punished as you get flanked from all sides and ambushed.
  
  Unfinished
  
• After 6 years of development game feels more underdeveloped than it was before release. It is missing music in game. Its interface pops over GUI elements. Transition screens are sudden. Score screen is confusing mess with nonsensical icons, layout and over-abundance of information.
  https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3173751401

Over the years, Hi-Rez just kept adding new heroes. That is a short sighted policy to monetize your game as you cannot create many truly unique, fun and balanced heroes. The more you add, the greater support burden, unless...you do not plan to support them to begin with?

Heroes
• That sadly was the case. Game is notoriously bugged stemming from the fact that developers were vomiting content into the game. Now code is a mess which barely holds up according to youtubers. I'm however far more concerned about hero balance. As developers tried to monetize new heroes, they added ever more powerful heroes which can do...just everything better. Game has too many heroes to ever balance. Most new heroes are incredibly bursty. Most new tanks are insanely tanky. At the same time, old heroes are noticeably weaker. Terminus for example completely outclasses Ferninando to the point it becomes pointless to play him. Skye's bursty nature is no longer an exception. There are plenty of heroes which can burst just as well as her without endangering themselves. This game feels like a cheap knock off or something created by modders. Just because you can add something, doesn't mean that you should. No consideration is made for game's balance or even if hero works within game's engine.
  
  Store
  
• Store is a mess. It never got an update after game's release. Now it looks cheap and outdated compared to Overwatch. More than that, everything in the store is incredibly expensive while veterans rarely need to consider purchasing anything due to gluttony of gold. The experience is horrible. You are hit with countless monetization options which are expensive as hell and provide very little value. That is more, skins are locked inside the 8 euro lootboxes. This means that even if you want to spend money, you cannot. Hi-Rez never invested in their store. In presentation of their content. They never tried to create an appealing monetization system and instead just ramped up content production which in turn ruined the game. Paladins is what happens when game is financially mismanaged.

Trying to play old favourites felt really bad. Skye used to be a lot better. She had similar amount of damage as new heroes, but she has a terrible kit AND she has to go to basically melee range and to unleash her magazine on unsuspecting enemy in order to fulfil her burst potential. Same was with her bomb. On its own, it was really difficult to get value from aware opponents. It takes right timing to get value out of it. Her entire kit did not boosted her damage, only allowed her to flank or to escape. However, every new hero seems to do her levels of damage from any range. Has superior mobility options with something in their kits helping them to deal damage or allows them to deal more damage.

Then there are baffling choices. Skye could perma-stealth. That was fun, but took a lot of skill to really make proper use of it. Especially when you consider that an alternative hero had something which would help them in a fight. Then they took Barik's turret. Now you can only have one and it is so weak that it is barely usable. His ultimate was also nerfed to the ground as your flame turret does same damage, but now comes without a shield thus making it very fragile when you NEED to zone out opponents. Barik is a great example how an old hero with a niche was nerfed over time and power creeped.

Game balance is in shambles. As old heroes with clear strengths and weaknesses are gone. Drogoz could fly, but was clumsy and could not fight aware opponents. Evie's mobility is too clumsy to use in combat and she couldn't duel opponents. Fernando was a great point guardian, but he lacked in mobility and damage potential. A lot of heroes had clear strengths and weaknesses. You could play against or with those weaknesses by choosing how you spend your cards customizing heroes. However, nowadays it feels that every hero can three shot you in a second without even aiming. Game balance feels terrible and it was never properly designed. Everything was power creeped up and TTK (time to kill) went significantly down, chaning how it feels to play Paladins.

Paladins was one of my classical games and it is never easy to say goodbye to one as it is hard to say hello to a new one. Paladins was a great game. It has an amazing vision. It was the best hero shooter on the market. Its passing had left the hole. What other games are out there? Team Fortress 2? Butchered with community content. Overwatch 2? Butchered by Blizzard. Other games? Completely different in nature. There are no other good hero shooters out there and its passing had left hole which won't be filled for many years to come.

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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I'm concerned not about state of EA game, but that through two years of development, game progressed relatively slowly. It feels like a longer demo all those years before. Some things are better, others seem to be worse. Basic gameplay loop, content or just simple balancing seem to not had been worked on throughout those years.

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What people would like to see ideally is their own build-your-own-tank tycoon where they can play through historical events with their own unique tanks or twists on historical tanks and see how they perform in the market and war. It should allow player to compete both on price and quality of a tank, to either produce best possible tank or fill orders as quickly as possible.

This design freedom is what attracts people. They want to build their tank and then own it. To try and market it, to sell it in a market. They want to build on a good reputation which their firm builds on. To deliver on time, more and to produce superior quality tanks which receives plenty of praises. Or likewise, they want to turn them up by the hundreds. They want to make the minimal viable product and see their mass production helping tide of war to turn to their favour.

At the end, you want to see how your tank performed in combat. What weaknesses it had. What design flaws it has. What could had been better. What was superior. You want to address shortcomings and to build better tank next time. This interaction between what you built and how it performed is critical in establishing meaningful gameplay.

By mentioning what are expectations of this game, I can dive deeper of what is wrong within each category. Where players have higher expectations than game currently deliver.

Creation of the Killing Machine
• At the moment, options to create tank which you want are non existent. You get historical hulls and typical upgrades for them. Those upgrades generally range from Tier I to Tier X upgrades and I mean it in direct sense of that word. There is usually no benefit of going with anything else than the absolute best. Only in rare situations when you are trying to do something which you weren't not meant to, it becomes a slight issue and you might not be able to pick the best upgrades for each slot. This is really disappointing. People want to create tank or at least tank variation of their dreams. Instead we got a mobile game where you press on a hero to upgrade it.
  
  Game could become better by adjusting specific requirements of what countries want. At the moment it doesn't seem that having custom-tailored tank for requirements is possible. What about making requirements such that it would incentivise sacrificing better performance for increased reliability and off-road performance? What about making each part more of a side-grade with different focuses rather than as an upgrade?
  
  Then we could think how to make game better from tank design side of things. Why something as basic, as tying weight with mobility and reliability is not already in the game? You should not be able to load tank to the maximum load and get away with merely paying a fine at the end of testing range. Weight should directly reduce longevity and mobility of a tank. It should not have a hard cap. In a same manner, you should always have more stuff to add to the tank than there is space. You should aggressively trade ergonomics by trying to cram everything available to your design.
  
  The most important thing which I'm missing is lack of ability to up-armor your designs or likewise, reduce armor protection of a tank. You should be able to designate area, whatever it would be front, side, top or rear. Then you should be able to increase protection of that area while drastically increasing weight of a tank. Likewise, tanks should be protected against existing threats. Each gun should have its penetration value and you could design a tank to be resistant to a specific threat. This is actually simple, but brilliant system first introduced in Hearts of Iron III expansion. If you had armor superiority, that was expressed with a combat buff to your formation which has those tanks. This buff represented a reality on the field that enemy doesn't have effective anti-tank weapons against your vehicles. This game should implement the same system here. As nations already naturally gain specific weapons, we should have an estimated protection values needed against those weapons.
  
  Monetization of the Killing Machine
  
• Selling of your tank is deeply flawed at the moment. You either win every contract of you are hopelessly outmatched. Furthermore, nations are very slow to offer any other contracts and they never replenish their stock. This creates a very arbitrary gameplay where you either win every offer or go bankrupt as there are no offers. You cannot enter international market until mid 1917 for some reason. Those contracts for thousands of tanks never materializes. Nations do not ask for specific tansk to fill individual niches. Britain for example formed like 8 regiments of landships until they even considered a light/medium tank. Then they filled their maximum limit and never asked a tank from me again.
  
  Game needs to offer a lot more depth to contracts. If you win contract in the past and your tank performs adequately, it is natural that customer would want to replenish its stock. You should always get trickle down contracts like these or "long term contracts" where you have to provide X amount of tanks each month to replenish losses". Tank reputation should influence the premium which you can charge for your tank too. Its reputation should not be accumulative, but a median value over a period of time. This way you could potentially create production of inferior tanks with thinner margins rather than selling more premium tanks for more.
  
  At the moment, this part of the system is completely broken. Look at this:
  https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3163601519
  I offered a tank which completely doesn't meet requirements. However, it passes like some super-tank way above its competition. My competition scores 450 points top. I can easily score double by providing a wrong tank to what a country wants.
  
  Likewise, some contracts will not accept my tank even if it fits very well to what country wants:
  https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3163601181
  System of selling tanks and core gameplay foundation is completely broken at the moment.
  
  Usage of the Killing Machine
  
• What this game needs is statistical representation of a battle like most of grand strategy simulators have. Those abstract battles would test random values of a tank. If a battle tanks in an environment where there isn't a lot of roads, tank's off-road ability is being tested and praise/complaints are then given based on what is expected average for such tank is. If battle tanks a long time to conclude, operational range becomes important. As for combat, if enemy only has infantry, its armor would never get tested. As enemy armaments increase, such as its need for armor. A heavy tank which cannot resist anti-tank fire should get a massive reputation penalty. Likewise, a light tank should get primary stat penalty regarding mobility.
  
  I played more than dozen of hours. I saw my tanks in combat once by accident. Nations do not report battles of your tanks. I repeat - the most bloody important feature of this game is still missing. Even when you see battle reports, they are confusing on what you can actually do to improve designs. This is mostly due to designs being very limited. You put the best parts available by default and you win every contract regardless how well your tank fits the bill.

At the moment, gameplay foundation is not here. It is just a bunch of attempted systems which do not quite work together yet. We have tank design where you can only min/max statistics. We have contracts which just spam one type of tank. We have global map and battles which doesn't appear to the player when your tanks are fighting or give enough overall information of where your tank can improve. We have a tank building system which doesnt allow you to build heavier tanks at the expense of reliability. We have a system which doesn't understand that machine gun up front is a lot more valuable than at the back. We have a tank building sim where you cannot up-armor, change weapons or suspension of a tank.

I will check this game again when game is released. However, I'm not too optimistic if development will take a right turn. I had waited for years only to receive a slightly longer version of a demo. All of the development effort went not into core gameplay, but in features which I barely appreciate. Hopefully, upcoming updates will make core gameplay actually work and hopefully - more meaningful.

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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Few classics hold up throughout years. This game is still fun to play, because it never went for flashy gimmicks. What is here is simple and effective. I do recommend this game if you want hard as nails military shooter which you complete mostly solo through predictable trial and error.

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Game represents to me what was great about gaming back then. An obvious effort was made by developer team to make game feel more than just a game. You can feel their passion and enthusiasm engrained in their work. That is more, even mainstream AAA games of that era had significant innovations to gameplay formula and complex gameplays which modern titles simply can't and do not want to imitate.

Story
• Game is amazing in its own delivery. Every mission is done by voice actors who show passion and emotion in their emotion. Even in this dry, emotionless age of AI, they stand out as quality after decades of gaming progress. They just keep on and on with their story. Trying their best to make your care about your next mission. Bless their hearts.
  
  Story is equally out of wildest Tom Clancy war fantasies. It is over the top, right wing nut fanatic perspective of Hurray USA - the world police. Yet, at the same time it manages to retain an air of sensibility and doesn't become cringy. That is a very thin line to thread and this game manages it quite well.
  
  Customization
  
• You have fairly complex soldier customization. You have a lot of freedom how you customize your squad. You can take every weapon while your allies are limited to weapons of their class. You can take weapons based on their weight. Attachments adds to the weight of a weapon. Likewise, you can drop sidearms or take sidearms almost equivalent in power to main rifles. However, you have abundance of different classes to pick. Class limit seem pointless for your allies in this game as they do not feel any more effective. Likewise, there are balancing concerns. For example, underbarrel grenade launcher is so weak that it is not worth using. While missile launcher can be crucial in some scenarios while deadweight in others.
  
  Pacing
  
• Missions escalate nicely. From easy starter missions which are meant to 'gently' introduce players to the game to absolutely pro-level challenges at the end. It represents what gaming used to be. In order to beat the game, you had to be bloody good.
  https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3103948271
  Missions are memorable. From spec-ops infiltration of blowing up Black Hawk evidence to all out fights in the streets with military assets. What stuck with me is this game's low of blowing up artillery pieces. You have to play it in order to know it. Oh wait, you can't! That's right, go back to play your child-like modern Ghost Recon games.

Game shows its age and is very limited in what it can do. However, through the ages we did not progressed any closer in solving those issues. Thus, it is not game's flaw, but humanity's as a whole.

The main issue with this game is that AI is dead. It generally just stands around and follows its simple script. It doesn't react to your actions in a sensible way. This gives this game feeling of a puzzle. All enemies are largely in same places, doing same things. Some spawns are randomized in some places. This translates very well into trial and error gameplay where you train to beat level without making any errors. It would be great if enemy and your allies could react realistically, but it is better to have at least this than "clever idiots", an AI which would try do clever things, but in reality would only produce bugs, inconsistent behavior and randomness in a game which is already quite hard.

Likewise, you cannot trust your own allies. They are surprisingly competent for their time. They can absolutely shred enemies under right conditions. However, they an become blind to enemies. Struggle with stairs or more complex tasks, like clearing the corners. Your allies at this game are best at providing cover. Considering how limited your assets are, you will default to preserving them as much as possible while doing all the work yourself.

Game revolves around missions which ever increase in length and time between save points. Soldiers gradually get replaced with laser sight, no scope killers. Game threads a delicate line between being unfair and annoying to fairly challenging.

One of the issues is that on rare occasions game will place a sniper in a distance. Can you spot it?
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3047346593
Exactly and you encounter enemies like these few times in a game. You creep along the map, looking for enemies and you get shot from nowhere. It creates feeling of paranoia which is never justified. On harder missions like these it is just tiring.

Last mission in this game is also poorly designed. It tries to ramp up stakes, but ends up just plainly bad.
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3103947373
On higher difficulties you are landing directly at direct line of sight to your opponents. This often results two of your squadmembers dying before they reach the ground and rest being wounded. The hardest mission in the game and it already kills pre-emptively your squad. You are forced to restart mission until you get favourable RNG and can start playing this game.

Outside of outliers like these, game becomes eventually very stretched out. It can be a good or a bad thing. Since saves between points are long and you prefer your allies in overwatch positions, you have to clear levels by yourself. This creates feeling of an FPS tactical shooter where you memorize level and try to do just a little better each time through trial and error.

Game ends on a bang. Once you infiltrated missile silo on your own, you make a sacrifice to neutralize weapons at the cost of your own life. However, game actually allows you to run out of the base. It is fairly paced challenge, not too tough, not too easy. However, no matter if you run out in time, you will still are going to die.
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3103946883
Game glitches out. It teleports back to pre-determined location, changes your model into this goofy looking pose. Then you are teleported back into a bunker from which you walk out after explosions and die. It really takes away from an experience and it stands as a giant cut corner which developers never had enough pride in their work to remedy.

I played this game a little as a child. It left impression to my young mind back then. I enjoyed depth which gameplay provided. Now after many years, I come to play this game and see if it stood the test of time. If I enjoyed this game merely, because there was nothing better. When I replayed it again, I found gameplay to be simple, but to generally hold up. I appreciated all the effort which went into setting up the story which flew past me back then. I also had skills and patience to beat game fully which I did not had back then. This was a game with which I had enjoyed my time and I'm glad that I came back to check it out again.

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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Max Payne is a strong narrative experience. It has an interesting single player story which carries this game. Such games are Remedy_Entertainment speciality. Other than that, there is nothing special in this game. Even bullet time which this game was famous for is done poorly.

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Bullet hell mechanics might be what pushed Max Payne popularity at the start, but it is the story which makes it worth playing. Max Payne has such a great combination of cheesiness, seriousness and depth to itself. It plays on every gangster stereotype. It makes its each boss a memorable encounter. After all those months, I still remember each chapter and unique characters which it contained. It is really worth playing once for the story.

It is like Futurama TV, but in real life!
• This is where it all started! Max Payne is famous for its surreal television. Lord and Ladies are such cheesy and short TV drama that it goes full circle and it becomes really good. I simply love it!
  https://youtu.be/5IZbVXZZO5Y?si=b-_axwCAsQICoIvk
  Likewise, Pink Flamingo is an horror alternative. It is weird, but avoid being nonsensical while not making any sense. I love this show too. Back then these little details were made this game great. It is still greatly enjoyable to see them in this game. It adds soul to the game. It shows real passion and care for a product. Many players just sat and watched those videos in awe. I still do and I find them so much more enjoyable than any over-marketed, generic indie game which exploded in popularity.
  https://youtu.be/Mx932bZ-ILo?si=XIea8xYcjISTlz1l
  Lack of Focus
  
• Unfortunately, large roster of characters are limited by lack of characterization. Max Payne tends to focus on unremarkable details and start characterising your villains just about you are going to face them. This results that you rarely get to know them before you face them. The last villain is the exception, but she is unfortunately also the least interesting out of the entire cast. Game would had benefited from a tighter focus as it often feels just aimless wandering across extremely generic environments. Only specific levels are more interesting and remarkable. Like mansion, lab or a night club.
  https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3103946525
  This dude had amazing presentation. However, it only starts when you enter his night club. First with story elements and then he presents himself with his own amazing voice acting. However, there isn't much more to it than you can glimpse from a single screenshot. This is why it is disappointing that the least interesting villain is explored the most. Game has just too many great characters and not enough time to show them all!

Actual meat of the game is highly disappointing. It is hard as nails, unforgiving quick load simulator. Its gameplay experiments are unmitigated disasters. Its environments should get a reward for being so incredibly boring.

Nightmarish nightmare sections
• These nightmare sections take the cake of being one of the worst alternative gameplay sections in a mainstream game. I hope you like precise platforming in a game which wasn't made for it. It feels like you are controlling a tank. You are expected to make long jumps over abyss with it. Also, a platformer is a featurless void. To make matters more interesting, platformer is a maze. To put cherry on top, mazes are long which makes great use of its quick save mechannics. This...this game comes from an age where developers felt a need to drastically shake up gameplay. Games from this era often have extremely contrasting sections which usually range from bad to awful. However, this little gem is straight up abysmal.
  
  Bullet Hell
  
• It is of course fun to jump around the corner and gun down enemies while bullets whiz around you. At the time of matrix this was very popular. For kids of that era, it was awesome mechanic. This is the only thing that makes Max Payne fun on gameplay level. However, as a progenitor, this mechanic isn't well done. Bullet time is too short. Jump is too small. In addition, it often leaves you vulnerable if you fail to kill enemies within a jump which happens a lot due to number of enemies. This is the irony of bullet time, the game which started it all is actually crap at it. If you are playing seriously, it will be more or less a gimmick.
  
  Saddistic difficulty
  
• The issue with Max Payne is that it demands perfection from you. Every encounter feels like a quick save & load exercise. There are plenty of enemies behind every corner and their bullets are just as deadly as yours. This forces you to perfectly engage every corner and every hit is a mistake. Gameplay, especially on higher difficulty settings isn't good or fun at all.

This game is made by a small, inexperienced studio which had more passion and dedication than they had skill or money. It is fairly typical for that era. This unfortunately results in some early jank which at best is entertaining, at worst - bad.

Facial Expressions
• Steam's community page is full of screenshots featuring Max Payne's face. Their highly detailed sprites for 3D models really do look apart. They are cheesy in a good way as it adds level of comedy to a game which doesn't take itself too seriously.
  https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3103937729
  
  Poor Quality Comics
  
• Story by large part is told by its comics. However, they tend to vary in quality greatly. Some parts are quite well detailed, while others are just too abstract. Second game really improved in these dirty aspects of a game.
  https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3103945115
  Likewise, game's story is often stretched too thin to the point of absurdity. Do you know your story romance, but not really? Well, this is literally when you catch up after the first meeting. She dies in the second slide...
  https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3103945541

It just keeps on snowing in Max Payne and I'm happy that I played. Though, I would not want to repeat it. Its highlights are parts from which are hard to extract extra satisfaction when playing second time. Its simple storyline is devoid of hidden meanings. Gameplay doesn't have any complexity or its levels any secrets. Take out story out of Max Payne and game itself is a giant slog. It is tough as nails shooter where enemies are waiting in ambush behind every corner and you are forced to slug through most forgettable and bland environments of the era.

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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With release of a remake, this game has no purpose. It will not receive much needed technical updates. There is a superior version of this game out there. However, if you just happen to own copy of this, it is still the same base game which is just as fun.

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This game is amazing in its smallest of details. Everything in this game is animated. If you want to make bread, you have to grow it. To reap it. To carry it to storage. Then wheat into flour. Then transport floor into bakeries. Cook the bread and transport it back. Every step of this is animated. It is a joy just to watch your castle run. From apple trees blooming to your king wandering your kingdom. It feels that game is alive and it is a real world. It even talks to you. It tells you when it is midnight. Asks if you are not tired. How long it is left until Christmas. All this breaking of fourth wall is done professionally and in character.

It adds so much charm to this game and to think that this was done decades ago and very few since had bothered to show so much care and love for their own games. This is why strategy games fail.

The main way to play this game is through the campaign. It has two long campaigns. One military one and another economical one. I played military one and it was amazing experience overall. One of those good, old games with which you used to fall in love with it, because passion and hard work is on full display here.

Awesome Story Telling
• In this game you go through long journey of taking back country which is on a verge of defeat from the rebels. Their inner infighting allows you to regain ground. Their lack of unity and discord allow to take them out one by one. This eventually culminates taking out the greatest of them all. Each character gets their own spotlight before their final siege. You hear their dialogue, plotting and scheming in pre-battle menus. You see this story being translated and in mission dialogues. It is just like old Starcraft games with its mission designs.
  
  Characters
  
• There are four main villains in this story. The Wolf, The Pig, The Rat and The Snake. They are "The", because their names fully captures their over the top personality. Everything they do reasembles their names. The Rat taunts you, trembles in fear, he is quick to give up or to jump to an opportunity. His castle is shoddily built. Snake goes down by scheming and plotting. He makes bargains with you and betrays you as you expect. The Pig is glutonous of course. He is ugly, overweight and greedy. He is one with the most gold, food and attacks with massive waves of troops. In sharp contrast, when you encounter wolf's troops, he sends a single knight. A well armored beast with whom you cannot deal effectively at that point. He is the one which howls at night and hunts you through the campaign. It is also the one which built his castle the best and it is a nightmare to besiege, utilizing game's principles to the fullest. This Quartet together with other minor supporting characters like sir Longarm accompany you through this long and difficult campaign and make you care about the story and what you are doing. They carry this game.
  
  Awesome Ending
  
• Campaign properly builds up main antagonist. You have myriad of missions with him. However, what had impressed me most is that at the very end, you are not facing Mr.Skeleton in his mountain doom fortress like so many games like to do. They just spam whatever they can to make over the top mission with too many defenses and units to try to make it feel epic. Stronghold actually has working gameplay and thus it doesn't need to just throw more crap at the wall in hopes something sticks. Instead what we get is a decent assaulting army and Wolf's fortress which seems modest by comparison to what you faced before. However, it is superbly designed. Each layer of fortification saps your strength. Each obstacle has to be approached expertly with everything you had learned through your journey. Wolf is also not holding back, every trick used will be used against you. That mission is just a perfect example of how missions and games should be designed. I had breached Wolf's final defenses with just my last ounce of strength. It was an experience which all RTS games which they could emulate.
  
  Difficulty Spikes
  
• However, not all is nice and rosy in the campaign. Campaign tends to jump and down in difficulty. That is most apparent at the start where you have to raise a bribe for Snake while defending against the Rat who throws such a force at you that you must know what you are doing and optimize everything in order to effectively defend against him. Then there is another when first time assaulting Pig's castle. Difficulty in the campaign tends to jump from mission to mission and the hardest missions in this game are spread randomly through the entire campaign.

Despite being good game at its core, especially for its time, it still have technical and design issues. Those tend to be just annoying and luckily doesn't take away too much from the core experience of a game.

Castle building
• The major issue with this game that it is not a 3D game. It is sprite based and thus it is very difficult to build a perfectly symetrical castles. All those castles which you see in screenshots are a lie. You will not make such perfect castles in this game as you will be limited by the terrain. These people get a sanbox, make a perfect map and then place their castle. Even then, it is very hard to judge how everything will connect. Gates for example only have 2 directions which limits how they can be placed. It requires a perfectly vertical surfaces which in real gameplay scenarios rarely occurs. In reality, your castles are often crooked, imperfect.
  
  Pathing
  
• The single hardest thing in this game is units walking through your walls. This is an extension of a first problem. Since game is sprite based, you cannot judge distance or depth. Very often you design a fortification, await the enemy only for their entire army just to walk through your wall. It is then you discover that there is a small, hardly visible gap which you need to awkwardly change camera angles and do long inspections if your castle is truly without any gaps. This is an ever present issue in this game and it is one of the hardest things in this game to do it right. It will constantly plague you through the campaign.
  
  API is invisible
  
• The last thing might be fixed with the newer version of a game and this point might not apply to it. However, modern programs do not detect this game running. It also blocks screen capture. Making screenshots or recording footage is as difficult as doing anything on Linux. Or in other words, a simple step will require a lot of effort and workarounds to get working. This game doesn't play nice with other software and remains an outdated to its current day. Play this version if you just happen to own it and want to save few euros, but otherwise hop in the new one and avoid needless frustration.

This is one of those games which was ahead of its time. Complex economical system? Large scale military action? Elaborate defensive fortification? Very long campaigns? Game filled with charm and personality? This is dream game which I wish that I had played back then. It would had been far more impressive and engaging. It is one of the classical games which spawned an entire genre on its own. Unfortunately, this genre was never really ever expanded on as the best sequel was Stronghold 2 or Stronghold 1 expansion - Crusaders. Direct sequel was unfinished and contraversial and from that point onwards series only went downhill.

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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There was a time when a famous IP would have a game. Those games usually were exceedingly mediocre if not terribe. This games me reminds of those good old times. An exceedingly mediocre game with a contract which was set to kill this game and a developer which showed just enough effort not to actively disappoint people.

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This game promised to bring animated W40k skins into chess. There are games like that there and here, but they all have some issues and downsides. This game was no exception. If not poorly designed then low effort put into this game was on a display clear to see for anyone.

The main difference between normal chess is a special game mode. This is how developer tried to stand out. However, this mode seems like a poorly thought out and a half assed effort. It is a tacked on, bare bones RPG over chess game. This causes game to become a lot worse.

Prevents chess plays
• This is tacked on game mode which prevents you from playing chess normally. A good move becomes a bad one in this game mode. Regicide is not a game mode on its own. You cannot play it in its own way, like shooting, using abilities, etc. These things are all too weak while the main method of attack is still normal chess movement. This creates a design issue, you cannot make a good move, but you also cannot really not to defend or attack. It forces player to play chess, but not really. That looks like a lot of shuffling pieces around. Never committing to an attack. Game of Regicide just doesn't work as you cannot play chess nor play this RPG. It stands in a no man's land where it appeals to nobody and is just a gimmick.
  
  Negates aggression
  
• Regicide inherently prevents you from attacking. An enemy makes a mistake and exposes its knight. You take it with queen and establish a dominant position. However, now your queen is ahead of your positions which means that every enemy piece can fire at your queen while your army cannot focus fire on anything. This then forces you to fall back from an advantageous position. Even more, if your chess piece do not have many hitpoints left, you cannot do an aggressive play with that piece, because it will be just killed by abilities. Thus you are forced to just shuffle it to the back and to try and preserve it from all enemy pieces.
  
  A massive HP grind with a huge RNG
  
• Lets say that we accept all those horrid design choices. I have no taste and I love it. Then we fall into the issue that every chess piece have ton of health and it is very bothersome to grind enemy down. You need several turns to kill something above pawn and that is not even guaranteed. Even if you play accordingly to Regicide rules and use its abilities, you are still prone to just plain back luck. I used Rook aggressively in this game. Full health, protective abilities. However, my plan was ruined by AI getting insanely good RNG and just wiping my Rook in a single turn. So, game is not only bullet spongy, but also unpredictable with wildly different outcomes emerging from RNG. RNG in your chess game? Talk about developer really knowing his target audience and how to improve millennia old games...

Game in general has little to offer. Every part of this game is poorly done. It makes it difficult to stay with a game even if you want to find it appealing. You do not need much budget to make a story. Or to make an interesting tactical chess game. Sadly, while it might not need more money, it does take talent and effort which seems just to be absent.

Lack of black play
• Imagine a chess game where you cannot play as black... Yeah, this fact best describes just how much love developer really had for his own project...
  
  Animations are the same for each side
  
• It pretty much sums up this game. You might play with mighty space marines, but they behave exactly the same as Ork Boy. Vastly different factions share the same animations. This makes game feel cheap and unimmersive. This extends to lack of original abilities where Orks pretty much mirror what Space Marines can do. What was the point of even developing Regicide mode if you are going to make chess terrible and then refuse to give different abilities for the sake of non-existent balance?
  
  Lack of skins
  
• In the end, people wanted an animated chess game where they could play with their own favourite faction. Developer could not be bothered to introduce paid DLC for different factions. Factions which are in the game are merely recolorings of existing ones. People wanted different chapters, different races. Developer had a golden ticket to keep on making DLC after DLC, but it never cared. It never tried nor showed effort in developing good quality content. It was all just bare minimum which pretty much sums up this game. A bare minimum animated chess.

I wanted to try this game out for many years, but life being what it is, I never got a chance. Eventually it was killed. Developer lost right to sell this game, so he pulled the plug from his own servers and never bothered to rework progression and game for an offline mode. Game is pointless to play now and was questionable even back then. A dead game which never received attention it needed even when it alive and kicking just after its release.

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.