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Overlord™: Raising Hell

The Evil Always finds the Way

Expansion tries to cleverly recycle existing content and add a few more interesting places to visit. It succeeds at that, but reinforces all the bad habbits which original game had while addressing very few of its shortcoming.

🌈Expanding on the Good🌈

Game is noticeably better on original's strong points. Levels are more varied, filled with more interactive content. It has more puzzles, more dialogue. Enemy design is more lively and they even do stuff in some areas before you come in. Levels are also great, as each hell has its own theme. A an eternally bad play which mocks and tortures elves with mockery of their beliefs and its crappiness was especially good. Though, levels sometimes can get confusing of where you need to go and what to do.

Forge also had received an upgrade. You can forge unique weapons and armor for your character. Now you get extra effects and can have a choice of forging non linearly scalling weapons. Previously, you needed just to keep on smelting your minions to upgrade percentages on your weapons. It wasn't very fun even if it was potentially better. Now you have a simple forging mechanic of pre-determined minions. You can get powerful weapons and armor without sacking multiple armies. It was much needed addition and it is little bit sad that only this area of a game was improved, especially considering the price of an expansion at the time.

☠Doubling down on the Bad☠

The issue with this expansion and why some players hate it is that it doubles down on all the worst aspects of the orginal. Were controls bad? Yes, but back then you weren't expecting to do demanding tasks with your minions. Here however a lot of puzzles and boss fights are designed around intricate and quick control of your minions. The last boss is especially problematic as it requires you to control all your minions to go to a specific spot quickly. However, there are always stragglers which take boss aggro. Timer and positioning also doesn't work as you get constantly attacked and you need to get attention of a boss who also is very inconsistent with who he is attacking. Essentially, you are combining finicky controls with inconsistent behavior and active pressure to make a right proper frustrating mess!

This extends to level design as well. Before final boss, you need to open doors which require you to do multiple things with minions. However, minions don't have controls at all for those tasks. If you put a command group, you can't order it to move from its position. Removing command group removes all of them and is slow. Your minions don't understand that you want to interact with an object if it is behind terrain. As an result, you frantically are running around and trying to press all the buttons. It is a complete mess. Likewise, objects with which you need to interact like a cart doesn't register half of the time and you can't do Melvin related pinball mini-game. Game doubled down and made its puzzles and bosses dependent on fine control of your minions which was the weakest part of the game. It takes a certain level of clueleness to do that and I'm glad that we have developers who against all odds keep on being ignorant. Such a dedication to their craft!

📉Plays Worse!📉

Developers managed to make expansion to play considerably worse than the original. The issue is that they doubled down on all the frustrating and unfair BS. There are a lot more enemies who can wipe entire groups of your minions in one shot. It also puts this content in a middle of existing levels. What if it is your first and only play of an Overlord? Since this expansion is a lot harder than a base game and you need to come to pre-grinded, you are setting up players for a frustration. This expension is meant to be done after main game, but it is put right in the middle of main paths. First to distract and severely lengthen the level with unrelated content. Then to mess players progression up. It just makes game flow and gameplay worse. Expansion even crashes for some reason while original was rock solid!

📋More of the Same📋

Raising Hell does very little in improving its story. It gives little reason to go into those hell gates, even less reason to collect those stones and to fight those villains. You are not even doing it for personal gain. It reinforces on story telling flaw where you as Overlord have no motivation and for some reason serve as a puppet for forces of good, risking your life for pleas of lazy peasants.

Likewise, there is very little choices to make. You can burn or save scarecrow guy, but it is all meaningless anwyay. They reincarnate there constantly and the choice itself is made in such confusing way where you don't know what to do. I often picked the evil option in original game and here as well by simply having no clue what I'm doing. Game needs to explain a lot more clearly what you are doing and present more meaningful options. Raising Hell expansion dropped the ball with those all together.

In the end story is left utterly unsatisfactoy. Your joker is actually evil. But what it even means? I'm the evil Overlord afterall, isn't he on my side? He escapes at last second while leaving me in hell to rule there. Like, alright? Did I ever wanted to claim hell as my domain? How imprisoning me serves as giving me power fantasy and pay off? You could had left me at least with some lovely succubus ladies! Game just keeps on failing to please you and leaves you wanting for more.

The Amplification

Expansion amplifies its good and bad aspects. It is more polarizing experience than the original which serves only to emphasize its pain points more. At the end, I had lost my patience with the game and last boss for all its shortcomings. It would be good if only it didn't doubled down on its own worst aspects, but it did and for that it is just overall worse experience.

Calicifer's Reviews

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Overlord

Told as a Fable

Overlord is one of those games which seems like a fable. It has that certain charm which makes you feel like you are part of a fantasy world. A game which seem to be a highly impressionable game then played in your childhood. It has soul and charm, but for all of it, it always reminds of unfulfilled potential and pretending to be more than it is.

🏰The oddity of this game🏰

Overlord has a great premise. It is a colourful and has its own sense of humour. It reminds people of Fable and in some sense, might be better at it. It has its shortcomings too. Unfulfilled story telling, lacking and disbalanced combat and questionable moral choices. It is often so toothless like a fairy tale and you are left in a back of your mind wanting for more. However, what game serves is easy to digest and leaves you wanting for more. It is like chips of gaming world, except being healthy for you. Imagine that!

The best part of this game is that it is colourful. It has ageless aesthetic which was amazing then and is still great today. Base game runs solid on modern systems. Game writing have its moments and base gameplay of sending minions to do your bidding by raising an arm is very satisfying. Game nails its presentation, light humor and basic gameplay loop and for those qualities, I do believe that Overlord is a game which you should play once when you are bored and don't have anything else to play. Game lend itself incredibly well to short sessions with several teleporters being laid down on each level, giving you a safe point there and a way back to your tower. Missions themselves feel substantial and that you are progressing. Game sets very clear and meaningful goals without overwhelming you.

Overlord is a curious beast like that. Base game is damn solid and it fails in more arcane, subtle ways. Sadly, game never exploded in popularity, enjoying only modest success which proves once again that gaming industry is a poor field to do business in. Even having a consistently good product doesn't guarantee success. There are very few industries which would be as bad as gaming is.

📋The IQ test📋

Game is critiqued for bad controls. They are bad, but for a different reason. People say that controling your minions is hard. You become a stationary camera and then have to drag your minions in a group around tight passages. People find it hard, because it activates different part of a brain which requires you to retain spatial awareness of where your control beacon is. Most people don't have that mental capacity and thus they find it difficult. We had fallen so much that we can't visualize movement through terrain without being there ourselves. So, then you hear someone complaining about poor controls, they are probably complaining about their underdeveloped brains.

However, what is really problematic with the controls is that minions don't get properly into control group. Then game doesn't know how to control those groups correctly. Control beacon might be somewhere in between groups, stragglers might try to catch up and get stuck. It is all very finnicky. It wokrs only, because game is not too demanding when testing that feature. Then there are general issues with control groups getting stuck to their posts which you place. There is way too easy to mark wrong group. There is way too many spells to use and you have no clue where is what. Small things like that.

🔥Unachieved ambitions of greatness🔥

The greatest waste in this game is lackluster story. Game tries to tell a story of an evil overlord. However, you are the one fighting forces of evil. You are ridding the land of bad guys. People literally sheer you and admire. You are a hero with an army of evil minions which by NPCs are not even treated in a hostile manner. They are referred adorably as cherubs and liked by everyone. In the end it is revealed that you were a hero and you are betrayed. You have no agency in this game. Quests are helping towns folks with their troubles. The moral choice is ridiculous just like in Fable to the point you don't want to even take it. It is to kill everyone on sight. Like what?

Likewise, there is a distinct lack of choices during campaign. You can do meaningless evil stuff just out of spite, but it all seems so token. You are being guided by the hand by your advisor like a puppet. There is another problem, since story focuses so much on fallen heroes and vices to which they had fallen, your actions don't look evil. Hence, you lack proper set up from supporting cast to be evil. An evil in a vacuum is meaningless.

And it all ties up back to world building. You construct your evil tower, gather wealth and get your girl. However, all of that is totally meaningless. Loot pile just sits there. Upgrades are token. Your tower is just a lobby which doesn't do anything or feels alive. Nor anyone there has anything to say in between missions. Nor there is any point in picking your lady. She just goes around the tower and says nothing. All what you get is one very disappointing scene where it is implied that you have sex, but it is done in such toothless and childish approach that even young teenagers would be left severely disappointed. This really highlights what is wrong with this game. It is just so toothless, play once, enjoy and forget it kind of the experience.

Striving for Greatness

This game reminds me of someone who has epic ambitions, executes game well, but lacks vision, talent or personality to pull off something truly amusing. It is one of those games which plays well, is unique and is worthy of recommendation to anyone interested in it. If only it had more spice and was more risque.

Calicifer's Reviews

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Fate of the World

So close and yet so far

It is one of those games which can be very entertaining to play, but it just keeps on disappointing you. It almost gets to that bliss of 'just one more turn', but severe design issues pull game right back to the ground and leave a sour taste in your mouth.

☠Flawed Execution☠

The fundamental problem of this game is that it possesses deep systems and gives you a lot of information. However, it doesn't give you tools to judge what is actually important and leaves your decision making to cards. Cards are very general and very large scale options for player to use. So, you have a system with a lot of parameters, but you only end up hammering the problem with sledge hammers. It's difficult to observe what you need exactly to do, a lot of options are not even available and any change requires massive amounts of investment. This leaves game into micomanaging hell where you have to over-invest into region for it to become productive and then constantly rotate massive policies to exploit the region or to add and remove same positive benefits constantly.
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3428653836
Game then is equally arbitrary in regards to failure states. You can lose regions or even a game out of a blue. You get a warning before a turn and there is often nothing you can do at that point. You might not have funds, cards to change course or they might not even be enough. It is bizarre how turns are split into 5 years. You can reverse all undesirable policies and give freebies to a region and it will still reach a failure state. Game is flawed, because it seemingly calculates negative effects before positive ones and you can lose region outright if it has low life (hearts). Even if not, it can fail you due to extreme randomness in events. You can out of the blue lose several hearts, unexpectadly losing you a region in hours long game. This is incredibly bad design choice as it combines grand strategy with pure RNG mechanics which mesh with each other abysmally.
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3428652891

🏰The World Building🏰

Game is quite immersive. You do feel like you are doing something important. Constant news report helps to establish a living world. Protests and state of being of regions helps you to paint how it is to live there. This is sadly is another area where games fails. It is politically bias as hell. Take an example of GMO (genetically modified food). It is supposed to be a great short to mid term solution to food shortages. However, while it is easy to implement it, it costs insane amounts of money to renew it. It also costs a massive amount of money to cancel it. Tech is absolutely garbage and in most illogical ways too. There are plenty of techs which are absolutely unviable in this game. All of these techs and solutions tend to be around solutions which are not liked by greens. GMO, non-renewable energy sources, conservative policies, etc. So, developers not only were incompetent as game developers, they were bad people too when it came to politics. Rot all around!

🌈What this game needed🌈

It was a great game for its time when indie games were non existent and small titles like that were original, unique and high quality. Now environment is completely different and it looks like a joke by comparison. What it needed and needs is a sequel which addresses those balance and GUI issues. Mainly, game needs a system which would track what your policies are influencing. It would be like in Democracy or Orbi Universo where you could see how card will interact with all the variables. This will allow you to know precisely what you are doing without obtuse texts and high learning curve. Then a game needs to have a tracking screen for main parameters in how well a nation is doing. No more random failure states. Failure should be systematic and long coming. This way player could know that things were bad for a long time and it would be more of his fault for allowing or choosing to fail.

Game also needs to either simplify its statistics or to make each of them relevant. As of today, most of the statistics are irrelevant as game doesn't interact with them in any meaningful way. Another half are statistics which works, but are irrelevant for most cases like free land for agricultural use. Game really needs to hide statistics which are irrelevant and give them as 'base' while hiding unimportant statistics deeper in game menus. Only highlighting them as an issue when they are close to becoming relevant.

As for cards themselves. They need to have another system in place. You get few slots which you have to unlock. However, cards vary from essential and low investment like education to outright insane like space programs. Something like education, land protection programs are essential for this game and they cost little to do. So, they end up just polluting available space. They should be removed as cards and be given as sliders. How much you want to invest into education and healthcare? This would give player far more meaningful options as it would allow to keep those cards permanently on with 100% slider while allowing to adjust budgets by increasing or decreasing sliders with trade offs. Developers rarely get card systems right and this game is no exception. They just end up adding simple buttons and sliders into cards and instead of 'diplomacy button' you have a card which gives you diplomacy options. It is like this in this game and it is just as bad. Cards are supposed to be for large, expensive, strategic decisions. You should think about how do you want to approach the problem rather than solving it. Do you want to energy crisis in investing to renewables or nuclear power? So, you add a card which abstracts investment into those sources. A strategic level depth here being how much nuclear fuel is available and a player could potentially invest a lot of resources into energy production which in long term shall become useless. To add further depth, make a random seed of how much hidden uranium there is and cards to explore for new fuel sources which are revealed with varying levels of cost for exploitation. BAM! Instant strategic masterpiece!

Frustrating & Outdated

The game was fine for its time, but we had come a long way since then. Its mechanics are fundamentally flawed. Its artwork is primitive. It speaks about experience and resources of developers who made them. It would had been fine for their first project which they later would massively improve upon in the sequel. Sadly, we are not living in such a world and nothing came out of this studio and we are left with thoroughly outaded game which time has rightfully forgotten.

Calicifer's Reviews

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Darwinia

Timeless Gem

Game remains an unique gem to this day. There are very few games which tries to portray a feeling of being in a virtual world. It retains an unique aesthetic and feeling. One which was very impressive back then and still holds up to this day. It is a timeless game, but these days and in the future we are cby a mediocre slop.

☠️It should be the sin to be poor☠️

I remember seeing this game in a gaming magazine. It struck me as such an unique and good looking game. Back then, games were trying to push 3D graphics into realism, but they were still looking quite unrealistic. Especially real time strategy games. This would put them in an uncanny valley or just make them look bad. Very few games looked graphically great in that period and AAA games were ones pushing the limits. This game stood out, because it was trying to do its own thing. It is an unique, little gem which is still great today. I only regret that I couldn't play it back then when I was a child. It would had blown me away as it would immerse me in a simulated, virtual world. I do regret of not being able to play it back then when games were a lot worse, far fewer and anything remotely good was an instant cult classic. This is one game which plays just as well today as it would had back then and it would had left much greater impression on me in those simpler times. Sadly, affordability was the main issue and childish lack of attention was another reason holding me back.

💖What makes it special💖

Game tries to sell you an idea that you are in virtual world which is alive. Over time, this idea grows on you as game is immersive. It knows what it needs to do in order to try and sell you an idea of a world. It is not trying to be convenient or responsive. It doesn't reduce people in a game into HP and units. This inherent resistance helps you to feel that this is its own world rather than just a level which you have to conquer. Units which you control are explicitly stated to be just programs. They are directly controlled by you and are perfectly obedient. While Darwinians (local sentient inhabitants) on the other hand cannot be directly controlled. This separation goes a long way of making you believe that these two things are different and it helps with immersion.

Another aspect of an immersion is simulation. World is simulated from Darwinians to terrain or projectiles. Even entire game map tries to portray that it is something in which Darwinians live and work in and everything is connected. Over time, it grows on you through little experiences. It plays badly, but that serves to reinforce that it is not a video game. Simulation also goes a long way. Each particle has to connect with the enemy. Grenades bounce through terrain. You start thinking in terms of line of sight and high ground. You become more engaged with the map terrain and as result, you get emotionally invested with maps themselves. Sound of difficult battle going on in the distance and your Dawrinians lollygagging at the helps to sell you this world. Likewise, you can draft them and send them to die in the war. Seeing them trying to hold on positions which they are slowly losing is a missing ingredient which so many RTS fail to give to you. In those games, map and NPCs feel lifeless where here they have their own charm as they are simulated and reacting to threats which are themselves unscripted. This naturally leads into stories and far more natural situations.

📋Stories from the front📋

I tried to establish Darwinian colony on an island, but couldn't because other 3 colonies would constantly launch raids upon me. I couldn't control my AI units fast enough to respond to two flank assault. Their main strength - perfect obedience was turned into their weakness. So, I started capturing another, starter island so to speak. I managed to establish my colony there. It was far easier cleaning spawn point after spawn point since they were separated by greater distances and were more linear to each other. So, I had time to capture souls and convert it to my population. After conquering, I then could push into that island through transfer point. With ability to rally Darwinians to my side, I managed to make them entrenched on that spawn point. Through greater initial numbers and by carrying turrets to fortify area, I could focus just clearing one spawn point after another.

Game often turns into a siege warfare where you cannot just use your own directly controlled units. You have to rely on Darwinians who are semi-independent. This is what gives game so much of its charm. It is one thing to see your units fighting, it is another to see local inhabitants trying their best to fight. There was a spider infestation which I couldn't clear myself as they were spawning way too quickly and it would be massive chore to do it solo. So, I had called up Darwinians and established turrets at the entrance. They started to thin the never ending swarm. Each side dragging fallen entities as souls back to the base for revival unto their side. It is trench warfare to the extreme. Then I made several more formations and ordered them to engage spiders from another angle. They went through their mountain chain and occupied at that time, relatively free high ground with my soldiers. My soldiers were shock troops which cleared landing territory and kept enemies at bay until my allies arrived with their transport tanks. They established upon high ground and they started to seriously thin down the enemy horde from two sides. This was the thing which I was looking for since now I could easily use my troops/programs to go in and take their nests out. Once I had broken their numbers, rest was just the cleaning operation.

🔧Where it falls short🔧

This game had a surprisingly long support history. It is clearly loved and is taken proper care of. However, not all is roses and rainbows. I had issues with making Steam screenshots for the game. Steam integration could be better.

More substantial issue is that this game is simply dated. It is a game made in few years by few dudes more or less. Production values as such are low. Its unique artstyle can hide lack of graphical budget to make graphics, maps or music. However, it still has very little content. Enemies are very few and you will see most of them quite soon in the campaign. You have like one troop and one Darwinian troop. Rest are support units or gear. Enemies likewise are just 3 types. Regular lines on a ground, flying worm or a spider. Then there are recoloured Darwinians who are now evil and are fighting you.

Then you start playing game, it can get tedious very fast. As you don't have unlocks and are not invested into the world, seeing a new map with multiple islands which are teeming with enemies, get old really fast. You need to manually kill each of those enemies and gather their souls for your Darwinias. Gameplay is slow and lacks in any variety. You sure have to get immersed and like what you are playing, otherwise you will be bored to tears.

An Unique Experiment

I do wish that I could had played this game when I saw it in gaming magazine. Back then it would had struck like a truck. Its aesthetics would offer relief from mud, grey graphics at that time, awkwardly pushing for photo realism. It would be its own indie game when indie games didn't existed. Its mechanics would be seen as cutting edge and lack of content and its tedious nature would had been no obstacles to me. It is one of those rare games which could come at any period in history and still be good or feasible to make. It came out in 2005, but it's one of those rare cases where a brilliant game like this could had came out in 2000 too and be just the same.

Calicifer's Reviews

If you are interested reading full review or want to discuss something with me, please follow the provided link. I don't allow endless discussions under my reviews. You will be warned and then your comment will be deleted with my final say on the matter.

The Amorous Adventures of Bold Sir Hans Capon

Цитата допису Feral goose from the bushes:
Gentle night, why linger on? I earned this from my love so long, Whip out your worthy, silky breasts, Who shall suck my salty bits?

I know my horses sort of well, Some alcohol from nine to twelve. Seems I always have who.res apart, From the mistress of my heart.

Landlord, let me not wait in vain, I long to sing and laugh again. Oh gentle sir, get off your chair, I shall not bring you another beer!

A textbook example of how not to do a DLC

Developers from Warhorse Studios are a grade A morons for making this DLC. They made such stupid, amateurish, intern level mistakes that it makes me wonder if there are even any senior leadership there. All of their DLCs tend to be botched in one way or another. This one reminds us all that even basic mistakes as not touching burning fire with your hands are lessons which need to be learned by some people.

☠️The tragedy of Kindom Come DLCs☠️

The thing with their DLCs is that they often aren't even bad. They could be great, but one or another stupid decision lead to an entire DLC being incredibly bad. Some DLCs are tedious. Others are buggy. Some of them are poorly placed in game. Others have great ideas and concepts, but are niche.

Same applies to game in general. Monestary quest probably took a lot of time and effort to do, but it is absolutely infuriating, boring and tedious quest to do. It is also the one most unique and interesting quest I had seen throughout my life. If only developers had a foresight to make it optional and warn players that it will be tedious. Then it could had been amazing as people could opt in on their own. However, when placed as a mandatory part of a main story line, players absolutely despise it and just cheese it. Thus ruining the game and immersion. Developers are full of ideas which are great on paper, great in practice, but are implemented and placed in a game seemingly in the worst way possible. It is a rare combination of attributes which all their DLCs have in common.

🔥What is so evil about this DLC?🔥

As anyone who read the first review of this DLC could had guessed already, it is placed right at the end credits. You complete the entire game. You ride out of the map. All it is left is to ride out to the sunset. Then this loser wants to get some strange and of course you must do everything. You cannot say no, game does not allow you to progress it. This instantly alienates half of the community. You already finished game. You were asked to ride out of the map and this loser won't let you roll the credit until you get him some syphilis.

So, this DLC is placed in the worst possible place possible. I don't know what developers were thinking. There is some serious lack of oversight in this studio and this is exactly the reason why developers cannot be trusted to develop a game without a manager or two. But enough of that. The second reason is the content of this DLC. First it is introduced as something that Hans could easily have done at his free time. Something which doesn't have to involve him. Unserious nature of his request frustrates even more people. If he would had come with some serious reason, people would be a lot more forgiving. Now it sounds just as a waste of time to even engage with this DLC.

The third reason why this content sucks is that it places the worst aspects of its gameplay to the front.

You have to do fetch quests by going to distant places to talk with person X which of course will not solve the quest and will direct you to 10 extra steps first.
You are dragged into quest chains by NPCs which have no reason to give that quest in a first place. Motivation of other people are bizarre and unnatural. After recovering the necklace, I honestly couldn't recall why I need to give this quest critical item to him, a body guard to whom this item is absolutely of no importance. It is contrived and arcadey scenarios which makes absolutely no sense.
Then game has its own mini-game with dice. As rule, all in game mini-games tend to be absolutely horrible. Caravan in New Vegas, Gwent in Witcher 3. They all suck immensely. Farkle is no exception. Not only rules are not clear and I would be unable to proceed with a game for no apparent reason as seen in picture below. Game also doesn't properly teach you how to play it, but it keeps on bringing in its gameplay. An optional mini-game which is completely unlike the main game and on top of it, it ain't that good. What is worse, nobody ever tells you what those extra dice are and that you were supposed to cheat and no one will ever call you out on that. NPCs supposedly cheat too.

So, a poorly explained mini-game which only a minority will like. Ones which is forced on you at various times and completely unexplained and you could get by just by losing few matches before. Yet now you are expected to enter to an entire tournament! Against band of bandits who cheat to no end of course!
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3435877378
Then you are given a task to fetch a love potion. One which makes you deal with unsavory individual with whom you want to have no business with. Game then forces you into getting suckered and paying king's ransom to charlatan. You can't ask him to make it and then kill him instead of paying him. Or buying some distilled alcohol with herbs and pretending it is this fabled love potion. You are forced into being scammed if you just want to get be done with it. To make matters worse, those clueless halfwits who call themselves developers also had added ways to screw up yourself in dialogue too and to double price of a potion to even more ridiculous heights. And once again, it isn't something aggressive or obvious. It is a small dialogue option about which you might not think twice about it.

The saddest part about it, I heard that it is a really good sub-quest. Shame that I won't be playing it. I wish that I could shove that unironically good quest of theirs into developers asses. Their sore behinds might grant them some common sense next time.
Then you get everything, Hans expects you to read in game book and to memorize love poems. You are later asked to recite it. Game makes an impression that it is important and you have to learn it, but it actually pointless as Hans is going to completely butcher it anyways. This is what first quote is all about. I'm not sure if you fail quest if you pick wrong options. It is really frustrating to be asked to memorize some bad poetry during my gaming and then for it to seemingly be irrelevant anyways.

Game pulls something like that several times more. Usually you are given brain dead quest markers to follow, but on rare occassion you will be asked to think and to explore naturally. It is very frustrating when game can't decide what it wants to be. Most of the time you are solving murder mystery with quest markers guiding you where to go. That is as brain dead as it can be. However, on rare occasion game will demand you to think and to find things organically. It is fun and well done, but this lack of consistency in game is very frustrating.

The Tragedy

This is actually a very entertaining DLC. Its content is well done. With just a little more polish here and there it could had been amazing. It takes exceptional talent to fail so much. All of its negative reception and hatred towards it is due to how absolutely abysmally it is integrated into base game. This screams to be an optional content which Henry does as favor to Hans before they depart. That would had solved most of its issues, but Mr.Common Sense obviously is not employed at Warhorse Studios.

Calicifer's Reviews

If you are interested reading full review or want to discuss something with me, please follow the provided link. I don't allow endless discussions under my reviews. You will be warned and then your comment will be deleted with my final say on the matter.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance

Too ambitious for its own good

It's one of those games who tries to do something great, succeeds in some, fails at others and is paper thin everywhere else. It's a very frustrating game to play, because it tend to vary between the best gaming moments I had in my life and pure rage from tediouness and jank. Thus by its nature it tends to be a very polarizing game and as 'realistic' game it tends to attract the most severe basement dwellers as its fanbase.

🔥Atmosphere🔥

This game sells itself on immersion. It's like playing Skyrim, but larping like you are in a medieval period. This is the main attraction of this game as people want Skyrim, but with more focused structure. Better questing, new setting, better atmosphere and a like. This game tries to deliver it and while it fails at large to do so, it manages to keep a thin veneer of authenticity which dazzles players and make this game immersive. However, a more acute gamer will quickly see questionable historic accuracy, simplistic NPCs AI and myriad of other issues which reminds you that this is just a game and a very simple one at that.
https://youtu.be/5h_5mK7GJXw

🕹️Saving🕹️

Saving in this game is done by sleeping in owned bed, potion or at certain story missions. Sadly, this save system does nothing, but frustrate people, because in practice it results in nothing else, but lost half an hour or longer. Usually dying over some stupid stuff or game jank. Clueless people defend this system by saying that you can power game it. However, if you have to min/max saving system with an expert player knowledge from the start, how good this system is exactly, does it add anything to the mix then? Saving is incredibly frustrating experience for a new player who doesn't know game mechanics in depth and doesn't power game. While to people who do min/max it, saving becomes trivial. Just an extra grind which they do.

As such, saving in this game does nothing, but frustrate majority of players and artificially expand game's length. It doesn't help either that saving tends to be incredibly inconsistent. Some beds save your progress while some at random do not. Quests should save your progress, but they often don't do that. Likewise, they often have an awful tendency to save during the start of a major chat, not before. This means that you have to grind conversation options all over again for xp and quests. Saving is just a giant mess in this game which serves no other purpose than to add tedium and frustration to the game.

🏰Questing🏰

If you want to see what mixed bag looks like, there is no finer game than this. Getting drunk with a priest was the best gaming moment in my life. While becoming a monk was the most tedious, boring slog of a quest which I had to restart multiple times and put up 10 hours to complete. A questline which should take you just 2-3 hours. If not for my stalwart dedication to gaming this would had been the moment I would had quitted multiple times, this is just how frustrating and tedious this quest was.

Quests in this game are often problematic as they don't account for ways how a player can complete one. Making non-direct ways obscure and unhinted. For example, I had quest to get a nobleman wine. It was incredibly frustrating quest where I needed to break through highest security doors and went through guard which basically sits in a corridor. It can take hours before you can sneak through and just to get in you need to abuse in-game jank. Likewise, when you enter monestary, you essentially need to have stealth and picklocking skills and play as a rogue. Every quest there involves sneaking and without it, you make everything so much harder for yourself. There are plenty of quests in this game where you are forced to approach situation in a certain way. Like A Night Raid where you are forced to sneak and use unreliable stealth mechanics or it is an instant failure. Another quest is killing Runt on 1 vs 1. This is a quest which also annoys countless players as it locks you in a room with the strongest opponent in a game (probably) and you have to duel him to death. What if my Henry isn't a fighter, but a rogue? Well, you have nothing left, but cheesing game and abusing its jank. Game quests have this tendency of some of them being absolutely awesome and others incredibly frustrating.

There is also an issue with quests in general. Game doesn't allow you to pick and choose quests you want to complete. It pollutes your quest log with quests you don't want to complete and it constantly spams your HUD with notifications that you can complete events. What kind of RPG is this? Likewise, it tends to lure unsuspecting players to their DLC quests. Woman's Lot is one such example where a player is taken away from the experience and is forced to play very tedious questline which can take him several hours at least just because he bothered to give a question to an NPC...

Then there are immersion. Game makes a big deal how you are just blacksmith son and you don't know how to fight. However, you kill like 3 bandits on your way to bury your parents. Henry already had seen more war and fighting than most city guards. However, game often assumes your lack of experience and it creates ludonarrative dissonance. Game quests also tends to emphasize how nobody is willing to trust you and they they casually give you to go solo completing the most important quest in an entire kingdom...Nor calling you a boy stops any of NPC to send you clearing bandit camps full of well armed and armored bandits. Things like that completely break the immersion.

Finally, main questline in game is also just...bad, It is a medieval roleplaying game, but every main quest in this game is about conducting detective work. I don't want to be a detective. I want to be a knight! And how do you think game handles such murder mystery type questing? Exactly, exceptionally poorly. You have to solve a mystery while game actively guides you by your nose by saying where to go next from A to B. It's a joke and game misses the opportunity to indulge player into fantasy of that era. Quests like that are few and far in between and mostly focused at the start of a game. Which might explain why this game trick so many players into believing that it's a better game than it actually is.

☠️Combat☠️

Game tries to reach for the stars with a very ambitious combat system, but it falls flat on its face. The problem with combat system is that enemies don't play by the same rules as you do. They don't get tired as you. They can instant block most of your attacks. Combat absolutely sucks for anything more than 1 vs 1 and even then, it is largely a stat fest where a person with highest stats win easily. It's even more lopsided than in MMORPGs since at least there you could do SOME damage to a high level player. In this game you are literally invincible against low level NPCs. Yet, they still are so eager to annoy you and to attack you. It's ridiculous how you are casually fist fighting in a full knight gear against peasants. They can't land even a single point of damage on you. Likewise, bandits get instantly overpowered and killed with high end weapons in a few strikes. However, it still doesn't mean that combat isn't frustrating. High end enemies tend to be in groups and then just constantly rush you. You cannot take one of them without other striking your from your side. This makes combat a very frustrating experience as it really drags out some fights and forces you to jank your opponents out by taking terrain which they don't know how to handle.

Another problem is that game locks camera on enemies. This prevents you from moving or fleeing. It is very sticky and makes your character very hard to control freely. Not to mention that opponents can cheat and force you into animations out of the blue. Like making you to fall down for some reason (probably pressed F to tackle from 3 meters away). Combat in such situations don't get good. Enemies are mindless and they essentially can start chasing your through entire map. I once had to backtrack through entire forest into the village where I finally got backup...

As for fighting itself, it's bad. Combos are weak and pointless. They are very difficult to pull off, because it's hard to precisely make a hit you want. A center thrust can very easily be understood as directional thrust. Even if you do a combo, enemy can just block it anyways. And entire skill tree is like that. It is just combos for your specific weapons which you won't bother memorizing or using anyway. Entire skill tree is similar. A lot of questionable and useless skills with some which break game balance.

📋Questionable historical accuracy 📋

In the end, even its premise is poorly executed. This game is as historical as far as buldings and models go. Everything else is just nonsense. For one, this game fails to properly portray villages of that period. Most of them in this game are size of a hamlet. However, they have a very heavy pressence of merchants. This isn't historically accurate. Villages often were a lot bigger than they are portrayed here and merchants weren't just standing in the open. There were bazaars to which they had traveled. Furthermore, they certainly didn't had their own shop in every hamlet with their own personal shop guard. Jeez, I hate those weebs who are saying that this game is somehow historically accurate. It is as historically accurate as a caricature.

Then entire countryside dynamic is non existent. Towns are barren of people. Most notably, game doesn't feature children which exclusion makes it completely unrealistic. What is more, despite that most people in that era were subsistence farmers, in this game there are precious few fields and nobody works in the fields, only in their own gardens. There isn't a single portrayal of three-crop system. Game is little better than throwing bunch of matching assets unto the map and pretending it's realistic. Here is a quick list of flaws:

Hund howling.
Useless skill tree.
Constant bandit ambushes.
Unhistorical weapon names.
Silly in-game economy.
Very poor vegetation models.
Poor lighting.
NPC loading.
No tavern life.
No NPC guidance.
Pointless eating mechanic.
Free bathing.
No mounted combat.
Lack of inventory management.
Poor hunting.

It's one of those games

Games which I end up reviewing negatively despite being quite fun to play. The problem comes from sheer frustration and lack of common sense from developers. Their lack of experience shines through and every time I start having fun, game pulls me out of the experience and pisses me off. As story focused game, it is timeless. However, it's deeply flawed, paper thin experience which collapses under any sort of scrutiny. Hopefully its sequal will be better in every way!

Calicifer's Reviews

If you are interested reading full review or want to discuss something with me, please follow the provided link. I don't allow endless discussions under my reviews. You will be warned and then your comment will be deleted with my final say on the matter.

ARMORED CORE VI: FIRES OF RUBICON

Sorry, didn't get it.

Sid Meier’s Civilization VI

Civ you loved, but with 33% less soul!

This is the same good old civilization which was iterated and improved. I think it is the best it has ever been. However, it seems less lively, less unique in this entry. Everything in this game feels more generic and lacks personality even if the game has high production values and aesthetics which work.

Why people love grand strategy?

This game is as flawed as it always has been. Useless AI, drawn-out turns, moving your units through nations takes decades. Those issues are still all present here. The game also tries a lot of new mechanics like climate change, dynamically changing environments, world leagues, leader agendas, and behaviors. I cannot fault Civilization for trying. I don't think that most of what they tried works, and most end up either as a nuisance or as busywork. However, they don't break the game, and well, at least Firaxis tried something new. The game didn't fix its fundamental issues, but that doesn't make this one worse for it. I don't care for their monetization model either, as Civilization games eventually always get deeply discounted, and you can pick it up for just a few euros. It ends up with truly massive quantities of content to play for very cheap. All of this doesn't matter as it is still a good Civilization game, and what makes it a good game? It is the desire to do just one more turn and the stories you make while playing a grand strategy. Stay a while and listen to my own!

Monster of your own making

Ah, I remember when I was young and idealistic. World seemed so vast and full of potential. Vast, unexplored plains awaited me at every turn and I, Trajan, leader of Rome had led them in conquering the unknown. We settled city after city. Tamed environment left and right. Fought barbarians and brought law to uncivilized lands. In our conquests we found others who had their own goals. One was a Muslim civilization in search of coin and wealth. We happily traded with them just as with other city state which we found at the north of vast mountain chain which cut our continent in half. Past it, we managed to establish two cities, one by the sea side and other by the mountains. This is where we met people from Indonesia.

We were focused on expanding our Empire. Settling the unsettled land even at dislike of other nations who seemed uneager to invest in lands yet unconquered, but somehow claiming rights to them. Such unwritten rules were of no consequence for vast Roman Empire. We settled our cities and would later hear complaints how this virgin soil was theirs for the taking. It is funny how everyone starts caring about what they had only when they lose it. Regardless of all of that, we pressed onwards, dreaming of what lies beyond the sea, exploring new frontiers and finally turning back inwards and developing what we already have.

Those hopes were dashed away as Mansa Musa, our rich neighbours had launched a surprise war with their Venetian allies. We didn't had much in terms of army, but our frontier cities were well protected. However, against rushing hordes of mercenaries and merchant armies, it was unclear how well they would survive a siege. One city didn't even had walls while other was just finishing them at break neck speed when war was declared. Their new fortifications would be soon tested by fire and wisdom in settling a city in a strategic choke point.

As defenses were being prepared, Trajan was busy in organizing a relief army. We drew all the available troops and garrisons from our other settlements. We paid a king's ransom for allying ourselves with a city state and bribing their military to assist us. With these troops we had to hold the frontline while Empire could muster new legions for war. Luckily for us, merchants are not good at war. Their main focus was at our most well protected and built up city. They failed to properly surround the city and incurred casualty after casualty in trying to assault its walls. As a city was finally surrounded and siege reaching its final days, our reinforcements finally had arrived. Since city was split by a mountain chain, armies had to split to two different forces to surround my settlement. A part which it sent to go around got wiped out. Defenders were reinforced, siege withold. From then onwards, these infidels knew the wrath of Rome for their dishonorable actions. Only their capital was allowed to stand as our legions had won the long war against their small merchant cities and their free city allies. Only two major cities were spared the pillaging and honest Romans had re-settled in their former lands.

History had repeated itself. As we were downsizing our military - industrial complex, trying to boost an economy to support it, we were attacked by our Indoneasan 'friends'. Gitarja had launched an attack against our mountain fortress. Our Empire separated by mountain chain, paths non-existent and route perilous. Our legions had marched on through mountains and jungles from both sides in order to relief our city which held well. It had professional garrison and strong walls high in the mountains, surrounded by rivers, making a siege a lengthy and costly affair.

That is worse, attack came during start of industrial age. Our Empire was trying to settle new colonies in another continent at North and South poles. Ultimately, those adventures were unnsucessful no matter how hard we tried to maintain out colonies. Only a lone island found in between managed to thrive. This expansion was fueled by our desperate age of new wonder resource called - niter. Unfortunately, our Empire was devoid of it and we had to settle distant lands to mine it. Our enemy had no shortage of it and with its use, it tried to conquer tenacious Roman people with their arcane boomsticks. We were seen as outdated and backwards by them. However, we still had a large military and ability to assemble vast legions due to sheer size of our Empire. Ongoing war was long and brutal as we grinded their new musketeer units with our cavalry charges and held the line with disciplined infantry. We lost a lot, but we managed to successfully gain a single city of theirs which was blessed by niter mines. Our woes were at the end as our colony began sending shipments of precious niter resource and our newly conquered province had a small mine too. However, said resource was always precious and jealously hoarded by our legion's quartermasters.

After two brutal wars, our national psyche was changed. As we entered industrial age, we knew that we had to maintain a massive army to secure our future. Country changed from Republic to Monarchy and eventually Fascism. Our dreams and hopes for exploration had died. Our desire to for science were consumed by war. Our cities were transformed to serve the needs of our vast military. Our society changed with mandatory military service and seeing military career as the brightest career path in our society. Rome became a massive military juggernaut and to fuel it, we turned to coal and eventually oil. We became the core polluter in the world which ironically further alienated us from rest of the world. We were a massive pariah state, slowly killing the world.

We tried to enact reforms. To strengthen our economy and to downsize our military. However, an international crisis had emerged as South Korea had captured capital of Norway in another continent and emergency alliance was agreed on an war declared on Seondeok of South Korea. Since I already was embroiled in my colonial wars, I had a significant military presence were and joined the fight. To my shock, my old and outdated military was no match to modern armor and artillery of South Korea. They had tanks, aircraft and modern artillery where I still had rifles and military or WW1 era. Initial encounters had bloodied my forces and as they struggled to make any gains in foreign lands, one thing became apparently clear to Trajan. South Korea must be stopped. It is the most powerful and advanced nation on that continent. If our alliance will not be able to turn the tide, Korea will conquer the entire continent and wipe remaining nations out of it. Thus the order was given for full mobilization and our armies set sail across the seas, not unlike like USA did during world wars. I had abandoned my colonial wars and allowed my colonies to be free. All the troops were channeled to reinforce my German allies.

There we were afraid to attack. Our previous encounters with South Korea had seen us encountering heavy loses to their aircraft, artillery and infantry. Thus we were slowly amassing troops from our colonies and mainland. We were defending lands of our allies and with massive numbers and their seemingly reckless aggression, we managed to surround and to destroy their forces. Eventually, they had exhausted themselves in their attacks and we started pushing in. South Korean forces were depleted, exhausted, demoralized and spread way too thin across the continent. With weight of numbers and professionalism of our armies, we managed to liberate Oslo. We had continued the momentum and had captured two other cities from Seondeok. However, we could hold them as partisans kept rebelling and tying our forces down. Eventually Seondeok had reorganized and reinforced their troops and started whittling down our forces. Seeing that future war was of no use, we agreed to make peace. As last act of spite, we leveled those accursed cities and left the continent for good.
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3401294753
That was had amply demonstrated just how backwards our military was. We had rushed to invest heavily into our technologies. New universities, new labs, new research projects were announced each day. Our empire was trying to catch up and modernize our backwards empire. For the most part we did, we managed to close the gap militarily with out far more advanced peers on the other continent, but we were hopelessly backward in all other sectors. That is worse, with new age, nations started to test nuclear weapons. We had one mine in the Arctict. We started to mine uranium, test our nuclear weapons. But in an ironic twist of fate, those lowlands were flooded by melting ice caps. A global warming created solely by me due. I was robbed my only source of uranium in an nuclear age. We still had enough to test weapons, to build missiles, but our most vulnerable secret was, we didn't had enough uranium to actually make nuclear weapons while our enemies did. We still pretended that we did. Bluffing is all that we could do and we pretended that we had vast ICBM arsenal, we built nuclear silos, nuclear submarines while all the while, we didn't had uranium to fuel our ballistic missiles. If our empire was to survive, we needed to capture new mines. One was in the south, owned by Gitarja which wouldn't trade uranium with us nor had any use of it themselves as they were no longer focused on warfare themselves, but rather diplomacy and placing themselves as a world leader.

Our woes and plans were cut short as another massive war had erupted in a distant continent. Again, world nations had declared emergency against Seondeok expansionism and we had answered the call. We had a lot of bitterness left from our last war, being so unceremoniously used by other nations and then dumped without any rewards or recognition. We had high hopes that second war will go a lot better for us. We had modernized our forces. We had tanks, aircraft, battleships, missiles. Our army was modern, professional and massive. Sadly, none of us could had predicted what hell on Earth our landing in Germany would be.

Our armored core had landed in coastal German city first. What we saw there had defied our expectations. Massive robots had stalked the land. Our cannons couldn't hit them as invisible shields protected them. Our armor melted against their lasers. We lost entire armored regiments trying to assault their towering monstrosities. After they were done with us, they continued in sieging Germany as a whole. Each city was under siege, nation was facing existential crisis. Seeing their allies being so unceremoniously wiped out had sapped little hope they had. As a siege continued, rest of our armies had arrived. We started a massive landing campaign as we tried to offload million of men, their armor and artillery. We might be outmatched, but we never do anything half-hearted. Our massive armies were deploying by the shoreline and establishing a bastion of resistance against those mechanical monstrosities.

Landing of that size never goes smoothly even at best of times and enemy had a thing or two to say about that. We were bombarded by one size by Seondeok city state allies and their robots. At the other, Seondeok was pushing with its main force, bombarding our disembarking troops and assaulting ones which already had set up a frontline. Thousands had died in the sea, trying to reach shores. Many more had perished trying to reach frontlines. We were bombarded from each side, every road and camp was in range of their artillery. Those were dark days. Our armies died by the thousands each day for month upon month while we fruitlessly tried find and effective way to counter those walking monstrosities. Many renown regiments had simply just vanished from existence. Entire armies wiped out. Situation was looking hopeless, but we were not the ones to give up while there is still strength in our arms and a rifle in our hands.

Through years of war and constant reinforcements from the fatherland, we had managed to gain an upper hand. We had figured out tactics how to effectively combat those robots and we started to push them back. As we were pushing back, even more of them were arrriving on the battlefield, it seemed like never ending march of men or iron. We started to doubt if there is anything more for us here than death and dying for freedom of our ungrateful and weak allies. Hundred of thousands of men had died for these pigs who will forget about us when the war will end and will promptly continue their squabbling and self-destructive politics which already had led to two world wars. However, those were thoughts for later, we already had comitted and we had to survive another day.
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3401293685
At this stage in the war, years after start of a world war, we managed to lift sieges of German towns and reinforce their lands with our armies. We set up positions and were fighting legions of iron men in well prepared positions. We knew how to fight them. Might of our legions were conquering all even if we expended lives of our brave Roman soldiers for bolts and circuits. We held our defenses valiantly against hordes of those machines for an year, fighting in a prepared positions or hunting their breakthrough with our armored divisions in a countryside. Year had passed and we noticed an odd change. Their iron men became slower, less aggressive, more lethargic. It was subtle at first. Fewer artillery strikes on our position. Fewer assaults on our fortified positions. We didn't noticed shift in warfare at first, but then effects became more pronounced. Their robots became slower, their shields became weaker or sometimes would fail entirely to stop our attacks. Machines themselves became slow and indecisive. Not understanding the source of their weakness, but sensing weakness and opportunity, we launched an assault on captured German cities. We liberated them easily and had trashed legions of iron men with relative ease. It seems that their armies were collapsing on their own. From captured scientists and officials, we gained a full picture of what is happening. Those robots were fueled by uranium and they devoured massive quantities of this fuel. As war raged on, Seondeok had overproduced her iron men while their uranium deposits shriveled and evaporated. In this massive strategic blunder we had managed to capture one of their cities and we set up our eyes on a capital. We defeated their armies and war was won. But we wanted to make a wound to her, such that she would not be able to recover and threaten us ever again. We continued the war and had razed their capital to the ground. For hundreds of thousands of soldiers which died in their accursed wars, we pillaged and razed their capital to the ground. We sent millions of people to the pyre, ones with some sense fled, others perished in flames. This had marked final act of vengeance in the war. We left that accursed continent as pariah state as were were. We died for their sins only to be condemned and despised by all.

As our legions returned from their conquest, situation at home was grim. Global warming had sunk most of the coastal regions. Economy was under strains, trying to cope with rising sea level. What is worse, we were running out of crucial resources. Oil reserves were running low. Nobody would want to trade uranium with us and after seeing that the future holds, we had to acquire it. And thus, under the necessity of expanding our Empire, of acquiring more living space and gaining necessary resources which our motherland was devoid of, we launched full scale war on Gitarja. If world cannot be trusted, then we alone will stand tall in it. Conquest was short and easy. She was no match for our legions, forged in fires of war, coming out of hell itself. Even if her lands spanned half the continent, she was rolled over with contemptuous ease. After which, we erased all what they once were. Their citizens were allowed to live, but we took away their religion, their language, we deleted their history.

Most of the world had declared war on us, but were impotent in doing anything. We had a superior navy to any each of them and entire ocean had separated us. When we were done, Rome also had researched same robotic technology as our enemies had used. We tested it in our war and sent a small army to an old continent. It emerged from south pole Antarctic, laying waste to our Norwegen cities. They were taken by a complete surprise and were forced to sue for peace as we razed city after city. The rest quickly sued for peace as there was no point in fighting anymore.

In the end, we were officially declared as pariah state and cut off completely from international trade. A world which we saved multiple times had turned its back on us. A world which tried to backstab us, but we grinded them to dust. Actions which we did in order to ensure lasting balance in the world had made us devil itself. We eventually had made AI controlled death robots ourselves, but found them not worth the effort. The sheer cost of resources needed to make them was deemed as inferior to flesh and blood of conventional forces. Our military got so used to death that sacrificing entire formations to achieve objectives became a common sense. For there was always more of us. For every one of us which died, there was two ready to take its place. Our nation was always devoid of any advanced resources and the only thing which we had in ample supply was quality men ready to be sacrificed on altar of war. In the end, they proved that flesh is more resilient than steel. That man can outthink and to outsmart the machine. That spirit of man is is superior to legions of self replicating men of iron.

This marked the final chapter of Rome's legacy. Learning lessons and seeing declining state of this world, we focused our efforts on interstellar efforts. We established bases on moon and mars. We were the first to colonize other star systems. In world which we destroyed with climate change. In a continent which we had forgotten, one which returned to their old ways. Our meddling only restored balance of power in it and locked it to a never ending cycle of warfare. There is little left in this dying world for us. Its resources consumed, environment destroyed. We returned to our roots in a way, exploring new frontiers in which to settle. We were last nation standing on Earth. Its navy, legions and distance from everyone else ensured that no one will ever bother us again. We coldly observed how rest of the world collapses into infighting over ever shrinking resources while we were slowly preparing to abandon them all. In a world which we ultimately, unwillingly destroyed ourselves.

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.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted

This game together with Underground 2 is our childhood classic. It is one of those games with which we grew up with. For me, it marks a step from childhood to teenage years with later Need for Speed games falling into grey blob which never attracted our interest. This is when Need for Speed games were THE racing games which everyone should play. So, I went back to the original to see how well it held up and if it is worth playing.

The quick answer, yes. It is still rock solid. Graphics had reached the point when they didn't mattered anymore as much. Everything looks as it should. Gameplay itself is solid and holds up as a decent, basic racing game with unique for its time, time slow down mechanics. Together, you are treated to old school, nostalgic rock songs. Story starts strong and gets you going. Game is fun to play even today and runs great on modern systems.

The major issue with this game is that it doesn't offer much variety. You don't have much depth in how cars behave. You don't have much depth in upgrading your cars. It is always mandatory "Upgrade Up" button which you press in the garage as next tier of performance gets unlocked. In addition, even customization of your car is kinda limited. The only truly bad part of this game are Drag races. It is a game mode where it takes away direct control of your car and you can only send commands to move left or right. In theory it should be all about gear shifting to gain the advantage. The problem is that gear shifting is bad and underveloped so there is nothing to it. However, it is nightmare to control your car. Those missions often love to place scripted cars as road blocks to dodge. However, if you press left or right, your car might fail to react all together. It's very sluggish to shift directions, resulting in very frustrating control of a car. That is worse, even if you dodge the obstacle, terrible auto control can just slam into the terrain ending your race. I hated every moment of this awful game mode.

Game then drags on with its campaign. While it starts strong, you are quickly worn down by endless repetition of same missions. Each Blacklist driver demands a long list of races to be won and around 5 challenges against cops to be completed. It is tedious even if you are good at the game and win every race on your first try. God forbid if you are struggle in this game. Especially against cops it can become a loss spiral as financial loses against them are limitless, but your source of income seems to be locked to races which is finite. At the end, those challenges become ridiculous, expecting you to race 13 minutes against 5 Heat cops. Races likewise start becoming challenge in patience as they can be brutally long. Have fun losing at the end and having to restart the whole thing! So, the grind with this one is real and I'm not surprised that back then I sort of lost interest in the game. Everyone did and very few people get their BMW back.

Now another issue are with cops. Lets not pretend, cops were never good in Need for Speed games. In Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered I could negate them completely by slamming every new cop which enters the race and knocking them out thus ending chase in an instant. And that game supposedly has them better than in other games. Here system is annoying. Game tends to force too many encounters with them. On anything below Heat 5 level they are very annoying, because how easy it is to lose them. I have to babysit a cop until chase escalates and I can start fleeing. On Heat 5 it becomes annoying. You get special cheating cops with cars faster than yours. It is same in all Need for Speed games. So, it becomes about just racing and waiting until they make a mistake and crash into something. Gameplay is about endurance and whitling them down through attrition. However, cops will start to lay spike trips. They are super annoying, because if you hit even a pixel of it, you are instantly busted. It is really frustrating to have this arbitrary failure mode. It always feel cheap when you get caught this way. To make matters worse, they start putting SUVs which are really hard to force through. So, they lock up road entirely and it is up to RNG if you are going to punch through them. Last, but not least is how game handles "Busted" mechanic. If you slow down, a meter will start filling up where cops consider you to be caught. The only problem is that this meter is set way too aggressively and even moving slowly is enough for you to get caught. It is frustrating as if you lose speed even for a moment, it can spell defeat. Cop chases are tedious, easy and exhausting only to be frustrating with some BS mechanics which are way too powerful. The only time they become somewhat challenging to race against it at Heat 6 car. However, if you want a challenge you have to race them at Heat 7 level with recreational cars which are a lot slower than your end game cars. Sadly, that is available only on one challenge mission with one car. As a result, regular gameplay doesn't have any challenge anymore for veteran gamer like myself.

In other Need for Speed games cops cheat by going way faster than they should in order to catch up with you. However, in this game cops don't cheat this way. This can result in a lot of anti-climactic chases where you just wipe the entire force with one excellent trap. This then can force a hilarious situations where you are desperately trying to find cops in order for chase not to end. Game also has two states in one where it allows you to escape and another where it cheats and spawn cops. Both are frustrating in their own right as you can end the chase against your wishes and cops don't naturally try to find you while you have to evade them or go to them. Game also cheats a lot as it can spawn cops on top of you. It can even cut cooldown (after certain period of time chase ends if cops don't find you) timer down in order to give time for cops to find you. Imagine how fun it is to sit for a minute only to notice that timer gets reduced and cop is teleported nearly on top of you... Game will do it on some roads where NPCs normally dont roam in. Game is frustrating and cheats in its own way which takes away from the fun.

In this game cops will always try to initiate chases. After a race. During the race at random. When you are driving in open world. When you knock few things out in open world. During scripted story points. As you can see, it just becomes tiresome. It is a long game and you don't want to be messing with an exhausting threat. Especially when you have often do to multiple runs with cops for milestone for each Blacklist driver. As there 15 of them, you can easily go into 50+ progression chases alone. Not to mention how many times I have to avoid forced chase after a race. The trick with them is to always go to menu and jump to the garage. This way you can just reset cops and roam to the next race. Likewise, if you are getting caught, ALT+F4 starts you with a progress before the chase and it reduces Heat level a little without any negative outcomes. This game becomes really tiresome as player doesn't have an agency to play the way he likes it. Need for Speed Hot Pursuit had this thing fixed with player being able to choose races, repeat them to earn highest scores and you not tied to winning each of them initially, races have set chance or guarantee for cops and you can free roam in a lot more detailed world. While Most Wanted is a childhood classic, newer games had done gameplay better.

Graphically game suffers heavily from vomit filter. It is yellow filter over everything which pretentious and clueless game designers thought to be neat back then. It was hideous back then and it aged terribly. You can't completely remove it, but you can set it to minimum. As mentioned previously, game still looks okay to this day. That is all what matters to have fun. Anything more is just cherry on top. As for the sandbox. City in which you are put in is functional. It is good for racing which uses it extensively. Traffic is not too bad and it is challenging and memorable in places. I still for example remembered those windmills in a highway. Likeweise, music also felt nostalgic and familiar. Those are the old classics. However, game lacks further refinement which other racing games had. There are no secrets. No sights to be seen. Game has nothing going for it and city is made as an excuse to put racing missions all over the city. City serves no other function. Which was neat back in its time to have an open world gameplay and it is certainly a gold standard how racing game should be made today. However, lack of point of interests and secrets makes it feel dead. Newer games are a lot better in their own world which are interesting to explore just for the sake of it.

As for racing mechanics themselves. They are good. This is arcade racer which means that it is very forgiving. It is great as a starting point for more serious racing games. Slow time function is really helpful to take those aggressive turns which otherwise you couldn't do. It really is "Get out of the jail" card for all those racing neanderthals who cannot figure out that you need to slow down before taking a corner. Chases themselves are good as cars smash through street objects and send them flying. Likewise, opponents crash into stuff just as well and they don't seem to cheat too much nor they are obvious at it like in some later Need for Speed games. Opponents seem well balanced from start to finish as difficulty level raises steady without big difficulty spikes. You feel like you are fast. You feel excitement correctly taking corners, managing not to hit into the walls and game properly rewards you. If you play flawlessly, you will be well ahead of your competition.

However, game fees lacking. As it doesn't have meaningful upgrades or long term customization of your car, game feels rather light on content. Its weather system is just a filter. It lacks day and night cycle or real rain. Likewise, I would had enjoyed seeing more fleshed out story. Maybe some cutscenes in a mid game to change story a bit. Game story is great for what it is. It is over the top, it starts strong, it is everything what game such as this needs. It keeps you interested and invested. However, it peeters out. There are no cinematics until the very end after you start the game proper. The little interaction you get are through voice messages. Voice actors do a good job, but they just don't have anything to work with. The only thing in this 30+ hour game is a plot of someone setting up racers from within as cops show up to bust every race after you leave. This sub-plot doesn't go anywhere and as you can imagine, game feels hollow. You mostly get messages saying "good job" and that is it. The last thing which I miss in this game are drift game mode. Game engine works quite well for drifting and I'm surprised that it isn't in the game. It would be quite fun for some missions to play around enchanced drifting like in previous titles. That would really spicen things up. Likewise, rain could activate that "drift mode" in open world, creating real dynamic interactions and change of gameplay when it starts raining. In addition, if developers could have had added night races, that would had been sublime. And few more songs if I'm making a Christmas wish list.

As you can see, there isn't anything fundamentally wrong with this game. I just want more of it. This is a great sign that game is really good at its core. Sadly, Need for Speed franchise was milked to death at that time. EA milked it to death back then and over time developers couldn't keep up. They couldn't keep on delivering excellent games and games really dropped in quality afterwards. This game feels like it was undercooked. That it would had been a lot better with more content. As it was an amazing success, no doubt EA would had benefited from releasing Need for Speed Most Wanted 2 immediately after it. With new city and every addressing its every shortcoming. Just remaking the same game, but bigger and better. That would had been enough to make it a big success and instant classic amongst gamers. However, milking machine had to keep on going and from this point, Need for Speed games became worse and worse until it sunk into irrelevancy. Their latest game - Unbound is a complete disgrace, Forza essentially became what Need for Speed needed to be. From entire two decades, I can only recommend Need for Speed Hot Pursuit. I think that it is the best Need for Speed game which I ever played, but it suffers from same issue as Most Wanted does. It really feels undercooked.

Need for Speed Most Wanted stood the test of time. I had completed main campaign. It was really fun at the beginning, but became tedious over time. It is a long game which gives you everything at a very start and then very little content up to the very end. It is kind of game which most people quit at some point and you cannot blame them. Game is overstretched. Overall, it is still fun to play and it is a good game to permanently sit on your computer when you want 10-30 minute short, easy race.

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