Recent reviews by Aqour

This review's changed a couple of times since the game's released. There's been serious cycles of "it's so over" followed by "we're so back" when it comes to gameplay, content balancing, performance, etc. The audience that came for a horde shooter with a Starship Troopers experience faced devs who seemed to want a niche hardcore, limited-win game instead. Regularly strengthening the tougher enemies while weakening players' ability to counter them. Every time a particular counter method was discovered and utilized (e.g. popping charger leg armor, railguns providing the best anti-armor performance, etc.), the response from the devs was to eliminate those methods by nerfing whatever was enabling it, and oftentimes buffing the affected enemy units (often by increasing spawn counts and rates, leading to high-difficulty missions being so inundated with so many heavy-armor enemies at once that the gameplay devolved into just running in endless circles the whole game to stay alive while waiting for your limited stratagems and anti-armor weaponry to come off cooldown).

Eventually, however, things began to turn around. By my measure, it was around the time period that the Illuminate faction first appeared. The game had just come off a series of balancing patches to address how the ineffectiveness of anti-armor weapons against armor and the complete uselessness of certain weapons and stratagems was forcing a "meta" gameplay (and addressing how the prior attempts to kill the meta with nerfs was only driving players away). The game felt like it was opening back up, with people able to actually pick and choose a variety of loadouts without being so combat-ineffective that it was practically griefing. Following that with a new faction with noticeably different strengths and weaknesses than the other two, it all brought in a fresh breath of life into the game and turned me from having virtually given up on the game to being cautiously optimistic.

Since then, the devs have mostly avoided the pitfalls of the past, taking player feedback into account and keeping rebalancing tweaks on the smaller scale but still experimenting to find what works best (shoutout to the many changes of shrapnel patterns on the Eruptor). New features long desired by the players, such as ammo selections and more recently weapon customization, continue to show that Arrowhead is still looking for ways to enrich the experience in ways both large and small. Other aspects, like the removal of selection- and time-gating on the Super Store and full usage of in-game currency for the weapon customization system, offer hope that the game won't fall prey to focusing on monetization through microtransactions, a fate all too common in live-service titles.

TL;DR We're so back, let's hope it stays that way for real this time.

Basically XCOM gameplay, except you're a medieval mercenary group and instead of fighting alien invaders you're depopulating the land of bandits, refugees, and anyone else you get paid to fight. Solid recommend.

<<Assassin 1 | Kaiser: To all mercenaries, do not count days, do not count miles, count only the number of Feds you've killed! Go!>>

Best damn plane game I've ever played. Great gameplay, fun dialogue, amazing music, and it looks pretty as hell. For only $25, you're getting a $60 experience. I have both AC7 and this, yet this is the game that I've come back to repeatedly.

Note: VR/HOTAS integration is half-baked and has performance/functionality issues, but using them while doing my Mercenary difficulty run was such a fun experience that I'd solidly recommend it despite its flaws.

I've had years of fun playing this game, doing co-op matches with my dad while we were thousands of miles apart. It was a great way to keep in touch and share our common interest in video games and military matters.

Edit: Previously this review was negative due to a patch for a multiplayer exploit that was only rolled out to the Windows version of the game, effectively killing the ability to play multiplayer matches with Mac or Linux players. They have since released an opt-in beta branch that rolls back the game version to re-enable cross-OS play. While I'm still not keen on the dropped support, I'm happy to have this option now.

Dead playerbase, most of which is bots and whales, A thousand hours of my life I'll never get back. The music of the game is incredible however, worth downloading at least to pull it from the game files.

If I had to pick one good thing about this game, I'd say it's the freedom of choice you have in dealing with combat. There are dozens of different ways you can go about taking down a foe, each one just as viable as the last, leaving the choice up to you.

Great soundtrack, fun gameplay (controller recommended in my opinion), over-the-top story and characters, all in a neat package.

No knowledge of the Metal Gear franchise is needed to enjoy the game, it stands up by itself just fine.

Pay to not play the game.

Overkill is crashing this plane with no survivors.

Somehow they took a decently fun coop game, and thought "Gee, what would make this better?"
"I know! Let's add more paid DLC, microtransactions, lolsorandum forced memes, and for good measure, lock any negative threads on our forum!"

Overkill: Where we expect anti-consumer practices to draw in more customers.

The AI did a hyperspace jump behind my battlegroup, boarded my newly-constructed battlecruiser, and used that battlecruiser to destroy my flagship before I could retaliate.

10/10