Recent reviews by archonsod

Another victim of Steam's binary yes/no recommendation system. It's not a bad game as such, however when I think 'city builder' I'm looking for something more along the lines of the old Impressions series games, or Banished et al. This on the other hand is firmly from the Frostpunk side of city painters; less building of a living, breathing city, more playing tetris with building effect radii in an effort to extract maximum possible efficiency from a limited space.
If that's your jam there's a lot to like here. For one it looks gorgeous. One nice touch is that rather than build individual housing for your citizens they build districts themselves, springing up wherever there's sufficient attraction and space. The same is true of farms - you don't place fields, rather you set how many fields the farm should have when you build it and it'll build them itself. The end result is an organic looking city that nestles just right in the admittedly pretty landscape no matter how aesthetically egregious your building placement happens to be.
The optimisation puzzle itself is fine. You have a limited build radius from your city centre, extendable as you upgrade the centre, and buildings which can extend the radius should it be needed. Another interesting aspect is that when you build a cultural building, neighbouring residential districts will flip to that culture, and you'll get factions of that culture wanting to move in - for example place an economic building next to a district and it'll flip it's culture to commercial, and you may get the Sassanids asking to move in. The factions bring various bonuses depending on their trust level with you - which can be boosted by placing buildings they like - but they can also run up tensions with each other you'll be expected to deal with. It's a neat idea that adds an extra level to the placement puzzle.
There's some minor issues. The UI needs work, which I expect will be fixed in EA. It'd also be nice if you could zoom in close enough to see your citizens wandering around. Others where the tutorial could be clearer - you have wanderers for example who, according to the tooltip, are basically homeless people who spawn when there's not enough room in a district. Given you're not building the residential districts however it's not clear what you're supposed to do about it - you can't build more housing, and while it's stated citizens will move in should areas be attractive enough there's not enough information to explain why, for example, residential districts will pop up in one area and not another despite the overlay showing both having the same level of attractiveness; similarly the wanderers are also associated to the districts themselves with no indication of why - does it mean I need more religious culture districts, or would they be happy living in an education district? Similarly, I've noted times the game claims I have wanderers in the total at the top, but no sign of any in the individual residential districts; is that supposed to tell me something? bug? unfortunately there's not enough information provided to determine one way or the other. The whole 'four ages' thing also doesn't really seem as interesting as I initially envisioned; yes you have a potential fail state, going up an era unlocks new buildings and changes some mechanics, but it largely feels like a cosmetic shift; Tropico managed to pull off the same thing with far more charm (though admittedly, it wasn't trying to compress a couple of thousand years into one era).
If you're a fan of the layout optimisation puzzle games such as Frostpunk, Simcity Societies et al I suspect you'll probably enjoy this. For those of us who don't fall into that group however there's not really anything here likely to change your mind.

It's a digital implementation of the card game. For those who've never played, the short version is that you have a market of cards, each of which correspond to a number(s) from 1 to 12. On your turn you roll a die and whatever result you get you activate those cards which usually give you money, or let you take it from other players, and then use it to acquire more cards. The object of the game is to build four of the landmark cards which are expensive, but provide a permanent bonus too.
So it's a fairly simple game which would have been odd if they hadn't managed to implement correctly. The problem is the game lacks the expansions (DLC?) which go some way to mitigating the biggest problem the game has - there are numerous turns, particularly early game, where literally nothing happens because the number rolled doesn't match any cards. It's a minor annoyance when it happens at the table, however here it's exacerbated into a major irritation because, unlike the tabletop version the game feels the need to constantly interrupt the flow of the game to tell you spurious information - it breaks in at the end of a round every so often to display the current standings, despite the fact this information is also conveyed on the player display via little icons, or can be gleaned with a quick glance at the virtual tabletop (I mean it's not a particularly difficult thing to track). At the start of every turn you get a table showing the income from each given number - again, pointless given it's easy enough to read from the virtual tabletop (and I don't even know why I'd care what those are for another player, even if I couldn't simply see it there in front of me to begin with), and no way as far as I can tell to turn these off.
It's an issue because Machi Koro really is a fairly simple game which works best when everyone can zip through their turns so players aren't waiting too long for their chance to roll the die and do something. In this implementation however it feels like you spend longer watching the game present information *that's already obvious just from looking at the screen* in a different way than you do actually playing the game, which ends up becoming an exercise in frustration.
It's a shame because there's some good stuff here - the characters and art are a joy, there's plenty of statistics and information tracked outside of the actual game, the problem is getting through an actual game simply ends up trying your patience.

Of all the challengers to Civ's crown, this is the first in quite some time that seems to have taken Sid's maxim to heart - 'a game is a series of interesting choices'. As a result it's the closest contender in recent memory, and what's more it gets there not by simple regurgitation, but with a delicious offering of fresh meat with a sprinkle of Civ spices.
You start with a single city you'll develop via buildings and improving the surrounding tiles (via an improvement point mechanic not dissimilar to Call to Power's public works). You have units you'll move around - stackable, unlike modern civ - and pursue technologies. You'll advance your nation through various era's, build wonders, settle new lands and all the familiar beats, however this time the instrument playing them is somewhat different.
Take tile improvements for example. Similar to civ, you build a farm on some fertile plain and your citizens can work it for food. However, it'll also give you a grain good, which your city will consume for a little more food. A tech or two later and you can build a new improvement - the mill - which will take two of those grain goods and turn them into flour, feeding twice as many people. A few more techs later you can now build a bakery, which takes flour and turns it into delicacies capable of not only feeding more people, but making them happier. Or maybe you'll have built a storehouse and can now export that flour (or grain, or delicacies) to another of your cities where it would be more useful. You could even have a market importing clay from a neighbour which your city turns into bricks and then ships to another of your cities which really needs the production boost. Already it's a bit more involved than the usual farms and markets in the fields, mines on the hills style system, but it does so without being overwhelming.
Combat is another great example. Somewhat similar to Civ 3 units come in various flavours - line for your infantry, support for archers or artillery and cavalry on the flanks. Support units are weak when attacked, but do a lot of damage and target a random enemy in combat, and usually act first. Line units are there to protect the support, doing less damage but being much better able to take it, and will engage a random unit, though must target a line unit if one is available. Cavalry are last to act in combat, like Line units they must target a line unit if any remain, but unlike any other unit will always target the unit with the lowest health and do double damage to organisation (basically morale; once a unit runs out of morale the army retreats, which coincidentally makes scouts quite useful due to being very good at running away). Again simple rules, but since your stack limit depends on your military technology it leads to some interesting decisions regarding exactly how to compose an army - and we haven't even went in to leaders yet.
It's biggest divergence from the formula is in the domain system. Certain activities, buildings and bonuses generate XP to a pool - such as warfare - with more pools being unlocked as you progress. You begin with just government and culture, with a few abilities in each - government for example lets you spawn a settler or a military unit. It can also be spent on your government tree to unlock permanent bonuses, unique units and the like. The same is true of the other domains you unlock like warfare with the game allowing you to select a new national spirit every few era's which is tied to one of these domains and operates in the same manner. In the midgame this XP can also be spent on permanent boosts to your civilisation. Which again gives you some crunchy decision making - do you spend your government XP on spawning a new settler or absorbing a vassal, or should you save it up for a food bonus for all your cities? This feeds in to a lot of the game - for example rather than just chuck a random event at you every few turns, there's an innovation/chaos system at play. When something good happens you can get innovation points, bad things give you chaos points. These cause a bar to slowly fill up, at which point you'll be presented with an event. In the case of innovation it will be a new bonus or even unlocking a wonder for you to build, or an injection of cash. Chaos causes bad events like barbarian spawns, which you can avoid if you can pay the cash. After which the points reduce to 30% and the bar fills up again. You can control this via two Culture abilities, however Culture is also needed to build towns (which upgrade your cities) or peacefully change governments, as well as having some of the more powerful abilities like spawning an entire army or a significant boost to your tech research. It's a great means of engagement since you'll almost always have two or three things you want to do and the ability to pursue only one of them.
The other big divergence, and obviously big selling point, are the eras. The 'tech tree' such as it is is fairly small (that's not including the national spirits, governments et al) - in the beginning for example there are only five techs to research (this number does increase over time, but it's not the labyrinthe flowchart of a traditional civ game). Research three of them and you can select and research a new era - the mundane 'iron age' or, usually if you meet a few other requirements, the 'heroic age' for example. If things are going badly you can also wind up in a crisis age such as the Age of Plague or Age of Ignorance. Again it's not quite straightforward - while it can be tempting to rush an age these techs are still the main way you unlock more modern units, improvements and the like. You don't lose them entirely as you can go back and research them - in fact it's cheaper to do so once you're ahead in era's - but you do have to weigh up whether you should spend the next 12 turns researching the Iron Age, or perhaps you'd be better off pursuing the remaining techs in this age tree in the hope of catching up and overtaking in the next age. Throw in that there are times you may not want to be the first player into an age - for example because you'd be locked into a crisis age - and even this isn't quite as straightforward as you'd think. The ages themselves are a bit hit and miss; the variant ages, whether crisis or not, tend to bend the normal rules and introduce one or two unique techs (and associated improvements/units/abilities et al) compared to the 'regular' age - in the Age of Plague for example you can get the permanent ability to spread plague with envoys, slightly better city defences and a city improvement that gives a better boost to sanitation compared to it's regular alternative. As something of an answer to the usual snowball problem there's also a special 'victory age' you can trigger at certain points which allow players to attempt to win the game, allowing you to finish the game off early if you're clearly (or at least confidently) dominating.
In terms of negatives there's the obvious - graphics are functional rather than being particularly pretty, there's limited game customisation options and at the time of writing only hotseat multiplayer (if that's an issue for you). The other aspect I think could stand some improvement is the diplomacy. It's perfectly functional with the usual boxes ticket - peace/alliance agreements et al - but it's largely all done by text box and as a result tends to fade into the background. There are reasons to engage with it, but without any real character or fanfare it's far too easy to simply treat it as a numbers game.

Great implementation of the boardgame. Includes an interesting single player campaign which adds additional goals to each scenario to encourage you to really get to grips with the mechanics. AI is decent enough, though occasionally makes stupid mistakes such as trying to play an event on you when you've already revealed a defence. It will also end the game even when it's obvious you'll score higher, though since Tanto Cuore doesn't really have much in the way of catch up mechanisms (at least in the base game and expanding the house, which is what is implemented at this point) I wouldn't necessarily call this a flaw.
For those who are unfamiliar with the boardgame it's a Dominions style deckbuilder with cute anime wifu in cute poses staring out at you from each card. Each turn you play your hand of 5 cards, first spending servings to play maids, then love to buy new maids (or events to play on other players, or buildings et al) to add to your deck or mansion. Finally you draw back up to 5 cards ready for next turn. It's actually a neat little deckbuilder underneath the weeb baiting ecchi art with a strong emphasis on the deck engine thanks to the interplay between the cards, plus the cards and the mansion/private area. It's also a steal at a fifth of the price of the actual physical version.

One of those 'recommended with caveats'. It's certainly one of, if not the, best iterations of Harvest Moon since the Natsume/Marvelous split. It is however firmly within Natsume's interpretation of the series which not all farming/life sim fans are going to get along with. What you get is a large open world to explore with numerous points of interest, an over-arching storyline to drive the gameplay and pretty solid farming/animal husbandry mechanics. What you don't get are particularly in-depth NPC interactions (or in many cases, characterisation), extended production chains or much in the way of character and farm customisation (even with the DLC it's mainly just the ability to recolour stuff).

For veterans to the series there's some novelty value in the new mechanics, however the gameplay is streamlined (only two worker types to worry about, invulnerable companions that can attack the greed, farms replaced by stores and arcades that rain money like confetti) to the point the difficulty becomes trivial, though given the relative short playing time (4 chapters) at least it ends before the novelty entirely wears off.
For newcomers the easier difficulty might have made it a good starting point, however the lack of content is a problem. It's the cheapest entry in the franchise at present, New Lands being half again the price and Two Crowns almost double, but both have significantly more content (even without DLC) providing much better bang for the buck - and of course Two Crowns also has multiplayer.
The 'synth' soundtrack is largely forgettable. Even the nostalgia bait is reduced to a few background cameos that seem to exist entirely so you can say 'I remember that movie/show'. It's there perhaps the biggest weakness lies; the ingredients are all there to lean into the classic 'kids gang' movies of the 80s like Goonies or ET, however the individuals are barely given any characterisation, the story and plot feel rushed and is largely predictable and boring and as a result I found myself caring less about Leader and his friends/parents that I did the anonymous protagonist of the previous two games, and they didn't get the benefit of faux VHS cutscenes.

It's a competently executed if somewhat linear looter shooter that manages to tick all of the boxes you'd expect from a looter shooter. Gunplay is ok, story is ok, level design is ok. Game on the whole? ok. Therein lies the problem; while it doesn't do anything wrong, it doesn't really do anything to stand out either. Most elements, whether it's the skill tree development of your character to the twists of the story, will be predictable to anyone with a passing familiarity of the genre.
Worth a look if the backstory particularly appeals, or if you simply must have your looter shooter in a dark and chunky sci-fi skin (and aren't a fan of Necromunda). I'm going to have to chalk this one as a don't recommend though. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with the game (well, now that most of the bugs are squashed); there's a reasonable amount of content on offer and providing you're not expecting a revolution in the genre you probably won't be disappointed. It's just I can't come up with any good reason to pick this over say Remnant:From the Ashes, The Division or any other middling entry in what is a pretty well served genre.

The biggest issue with the game isn't the half-finished state of release, the missing features or the various bugs; while irritating I'm sure they'll be patched out. The main problem is it's simply ... boring.
It has the most starting races of any of the series, but half of those starting races are Daemons of Chaos. They're different enough when playing them yourself, however since the main differentiation comes from the campaign mechanics when played by the AI they're largely interchangeable. Slaanesh units are a bit faster, Tzeentch has ranged, but by and large it feels a lot like generic demon horde #4217.
The campaign itself is bogged down by busywork. Those who remember the initial release of Warhammer 1 might remember the issues with AI agents in that game - the AI would endlessly spam agents that would roam the map occasionally assaulting armies or damaging garrisons seemingly at random. That's now a core mechanic - when the portals open up (more on those later) they'll spam a bunch of Chaos heroes who'll wander the map randomly performing actions against armies and cities resulting in a constant stream of spam messages that cities miles away from any danger have had their garrison assaulted. You can of course clean them up by recruiting your own heroes to hunt them down, but constantly sweeping the map to RNG assassinate lone Chaos sorcerors isn't exactly compelling gameplay. It's the same issue with some of the faction mechanics; Cathay has a thing about defending the wall. While this sounds like it might be an interesting challenge, what it actually boils down to is a handful of randomly spawned Marauder armies popping up to besiege the wall garrison. There's nothing you can do to stop this - even taking the province they spawn in won't prevent it happening - and for the most part they're useless; most of the time it's just trash unit spam lacking any kind of siege weapons. It quickly becomes apparent the quickest and simplest means of dealing with it is to retain a stack near the wall to sweep them away whenever the invasions begin, which again turns into pointless busywork.
The central campaign itself is equally tedious. Unlike Vortex this one is largely forced upon you whether you want it or not. It's basically a race to collect four souls to access the final scripted battle, so far so Total War. To get these souls, you need to enter Chaos portals which occasionally open up, run through the domain of a Chaos power and kill their daemon prince. While this might sound interesting, they go out of their way to ensure it's not the case. The portals themselves open according to a timer you have no control over, it's basically every twenty or so turns with some RNG. Unlike Vortex, where you could at least speed up the timer by taking key locations, here it's set. Doesn't matter if you've functionally won the game by turn 50, enjoy hitting end turn another sixty or so times waiting for the portals to open so you can grab those last couple of souls. The Chaos realms themselves are built around a single map gimmick; Tzeench for example relies on teleporters while Khorne just wants you to kill things, which are fine the first time you play them but quickly lose their appeal for subsequent playthroughs.
Then there's the daemon prince battles themselves. These are the showpiece multi-stage survival battles that were trumpeted as a new feature for this iteration and they suck. You basically have a slightly larger battle map with points you need to claim to trigger the 'boss' spawn, then duff up the boss. Enemy units will continuously spawn in to attack you, and you get a trickle of points you can spend to spawn in units of your own or build towers, usually at those same capture points. The problem is the enemy waves follow the same formula each time, and as your spawned units are limited only by points and timers this largely boils down to taking a point, spamming a bunch of cheap chaff, and remembering to go back and spam a few more from time to time. Meanwhile the battle itself drags out an extra twenty minutes while you wander around to get the actual enemy army to spawn. Thankfully the Daemon Prince battles can be autoresolved; not so the final battle which also happens to be one of the more tedious examples.
Talking about tedious, sieges use a similar mechanic with the defender now able to magically build towers during the battle. The settlement maps have been altered to try and force you to engage with this mechanic, but for the most part the towers are a minor irritation at best. Instead, it now takes that little bit longer to complete a siege battle as the AI's pathfinding struggles to work out how to navigate the maze like streets. Worse still, CA were so proud of this mechanic you now get to experience it with every settlement battle, whether you're storming the walls of Altdorf or a couple of peasant huts in the backwaters of Kislev, turning what used to be a five minute blitz into a drawn out fifteen minutes primarily spent watching the AI try and fail to work out how to move around a building.
At the time of review Immortal Empires has yet to be released. While that's likely to 'resolve' a lot of the issues with the campaign through the simple expedient of making it ignorable, I'm still not sure I'd be recommending this over it's predecessor. If you're a die-hard Chaos fan then the chance to play each power, or make your own daemon prince, might be worth the price of entry. For everyone else, I'd wait and see what they do with the DLC - as it stands with only Ogre Kingdoms added the new factions aren't really interesting or even distinct enough from each other to warrant getting a whole new game.

For the seventh entry in the main series, we have a new protagonist and rather more controversially, an entirely new genre. Instead of the beat-em-up brawler gameplay of the previous six iterations it's now a turn based SJRPG. For most companies pulling it off would be a tall order; for Ryu Ga Gotoku on the other hand the result is a masterpiece.
Remarkably the game doesn't innovate much. The small(ish) open world maps stuffed with things to do is still the core of the game. Most of the old side activities like Karaoke, golf and mahjong are there along with some new ones, like a mario-kart style street race and a cinema minigame. The arcades still carry old Sega classics too. The combat, while new to the series, is still fairly standard SJRPG fare - on a characters turn they choose between attacking, using an item or skill; there's a smattering of damage types and status effects like burning or poison plus some positioning rules. Aside from the set-piece battles random enemies roam the map and trigger combat if you get too close. Nothing outside the wheelhouse of a Fire Emblem/Disgaea fan in other words.
Theme still veers sharply between extremes - one minute it's a serious crime and corruption drama, the next minute you're trying to sneak a naked man through the city to find some pants. Touching heart to heart conversations with companions and side characters are immediately followed by watching a woman dressed as an idol singer beat a giant Roomba to death with an oversized lollipop. At times the juxtapositions can seem jarring, though when it works it's possibly the only game that'll make you laugh, cry, and cry with laughter, often at the same time.
The side characters, companions and NPCs are all remarkably well rounded and well written, in fact it's the first RPG I've played in years where choosing which companion to include in the party has extended beyond their abilities or class. The writing as a whole is excellent; whether it's the tongue in cheek conceit of Ichiban seeing the world through the eyes of a Dragon Quest fanatic (complete with numerous callbacks to that series) or the more serious tale of betrayal in the underworld and political corruption.
Most of the complaints I have are minor quibbles. There's no real way to reposition in combat which can be slightly irritating given some things, such as environmental attacks and follow ups, depend on it. In addition you can occasionally whiff attacks due to the pathfinding getting stuck on a street bollard or similar. As with many games of this type, you do occasionally run across a group so weak relative to your party that they're no threat, however time is still sunk into watching the combat animations.
On the whole, a much appreciated game which doesn't take itself too seriously and insists you have as much fun with it as it's clearly having. Wholeheartedly recommended whether you're new to the series or a Yakuza veteran - it's not only one of the best games in the series, it's one of the best games I've played for some time.

Take Endless Legend, jettison the weird and wonderful asymmetric factions. Rip out the historical persona's from Sid Meier's Civilization and jam the remaining 'number tweaks and a unique building and unit' means of differentiating factions into the resultant gap. The end result is probably the most colourful spreadsheet ever released.
There are some interesting tweaks to the usual formula. Starting off as nomadic hunter gatherers and having to actually hunt animals until you can found your first city is interesting. The victory conditions show promise - here you earn stars for achieving specific feats, with feats that align with your current culture worth slightly more points. The game ends once twenty stars are accumulated and the highest points wins. The underlying mechanics are similar to the Endless series and thus tried and tested. One neat new feature are group projects - usually for wonders, religious sites and similar you can have multiple cities contribute to building them. The process of claiming wonders is more of a mixed bag; when you earn enough influence you can claim from a list of currently available wonders, giving you (and only you) the ability to build it. You need to get it built before you can select another, but since you're the only one who can build it there's no sense of tension or competition to do so (also unless I missed it there's no indication of what/when new wonders become available on the list).
The problem is the game utterly lacks character. Civilization utilises historical persona's with their own personalities to get around the fact that the only difference between one civ and another is a bonus here and a unique building there. It works by making the British feel different if they're led by Eleanor rather than Victoria (and while both games alter the soundtrack depending on your civ and those you've met, in Humankind it's just a given tune for a specific culture, not Civ's excellent shift from basic drums and flutes to sweeping orchestral epics as the eras go by). In Endless Legend the mercantile nomads who build their cities on the backs of huge creatures both feel and play differently to the S&M pain wizards across the valley. Humankind lacks this; pick the Egyptians to start with and your cities will look vaguely Egypt like, however pick the Greeks for the next age and they simply switch to Greek looking buildings, with only the Pyramids (assuming you built them) left to suggest things might have once been different. The same is true of the neighbours; to the point things can sometimes get confusing when the French contact you for a trade deal despite there being no French civilisation in the game; with luck you'll be able to recognise the country formerly known as Korea's avatar behind it's new clothes. The same even holds true of religion - decide to switch Egyptian Shamanism to Christianity and all it will do is give your holy sites a cosmetic makeover from standing stones to churches. Feel free to flip to Buddhism next turn.
The end result is a game which lacks that crucial 'one more turn' aspect due to it's failure to hook you in and make you care about what's happening on screen. Which is a shame - mechanically the game seems competent enough, but it has as much soul as a Power Point Presentation wearing a bank manager skinsuit. If you haven't already, play Endless Legend or Civ VI instead.