Recensioni recenti di archonsod

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.

The first thing the game greets you with on launch is a little pop up explaining they've spent time consulting with representatives of the native American cultures and adjusted a few things 'for historical accuracy'. Which appears to represent one third of the work that went in to this remaster. The other two thirds would be some shiny new graphics which scale up well to modern resolutions (though unfortunately the same can't be said of any of the new UI's) and two new factions.
All of the issues in the original, beyond presumably the offense apparently being caused by the bits they renamed, make a return. Unstable multiplayer code, missing features for factions that weren't in the original game and the AI's inability to comprehend how oceans work are present and malfunctioning just as well as they were in the original AoE III.
That's not to say this is a bare bones, minimum effort remaster though. It's quite clear a lot of effort went in to introducing new problems and breaking existing features. The AI is a prime example. In the original, Settlers tasked with collecting a resource such as gold would shift to a nearby resource if one was present once their current resource was exhausted. In this version, sometimes they do, sometimes they won't, and instead simply stand around despite having another viable resource source nearby. The same affects building; try queuing buildings or building a wall for example and they'll sometimes complete it, sometimes they'll do half the blueprint and just stop. The AI opponents equally suffer such stunning displays of stupidity - sometimes it's troops will start attacking your settlement, other times they'll come to a halt at the settlement walls and simply stand there in awe of your masterful stonework. It also has a tendency to try and send it's settlers to harvest resources right next to your town centre, ignoring multiple copies of the same resource it has to pass on the way that quite notably aren't surrounded by angry men with guns, and to keep doing so despite you gunning down every settler they send.
Then there's the stuff that's missing. One of the stand out features of the original was the pseudo-physics based destruction of structures and ships. Whenever a building or ship transitioned to a different damaged model it spawned debris which went rag dolling away from the structure. That's gone, instead they simply transition through their damage models until they fall down. While not the most vital gameplay component, it was a cool feature and sorely missed. However, it doesn't stop there; another big selling point of the original game was it's concept of the Home City - a persistent base you could have for each faction which would level up as you play, unlocking bonuses you could build into a deck for future games. In the original it was a neat idea which gave a little incentive to play both multiplayer and single player skirmishes, included in part due to the shorter campaign. In this 'definitive edition' it's gone, in favour of giving you access to all of the cards from the off, although the shortened campaign remains. At least you can still get some sense of progression via the cosmetic unlocks which are still available. For the original factions, the expansion factions and the two new ones are still missing them. Throw in additionally reported performance issues and occasional crashes to desktop to boot.
So in summary, if you're looking for the definitive edition of Age of Empires III with expansions there's probably a bundle available here on Steam or your e-tailer of choice. If on the other hand you want a version with higher resolution support, modern graphics, half the functionality and twice the bugs this version won't fail to disappoint.

It reminds me of Throne of Britannia; interesting setting, some interesting new quirks on the traditional TW formula but somewhere in the mix something went wrong and we're left with a game about as flavourful as stale porridge.
Characters are a good example. This is Romance of the Three Kingdoms; it's not short on larger than life personalities with unique traits from which to draw on . CA on the other hand have implemented a fairly simplistic 'class' system whereby each character belongs to a specific class, and all members of a class have access to the same skill tree (albeit randomly shuffled). We can equip characters, and some even have their own unique equipment ... but for the most part these are just incremental number changes. They have their own set of three traits and a special ability on the battlefield, but in the main these are randomly drawn from a limited pool. Ultimately whether you're Sun Ce or Randomly Generated Red General 435789 makes little difference; they end up doing the same thing with the same skills, and thanks to a largely generic troop roster usually the same army too.
This failing to quite bring it together permeates throughout the rest of the game. In theory politics should be interesting with each character having a personal relationship with the other characters, and you needing to juggle things around in your court to keep everyone happy. In practice it's largely ignorable unless you want to micromanage, and only if you want to micromanage as there's little reason to do so enforced by the game. With unit unlocks now shifted to the tech tree (and one which allows you to select a new tech every few turns rather than anything approaching the research mechanic of previous games) settlement building becomes a fairly drab process of simply choosing what particular number you want to increase. Even where the chain for a specific type offers a choice, it's usually just whether you want more income or more of whatever else it provides. Speaking of settlements we're back to the larger Rome II style siege maps, complete with the same problem (all of the action happens at the gate, leaving 90% of the map nothing but literal scenery).
That said, the problem isn't that it's a bad game, simply that it's a mediocre one. KOEI already grabbed the 'middle of the road strategy game with half-baked AI and endless stream of DLC' niche with their venerable Romance of the Three Kingdoms series, and it at least brings a lot more flavour to the experience. Dynasty Warriors already did the '(in)famous characters butcher their way through the Three Kingdoms' schtick and managed a lot more characterisation, despite their ever growing roster. If you're a TW completionist then you'd be buying this anyway, if you're not then there's plenty of other great Total War games out there rather than wasting your time with this 'ok' one.

Faithful adaption of a great boardgame.

tl;dr - It's pretty much a 1:1 copy of the boardgame, and as a huge fan of both the boardgame and the books it's a solid recommendation for me. Though those unfamiliar with the boardgame should note it's something we'd consider a filler (not a reflection on content - after a couple of years playing as a bookend to our games nights there's still sidejob cards we've not seen in play) i.e. a game designed around relatively short, self-contained rounds; Microsoft Hearts would be a good example.

Each character has a deck from which they draw cards at the start of the game (it's rare you'll draw cards during the game, though it is possible). Each book consists of two rows of cards containing a combination of obstacles, enemies, cases and advantages. Character cards allow you to resolve these in some way, for example attack cards deal hits to enemy cards. The aim is to have resolved more of the book cards than there are left on the board by the end of the game (at the end there's a showdown phase in which you get one last chance to finish any card that already has hits or clue tokens on it via rolling the fate die). Cards are powered via Fate points, which can usually only be gained by discarding cards to obtain points equal to their cost.
The end result is essentially a resource management puzzle. You know from the beginning what cards you have available, and much of the game is working out how to best use those cards (as abilities or discards) to manipulate the board to win, or at least give you the best chance to win via the showdown.
The digital version doesn't really add much beyond reduced setup time and the ability to play with people who aren't physically present. There is a separate background ambience for each book which is a nice touch, but the graphical effects are pretty much limited to cards being moved around. There are some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ inherited from the boardgame - the re-use of artwork on cards of the same type can be a little confusing until you get used to it. It's also possible to have a book configuration that's almost impossible (i.e. highly dependent on good rolling in the Showdown phase) to win, though since most books should be playable within 15 - 20 minutes it's not something I'd consider a huge problem (it very much falls into the 'reshuffle and try again' design school).
Thematically it's something of an odd duck. For Dresden fans there's plenty of references to get in terms of why certain cards have some abilities and the interaction between cards - to the point if you're reading through the series I'd avoid jumping ahead in the game due to spoilers - but there's not really any thematic component to the gameplay itself.

It's a Diablo style aRPG with a 40K theme. The original release was a wee bit too generic, although the latest changes have fixed that to some extent. The core combat is satisfying, with enough spread of abilities and enemies to keep it entertaining, and the variety of missions on offer makes for some interesting diversions. The map variety is a little too sparse and like most aRPG's if you want to minimax there's only a limited number of builds that will furnish the largest numbers.
The fly in the ointment at present is the levelling / character advancement seems a bit scattershot. There's numerous skill trees, but most skills have a fairly minimal effect. Most abilities are tied in to equipment, but with limited means of altering it (and a high cost to do so) it can make creating a build something of a crapshoot.
It's a tentative recommendation for me. If you're a fan of 40K there's plenty to enjoy here, however if your primary interest is the ARPG side of things it's likely to feel a little half-baked.

Recommended, but this is a game tailored to a specific audience and not necessarily the one the first game found.
The focus on worldbuilding and story is gone, replaced with a 'go anywhere, explode anything' design that'll be instantly familiar to those who played Just Cause. There is a story of sorts, but it's the same old 'chosen one of the wasteland' delivered by voice actors who sound as tired as the trope itself, complete with an antagonist who wants to rid the world of the weak and replace them with superior mutants (where have I heard that one before?). Thankfully the game wastes little time on the weak plot, being happy to shove it into the background as soon as you've completed the short tutorial.
Completing the tutorial puts you into a world which will be broadly familiar to anyone who's played any of the recent FarCry, Assassin's Creed or other Ubi 'icon em up' open world games. You have a large map, are left to freely wander at will and a bunch of question marks and icons where you can do things; usually things involving introducing random enemies to hot lead and / or explosions. The combat is definitely the stand out feature of the game as you'd expect. The gunplay feels and looks fantastic, including feedback in terms of staggering enemies or shots hitting armour. This is enhanced by a number of player powers allowing you to manipulate enemies, the environment or just plain wreck face in new and interesting ways. Vehicle combat is likewise fun, with a number of upgrades available and the wide open map spaces allowing for maneouver to play a part.
It's the rest that lets the game down. The frequency of enemy spawning is toned down significantly compared to the Far Cry series (or even Fallout 4), though at times perhaps a little too low which leads to the wasteland feeling a lot like a wasteland. There also feels like there's a lot less to do in terms of variety, whereas in a Ubi open world game there's often a selection of activities (even if by now many of them have become standard), in Rage 2 it's largely boiled down to 'kill these things, collect reward' style set-pieces; while the same could be said of much of Far Cry (beyond it's 'find the McGuffin' sidequests) in Rage 2 these set pieces often follow a similar format and layout. Similarly going off the beaten track to explore old ruins often proves unrewarding, with a simple puzzle or combat in return for some random supply crates. The opportunity for worldbuilding is often missed - whereas Fallout 4 would use item placement and similar to tell a story in such locations, Rage 2 seems content to simply pile the goodies in a corner. The end result feels a lot more like finding a secret area in the original Doom than discovering anything about the Rage 2 world.
The end result is something close to a real sandbox game - here's some guns, here's some powers, go find something fun to do. If strong narratives or characterisation is a consideration for you this is likely to prove unrewarding - as mentioned the plot seems like something cobbled together by an intern in their lunch hour, the delivery lacks conviction and if you follow the main storyline you'll finish in a couple of hours. If that's not a concern however you have one of the best gun playgrounds in recent memory.
The game does include microtransactions (at present purely cosmetic - weapon/vehicle skins) and additional content such as the pre-order stuff requires a Bethesda.net account.

This review is likely to come across as one long, negative rant, so I'll preface it by saying Steam only lets you choose between recommending or not recommending the game, which makes it a bit tricky when the actual answer is more of an "it depends", so I've went with "recommend" albeit one with a warband of caveats.

Firstly the game is based on Atilla rather than Warhammer, which isn't in and of itself a bad thing (Atilla wasn't exactly a bad game!) however one does miss some of the QoL improvements in Warhammer, particularly when it comes to the UI. Those fresh from the exploits of the most famous Hun probably won't notice, but for those who've spent the past couple of years campaigning in the Old World it's likely to ♥♥♥♥♥♥.
In terms of the meat of the game, I find it's something of a love-hate relationship. You can kind of see what they were aiming at with the design, but it has an awkward tendency to trip over it's own feet trying to get there. Some of the issues are those which have been a problem for the series for quite some time which the design exacerbates, others seem to be more systemic.
The map is a good example. It's possibly one of the most beautiful renditions of blighty ever seen in a strategy game. However, it's also one of the most cluttered and obtuse renditions of blighty ever seen in a strategy game. It's good looking, but expect to have to zoom in and squint quite often when trying to plan a route for an army (oh, and the focused map makes the usual oddness of TW's scaling quite apparent; I know it's abstracted et al, but I can't fathom how anyone with functional legs, or indeed non-functional legs, can take best part of a year to march the 41 miles between Edinburgh and Glasgow.). Similar issue with the art direction - they've went for a neat little stained glass style look which is nicely thematic and quite pretty. Unfortunately it also means differentiating units becomes somewhat tricky since in many cases the only difference between say your regular sword infantry and elite sword infantry's unit icon is the presence of a moustache. Yes, if history tells us anything it's that the more impressive the facial hair the more elite the unit is, but for the general attempting to distinguish between the two at a glance on the field it'd be nice if they could have posed differently for the regimental mugshot, or just had the artist break out a few more colours.
Into the meat of the gameplay itself and you have a similar story. Take recruiting for instance; this has been modified so you now have a recruitment pool consisting of a certain number of units of each type. When recruiting the unit is added to the army instantly, and then gradually replenishes in the same way it would after taking losses in battle. Which forces some neat choices onto the player - do yo focus your top quality units in the one uber-army to go stomping the foe and rely on the second class dreck to defend your territory, or do you try and balance it out a little? Oh, except since only the large towns get garrisons now you'll probably want to spend some of your precious recruitment pool on some kind of defensive force to prevent the enemy simply walking in and taking your villages, and to top it off each army needs food to maintain and now requires supplies to keep going. So we're trying to limit the player's ability to project force by around four different systems, none of which particularly play well together and tracking down problems in any of them becomes an exercise in frustration thanks to the somewhat cumbersome UI.
Then we have the design decisions that go nowhere. If you want to keep your nobles loyal for example you'll need to divvy up some conquered lands in the form of estates. Which kind of makes sense, the gifting of lands and titles being a big part of holding a kingdom together. Except the estates themselves are literally just numbers; they don't do anything for their owner nor is any given estate more or less valuable than any other, thus Lord Oswiu is just as happy to own sixty acres of prime arable land as he is to own the dunny heap. So this literally becomes nothing but a busywork; there's no interesting decisions for the player or ramifications to assigning an estate to one guy over another, just open the screen whenever you remember (or get prompted to, because you forgot) and divide the estates between your nobility as equally as possible, job done. I mean, why even bother including this in the first place?
Finally there's just the pure frustrating crap that makes you wonder. Happiness for example; this has been a thing in TW games for as long as I can remember, and they kind of hit a sweet spot with it around about Napoleon where it works quite well., and has done ever since Until someone decides to remove most of the happiness generating buildings and stick what's left behind research or upgrade barriers. Throw in buildings that cause unhappiness (which seems to be most industrial work for some reason; not sure what CA are trying to say about the average Briton there) and you're pretty much starting off with a kingdom prone to rebel quicker than a Tory Brexiteer on Question Time. Oh, and the rebel armies still benefit from the ability to magically pull units from out of their general's backside (they don't even seem to suffer the same 'replenish from zero' on recruitment). Combined with your troop's ability to outdo First Scotrail in terms of taking a wee while to get anywhere the game becomes less Total War, and more 'Slightly Advancing On The Enemy Before Having To Run Home Because The Peasants Took A Dislike To Their Lords Wife, Again'. Yes, most of this can eventually be overcome with good governors, research and building upgrades, but until that point you're pretty much forced to play turtle just to make sure your own people don't do something silly like burn down all their farms and declare themselves a separate kingdom while you're off reclaiming Wales from the Vikings.
To top it all off, assuming you can overcome these and other issues you'll often find your campaign curtailed since you suddenly claim victory by being more famous than Elvis or the like. Again, the new victory conditions on paper are a nice idea - particularly since they diverge from the old painting the map in your colour. In practice however they don't quite work; some factions feel like they can win simply by not getting involved in any conflicts for long enough, others find their epic saga accidentally curtailed due to hitting some arbitrary level they weren't even thinking about. Be nice if we could toggle them on and off.
So given these complaints (and more, but frankly I'd be amazed if anyone read this far to begin with) you're probably asking why I still cautiously recommend the game. The thing is, underneath these frustrations and annoyance it's clear there's a good game fighting to get out. Some of them, like the recruitment system, are just a nudge or two away from hitting the mark, Others are already there, you just need to fight through a few brambles before you can start enjoying them. As is usual for TW games I suspect a year from now it'll be patched if not to perfection then at least to an enjoyable experience. Until and unless that happens consider this a half thumb up - if you're a fan of the setting and can tolerate some rough edges there's an enjoyable game here. If you'd rather try something a little more polished then I suggest you try (or stick with) Atilla for now.
Oh, and the final criticism which probably only resonates with those of us from these isles - the voice work is unintentionally hilarious. The narrator and faction leaders are just about fine (admittedly the Circenni can't seem to decide whether they're Scottish or Irish) but the unit voices in battle are all over the place. Like Scottish Crossbows occasionally talking in a broad West Country accent ...

The premise is good, the atmosphere great (love the sea shanty soundtrack) but the game is marred by a combat system which is overly reliant on randomness with very few decisions for the player to make.
The game pits you as a survivor of the Pequod of Moby D.ick fame, swearing revenge you decide to captain your own whaling ship with the eventual goal of wreaking vengeance against the titular whale. The game offers the standard fare for nautical adventures - hire crew for your ship, load up on provisions like food, water and grog and sail the seas either hunting whales or completing missions available from certain ports. Emergent storytelling is provided by the occasional random event detailing interactions with your crew, spotting something unusual on the sea and similar. Earn enough money and you can upgrade your ship, or even trade it in for a larger one.
This core gameplay is rather good. There's some nice ideas on display - ship upgrades for example are researched rather than instantly added, with the upgraded component added to your ship once you return to the port after the research is complete. Ship upgrades are dependent on the level of ship parts. Crew management is an equally nice twist on the usual - crewmen have a class (or you can hire cabin boys with no class but the ability to level them up as you choose, should they survive) and the various stations on your ship offer bonuses if manned by a crewman of the right class. If a crewman needs healing you can send them on the quarterdeck where they'll restore hitpoints, although their skills won't contribute to the general running of the ship while they're there.
Once you spot a whale is where things unfortunately start falling down. Depending on the number of whaleboats you can deploy a number of your crew into combat. Each class provides a certain ability in combat (you always have the 'cabin boy' abilities available, giving a basic chance of attacking a target should you wish). Each sailor rolls a die in combat, with the face 'rolled' determining what, if any, action they may take that round. You can then pick one of these results (unless fighting a boarding action, when all results can be used) to apply. The higher the skill of the sailor, the more likely (usually) they'll roll a useful result, sometimes with special abilities or effects. Opponents on the other hand will pick an ability to use, and will use it after the player. Each combat round a random condition is also thrown in - some detrimental to your opponents, some detrimental to you, occasionally no effect.
The dependency on a random die roll to see if your sailors can even act presents something of an issue. It's quite possible to spend several turns where none of your sailors can actually do anything, even with a whaleboat full of high-level harpoon men. Instead of tactical decision making your actions are largely dictated by which, if any, action you successfully rolled. Since your enemies are not subject to the same vicissitudes of fate, combat feels like it's a simple attrition system where the only question is whether you'll roll enough successful die before your crew are killed by whatever they are fighting (and ways to mitigate or otherwise manipulate the rolls are few and far between). To exacerbate this it often feels like the only important decision you make is which particular sailors, and therefore possible actions, go into the whaleboat, though early game this is particularly unpleasant as crew limitations on the ship plus access to only the one whaleboat means even this limited decision making is taken out of your hands.
It does open up slightly later in the game, where more sailors deployed mean less chances of turns where you literally have nothing to do, and more options in who to put in the whaleboats and who to leave on the ship. However in order to get to that point you have to grind what ultimately feels like an elaborate version of 'who can roll the most sixes' for a tedious amount of time (and by the point you've got through that it doesn't feel like much of a payoff).
This is therefore a borderline 'not recommended' from me. The core game is solid, and with a little more interactivity or at least decision making in the combat I wouldn't have any hesitation recommending it. In it's current form however it simply feels too much like watching the computer play out the battle than actually being the captain, and while this is alleviated slightly in the later stages of the game the sheer tedium of getting there limits the appeal.

Pretty faithful port (of the mobile port) of the boardgame. If you're not familiar with the boardgame itself, probably better to check out one of it's reviews over on boardgamegeek.

The only real issue is the UI which suffers from being a mobile port. Most of the information isn't too hard to get to, but some of it does require some inconvenient digging - to get the contents of your opponent's tavern for example you can just click on their name and a summary appears on the right side of the screen; however if you want to track their quest cards or completed quests you then need to click on their deck and dig through their list of cards (here's probably where sticking a little too close to the boardgame hurts - there's no easy indication when a quest is a plot quest without clicking on the card and reading it yourself).
The AI provides a pretty decent opponent, with several levels of difficulty which scale pretty well. Multiplayer is cross-platform (requires a Playdek account) across the IOS / Android user base, so finding a multiplayer game is rarely an issue.