Recent reviews by Demos

Insanely good 4x game. This is often compared to civ but it's a pretty different game, and going in with a similar mindset is likely to end badly.

Like other Amplitude games Hmankind rewards "correct" play and if you don't practice a lot, or crunch some numbers, you will end up doing bad things. On the topic of bad decisions (and good ones) humankind punishes bad decisions much, much more harshly than civ, and it rewards skilled play much more as well. Your decisions have more impact on the future of the game than in civ and the impact is not well explained (and to a large extent can vary game to game depending on your strategic situation). This all means that humankind can feel very rewarding compared to civ if you play well, and punishing if you don't. Even on the lower difficulties if you are sort of "coasting along" like you might do in civ you will probably get lapped by the AI.

It's also much easier to be aggressive than in civ, particularly early on, and it's very hard to defend against aggressive play without playing explicitly "safe" and sacrificing almost as much economic potential as if you had played aggressively yourself. This leads to RTS style agro/safe/greedy playstyles and means you must scout.

SOTS 2 is probably the most interesting video game in history. Wildly ambitious and filled with bonkers ideas, it's too bad the game seems to actively avoid being playable.

SOTS 2 has even more varied factions and wild techs than SOTS 1 did, and for that it's interesting as all hell, and you'd think it would lend itself to lots of playstyles and fun discovery of mechanics and synergies. Unfortunately, it’s hobbled by a pretty terrible UI and horrible feedback about what’s actually happening, and turns take ages to complete. It’s also incredibly punishing in ways that are not fun. For example, you can be minding your own business as a fledgling empire and out of nowhere a planet killer or spectre monster appears and wipes you out without giving you much time or ability to prepare. This could be an interesting mechanic that keeps you on edge and forces you to adapt, but because things are so impenetrable it simply feels arbitrary and mean.

I’d recommend SOTS 1 or Endless Space 2 instead for gameplay, but if you want to study game systems and be immersed in absolutely wild 4x ideas then SOTS 2 is amazing. Of particular interest is comparing SOTS 2 with Endless Space 2; They both try and have wildly varied factions, with many, many ways to play. And they both attempt to keep tension high, and make every decision feel critical. While SOTS 2 tries to do this via its space monsters and random events ES2 does it by having mechanics that strongly interact with each other and strong opportunity costs for each decision. Figuring out good strategies in both is a kind of puzzle, ES2 is much better at teaching you from your mistakes.

If you can get past the UI you can have fun with sots 2, and if you’re interested in game design then there’s a LOT to learn here. Otherwise, unless you are specifically looking for wild ideas, go buy Endless Space, SOTS 1, Distant Worlds, or Stellaris.

2.0 is a major update, and I think it did a lot to fix some problems that the game has had since the beginngin. I know some are upset about the FTL changes but they were throught through pretty well. The dev even did a comparison to Sword of the Stars and Sword of the Stars II (I swear it's less broken now!!!! ;^). Essentially they talked about how in a game like stellaris different ftl types make it really hard to have interesting wars.

It's true there are some major bugs right now, but they are gunna get fixed. In the mean time you can still play 1.9 (or any other version of the game) by selecting it from the betas menu!

Not a great remaster, but the fact is that the original was extremely hard to get running on a modern computer due to games for windows live. And hey it still plays nicely. Besides bulletstorm didn't get the love it deserved when it came out.

Also don't expect a fine work of art. This is the Boxed wine of shooters.