Πρόσφατες κριτικές από τον Gwennec

Don't be fooled by my playtime on Steam, I spent most of the late 90's and early 2000's playing this game over and over again and I'm overjoyed to say it's still as great as I remember it!

There's just something that games from this era managed to achieve that most modern games can't do any more with the industry being far too serious and cutthroat now. Dungeon Keeper is simple yet glorious. This was Bullfrog Studios at their finest, it's dark, grimy and gloomy, unlike the cartoonish and comical second instalment which all the homage games try to replicate. If you truly want to feel like a dark & sinister evil villain, Dungeon Keeper Gold is the perfect game for you.

The level designs throughout are fantastic, offering a variety of challenges and secrets to uncover. The music is sinister and very befitting a deep, dark, evil dungeon. You'll unlock new rooms, traps, spells and creatures as you progress through the levels, slaughtering the good people of the overworld or destroying rival keepers.

The gold edition comes with the Deeper Dungeons expansion, giving you more missions to play through in both singleplayer and multiplayer, something I didn't have back in the day thanks to everything being bought on CD's in a store.

NOTE ON RESOLUTION: While in game you can change the resolution from the default 320x240 to 640x480 by pressing Alt+R, giviing you a cleaner picture. This will slow the gamespeed cycle down by default BUT can be fixed by cranking up the gamespeed cycle with Ctrl+F12 (Ctrl+F11 to decrease). Hit that until you get the desired speed that mimics the default resolution speed. Bear in mind that these are designed as Debug tools.

In its current state, I would advise anyone to avoid purchasing this game at full price and continue to play Crusader Kings 2, unless they are new to the Crusader Kings franchise. There are some good elements to Crusader Kings 3 but it's simply not enough at the moment. The game is seriously lacking in content and flavour compared to its predecessor and also comes with some poorly thought-out systems.

Ultimately, this feels like it's only just launched in an alpha state, rather than being a game that launched 3 and a half years ago. It should have been fleshed out by now.

I'll list a few examples.

THE GOOD:::

VISUALS: The game itself looks very nice and the UI has been very much simplified compared to CK2, making it much easier for people to learn if they are new to the Crusader Kings franchise. For this, I would recommend CK3 if you have never played the games before as CK2 has a steep learning curve.

THE MIDDLE GROUND:::

TECH INNOVATIONS: The technological innovations are again much simpler than CK2 and provided you are the head of your culture, you can influence which one your culture will focus on. That said, there is no ability to steal tech from other rulers/cultures which is disappointing and tech is locked behind set era dates which means you'll sit around for a good 100 years or so, unable to progress anything.

THE BAD:::

FLAVOUR: All cultures bar 3 (Nordic, Iberian & Persian, all of which require DLC) feel and play the same as each other, there's nothing to separate them other than a few different background images for your character.

LACK OF LAW OPTIONS: CK2 provided so many options for controlling your Kingdom by enacting laws from an extensive list. CK3 does not have this. What you can do is adjust the contracts of vassals on a 1-by-1 basis but there are not many options here and they will not always accept. As a King/Queen or an Emperor, you have no real influence over your subjects.

HOUSE UNITY SYSTEM: This appears to be a completely broken system in the game and from checking the forums, a very unpopular one. It supposedly changes the mechanics behind succession but for the most part, doesn't work. You're supposed to have a decision available, but that doesn't appear. This either needs to be completely overhauled or just scraped. There's a whole (incorrect) in-game tutorial about it and yet it's something you will just ignore.

DUMB AI: Wars are way too easy as the AI is far too predictable and dumb. There's nothing here to present a challenge.

PEACETIME ACTIVITY: Outside of war, you'll mostly be twiddling your thumbs, waiting for something, anything, to happen. You get a couple of activities you can perform, with 5-10 year cooldowns. The rest of the time, you'll just be sat there marrying off your insane amount of dynasty members because fertility is nuts and that's about it. The DLC that introduces the Hold Court options gives you the option to hold court now and then, but this just recycles the same 7 or so events over and over again. The intrigue and diplomacy options are almost non-existent and there is practically nothing to do involving faith. So you end up just endlessly declaring wars, which you then steamroll.

MODS: It's rare to add this as a negative but here we are. While there are mods available, the vast majority are quickly abandoned and will not work with your patched game. There are some of course, but you'll quickly find that most are dead.

DLC PRICING & CONTENT: The DLC for this game is extremely overpriced and other than the faction packs, add VERY little content to your game. I would avoid buying these at all unless they're heavily discounted.

Clan of the Owl are a fantastic addition to the mix with a very different play style to the other clans. They're extremely flexible, able to compete with other specialised clans in military, development & support, albeit by focusing on one area at a time.

Their tech three made of interweaving circles looks daunting at first but quickly makes perfect sense and allows you to respond to the global situation. Their unique alternative to the lore victory is also incredibly fun, turning it into an active military path.

In an era where the games industry is dominated by lazy AAA developers pushing pay-to-win content, season passes and microtransactions, Larian is a much-needed reminder that good studios are still out there.

I will rant a bit here before I get into the details of this masterpiece of a game. Many AAA names such as Bungie, Bethesda & Obsidian to name a few have hit out at Larian for the sheer amount of work & love that has gone into Baldur’s Gate 3. They gaslight the players into believing that this shouldn’t be the new standard we should expect from games, claiming to be protecting the small indie studios but this is total rubbish, they’re protecting their own laziness & greed.

No one expects a small indie company to produce this standard of the game, but we absolutely SHOULD expect it from AAA studios who have teams that are capable of it. Instead, we have the likes of Bungie releasing expansions for games like Destiny 2 that have barely any content and lock much of it behind paywalls, largely seen as a flop by the players but we’re told that this is the expected standard for games. AAA releases that are devoid of content and feel utterly broken on release have become the norm. That’s then made worse by locking huge amounts of content behind additional paywalls or microtransactions, all intended to turn you into a little cash cow so they can continue being lazy and get paid to sit back and do the bare minimum.

Studios such as Larian and Fromsoft continue to show us how things should be. Baldur’s Gate 3 is an incredible labour of love, and you can see how much care has been put into this throughout. The level of content is incredible, with so many ways to play the game and change the outcomes or even the world that you’ll just keep coming back and doing it all again and it’ll be different each time. Also, as you’ve probably gathered from my earlier rant, there are ZERO paywalls, microtransactions or loot boxes which is an absolute blessing.

The story behind the game is gripping and the voice acting is perfect, from the companions and narration, all the way to encounters, even just simple NPCs living their life as unimportant villagers somewhere. This game has an insane amount of dialogue and all of it is compelling and heartfelt, nothing like the emotionless dialogue of other big game titles... *cough* Skyrim…

The visual detail is beautiful, be it world, characters, or even spell effects. It’s a feast for the eyes! I could go on about every little detail in this game, but I would be here all day and barely scratch the surface. From the environment to the character animation, even down to the lip movement when characters are talking, it is simply phenomenal. The game is nothing less than a work of art.

Just buy the game, it’s easily worth its price tag and you won’t regret it.

Huge thanks to Larian for being a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stagnant industry. Let’s make this the new standard for AAA releases!

I've been a lift long fan of the AoW series since it's beginnings and Triumph Studios absolutely have not disappointed with AoW4. The new & updated systems have breathed new life into the series and the range of customisation is amazing.

I see a lot of people complaining that the customisation makes everything the same or removes diversity which couldn't be further from the truth. If you build everything the same way then yeah, but that's on you. Get creative and you can create a whole swathe of diverse factions.

The new province system is great, it adds more depth and strategy to your city building and new ways to test your alliances, whilst also giving you the chance to recruit powerful units such as dragons.

The spheres of magic is another thing I see people complaining about but I don't understand why, it gives you a wide range of magic/tech schools to choose from and gives you the ability to create a theme for your faction which is brilliant.

All in all, they've put in a lot of thought, work and dev play time which shows. I've not seen a game this polished upon release for a long time!

This clan is fantastic. The unique looting mechanic gives them a great head start even when random map generation doesn't play in your favour and their war chief can be an absolute monster with the right build. Eagle clan has quickly become one of my favourites to play.

Hoi!

TLDR: This is everything that I had hoped it would be and a fantastic addition to the Tide games. If you you enjoyed the Vermintide series but are craving something in a Sci-fi setting, you'll most likely love this.

NOTE: This is a Pre-order Beta release review. Yes there are bugs, that is the whole point of pre-order beta's. I see too many people leaving negative reviews because they've encountered bugs in a pre-order beta and it seems a lot of people mistake the beta time as a reward for pre-ordering... It's not. We're given access to stress test before launch and help find these bugs. If you're going to cry every time you find a bug or get a crash, don't install pre-order builds and wait for the official release. It's as simple as that.

That said, the team have been quick to respond and work out the bugs we've been reporting which is great to see and means the official launch is looking hopeful.

Now, on to the review.

Environment
The map design is brilliant. They've paid a lot of attention to the minor details in Darktide maps which is refreshing to see in a modern game, I often find today's games tend to lean towards lazy level designs but this isn't the case here. There's a good variety between multiple approach options and being funnelled into kill zones, allowing you to be tactically flexible whilst still throwing you into the deep end.

All the environments are as dark and grisly as you'd expect for the Grimdark Warhammer 40,000 setting and they've done a good job of adding various details that show that the Imperium is not the benevolent good guys in the galaxy that some people mistake them to be. (It's 40k, there are no good guys).

Weapons
The gun mechanics are brilliant. I still shudder at the memory of playing Valve's L4D and firing off guns that just felt flat. The feel of the guns in Darktide adds a lot of depth to the gameplay. From the satisfying clunk of the Kastrael XII Lasgun to the intoxicating thud of the Boltguns, they got the feel spot on.

The same can be said for the melee weapons, with the chainsword & chain axe feeling especially brutal, to the pristine clean cuts of the power sword.

The sheer variety of weapons is brilliant, allowing people to find a style that suits them. There is only one addition I would love to see come in the future which would be weapon customisation such as choosing between scope options. If this will ever happen, I do not know.

Enemies
I absolutely love the variety of enemies in the game and the extra challenges this brings. There's multi tiers of basic, special and elite enemies, each bringing different obstacles to the mission and can lead to some really intense and gruelling situations. The enemies will give you very little downtime and definitely keep you on your toes.

Character Customisation
This has been a brilliant first for the Tide games and the amount of work that they've put into creating this is amazing. The sheer amount of voice acting that had to be done to allow us to create characters that have a variety of different dialogues between each other based on our background choices has to be admired. It adds a huge amount of depth to the game play and has you laughing often. Just check out some of the Youtube videos people have made of character conversations and you'll see what I mean.

They've also provided a good range of character visuals to choose from when creating them + a good range of cosmetic items to create the style you want for the character.

Scoring - Or absence of it
Some people aren't happy that they've left out individual score breakdowns at the end of a mission, but others praise this. I can see and understand the arguments for both sides and take a bit of a neutral stance on this myself.

On one side, people like to see how they're performing and where they need to try to improve.
On the other side, many players become overly competitive with people they're meant to cooperate with and can lead to the wipe of many teams or to toxic communities.

If I'd choose one or the other, I'd prefer not having the scores and avoiding the toxicity they can cause, but I think there could be more balanced ways of handling this. We'll see what happens in the future.

{EDIT FROM FUTURE ME} - I take this last point back. Now that players have learnt how to play their role more now, some score or performance breakdowns would actually be nice so that you can see how you need to improve.


All in all, the work they've put in to adding depth to this game is something we don't see often in the industry. They've pulled out all the stops and it shows. I can't praise Fatshark highly enough for this game.

Yes launch day was rocky and yes it has bugs, BUT...

The dev team has already been hard at work to bring stability and fixes to the expansion and the effect is already very noticeable in game. I've been having some great firefights in settlements and performance has remained good and stable after today's patch.

It's a nice change of pace from the normal space combat of Elite, you are VERY fragile on foot so the fights can get challenging which is great. The guns are genuinely fun and the game looks absolutely beautiful on ultra.

It was nice to be able to actually visit engineers in person rather than just a screen on your ship and it's been fun exploring and seeing planets in a new way. I look forward to seeing what else they can do with it and to see if we get some new weapon and armour options one day.

The long wait is finally over, Bannerlord is finally in my playlist and it does not disappoint.

Graphically the game is beautiful and the new systems running behind Bannerlord are a huge improvement over the previous titles. Gameplay is nice and smooth and the combat is very fluid and immersive.

The sheer scale of the map is very impressive too, giving you plenty of regions to explore and conquer.
I haven't tried the multiplayer yet as I'm a big fan of the campaign mode but also that's already been well tested with the beta.

If you enjoyed the previous titles then you will love this game.

Do remember that this IS Early Access and you should expect to come across the occasional bug. IT IS NORMAL FOR THIS STAGE, if you don't want that risk then for your own sake and the sake of everyone that does enjoy this in early access, please wait until the full release is available. That said, I have encountered a few minor bugs but nothing big or game breaking and the game is perfectly playable upon release.