Recent reviews by StarGazer

Great game but does a poor job at balance.
Its probably at this moment the second best arpg on the market after poe1.
I took it as delve in poe1 with its endgame so to me this isnt too much of an issue however, most people wont like its fast progression or sudden difficulty increase. It's a whole different ballpark resulting in only a few builds being able to do high tier corruption hence the balance remark.
It seems to be a recurring pattern where newly released classes or reworks break the game completely wich is abit frustrating to witness because this will result in people's perspective on difficulty varying on a very broad spectrum.

It has all the build archtypes one might expect from an arpg with its legendary crafting system *both in the literall sense* it even beats poe in its innovation and idea's wich give it a very broad spectrum of midgame progression and evolution of your character.

I do hope however that they dont cave too much towards the average reddit user because its all fun to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ jonathan but any veteran arpg player would agree that too much loot or power makes it into d4.
And seeing how they do seem open to changes it would sadden me if they dint balance some of the ridiculously overpowered loot drop's with loot lizards or champion echo's.

Great game that gives you freedom in choice and looks amazing. 8.5/10 overall score for me.
I will give seperate scores in catagories so people can find what they enjoy in a game and decide if they want to play it for these factors. As i feel that resonates more with making a choice about what you enjoy in a game.
People giving this game a 10/10 are not known with dnd or other pen and paper rpg's in the genre.
Whilst good its not up to the level of a 10 as i will explain further.


Combat: 7.5/10
The combat while fun is no different from most turn based rpg's of the dnd genre. Alot of spells lack creativity in effects (visuals) and whilst mostly faithful to its pen and paper source still lack alot in the wow factor. The exception being creating environments as was present in Divinity original sin like poison puddles fires and icy surfaces.
Melee and ranged is no different with the occasional special moves and arrows that impact combat. The shove and jump bonus actions however are a great addition and seem very truthful towards its pen and paper source. The comparison between larian's Divinity and Baldur's gate is very different so it creates a need for multiple characters instead of being able to play entirely solo. Wich is one of the niche arguments that can be made for or against the flow of combat in Baldurs gate. It somewhat forces you into a balanced playstyle yet restricts you in freedom of choice, a counterintuitive moment when put in contrast to its freedom of choice in other area's. Aswell as my own assumptions or regards towards the game being truthfull to a dnd adaptation of the pen and paper material this is abit of a paradox but still a noticeable fact.
As you need a party for your adventures it does feel like power is being restricted and that aspect of the game resonates in different area's aswell. Alot of changes to the actual pen and paper spells and attacks are made purely to create a balanced experience but that goes against the fun factor and fantasy of being a powerfull player in dnd and in my opinion the essence of a pen and paper game. Some examples of this being mirror image and spellslots / arcane points. A system purely ment to restrict you in spellcasts so you dont make a super meta op character. I dont understand why this was done as the idea and philosophy of player choice is so high in other area's of the game and this genre is not a moba like league of legends. If they were concerned with difficulty they should have added an impossible mode with x5 hp and enemy's but perhaps that was too much work or ended up breaking to many engine related factors wich we will never know not being a developer or knowing the limits of the game engine.

Story: (short so no spoilers)
Great storytelling and atmosphere, cant really find any negatives here. Companions are fleshed out with good backstory's and engaging dialogue. Aswell as the secrets to be discovered giving you a reward for investigating and finding out more. The different ways you can handle quests and the story make for great replay value and fun. Impactfull consequences of your actions are the icing on the cake. The only 10/10

The WOW factor: (One minor spoiler with a companion named Asterion) 8/10
In retrospect to the WOW factor i mentioned, it seems like you are not allowed to experience alot of wow factors that make dnd so amazing where other games allow you to experience the apex of these powers and fantasy's (Being a Lich or a vampire to give you a small example).
Alot of amazing spells or moves are tied to these apex classes and choices. A little example of this is asterion whilst being a vampire thrall you can never become a vampire, So in the idea of letting him bite me and becoming a vampire or more accurately thrall the only thing i was left with was getting sucked by a male wich left a weird taste in my mouth (No pun intended). This seems like a huge wasted opportunity to let people experience the full scope of fun and rewards that everyone has in regards to their fantasy's and if your only fantasy is to get sucked off by a dude then its a 10/10. If you want to experience these apex classes then i can recommend Pathfinder wrath of the righteous. That game although being pathfinder lets you become the ultimate badass you want to be wich i feel is such a shame they dont let you experience and for that reason i cant give it higher than an 8 as this is supposed to be a dnd inspired rpg.

Stability: 9.5/10
Overall one of the best games in years to have been released and up untill now and i have yet to experience any major bug or crash. The only exception being with Sleep, as casting sleep on certain npc's in certain moves or pathfinding will bugg them out resulting in funny moments. As a small example there is a lady in the first druid area in a storehouse. If you cast sleep on her she will fall through the world *(Patched now she only t-poses stuck in the ground)* Perhaps this is a testament to the dev team in player choice and those choices will create anamoly's no dev can ever anticipate so thats deff amazing and tells you the passion of the game. Whilst needing a somewhat beefy pc its not too insane except for the 120+gb storage space required but i suppose iam getting old and modern day storage for games is getting to a point of insanity anyway and that might just be a nice indicator towards the content the game posesses anyway.

This review is based on the 1.0 release of bannerlord.
Older games are not taken into consideration.
If you want to read about its early installments, then that is up to you to investigate.

The game has been in beta for a very long time, infact also in early release so you could play it very early on in its beta development.
That being said the functions and updates vary between good and lackluster but that is a topic on its own wich i wont discuss any further aside from noting the long beta development and feedback wich has only moderately been taken into cosideration as i myself played this game after each major update and some of the issues i had a year ago still plague the 1.0 official release.

That being said i dont know a thing about programming so whatever is realistic and beyond achievable is not taken into consideration for my review.

Anyway, the game is fun and you go from a useless peasant to becoming a leader or king of a nation.
Upgrading and making your own build or roleplaying a character is fun but feels underdeveloped in relation to your start.
You can for example be a batannian but recruit units from another faction or start in a different zone.
Is that a good or bad thing? i dont know, it gives replay value but lacks immersion imo.
The campaign feels unfinished and the story is very barebones.
But thats not the strength of this game, wich is sandbox and player choice.
You have alot of freedom but ofcourse that is relative towards your goals.
If you want to be a trader then you can, but you are limited in the amount of things you can own.
Wich brings me to one of its fundamental flaws.
The parameters set by the game are unlogical and sometimes very frustrating.
For example i cannot own more than 10 workshops when im around tier 6 in clan rating.
This is already a very late game step and it means im restricted in my ability to go for that playstyle if i so wanted to.
The same goes for companions and party's your clan can support.
It degrades quickly into a grindfest for the fame points you want to gain in order to upgrade your clan tier.
Wich also involves doing non trader related options if you dont want to spend 10 years of your life doing only trade quests (the ratio of that is terrible).
Tournaments are fun for a while untill you understand its limiting amount of fights and options.
There is a ladder system for if you want to be a big boi fighter but it will always be the same recipe instead of adding races or other historical tournaments into the picture wich would increase its replay value, just to name a suggestion.

The war's and fights are fun but limited by your pc (duh) and the ai limit of troops imposed by you guessed it the tier and party size limit from clan tiers.
It feels like alot of these limitations might be because of engine limitations but if you go to mod's you quickly see alot of options and tweaks.

Wich is my main gripe with this game.
Alot of qol features and playthroughs rely on tweaks to make them fun or bearable.
And that is not a good sign.
The game should not have been released yet, its unfinished in too many area's that also plagued the beta versions of the game.
That being said thank god for modder's wich can make the game complete and therefor fun.
Wich is why i gave this game the thumbs up recommendation.

Ill try to summarise them all in this paragraph.
Army size limitations with too little correlation to my character (Mods that enable leadership + steward to increase are a must).
Companion Limitations (You get too many fief's or castles wich feel unmanaged and limit your micro management aspect and empire building, again mods add this).
Diplomacy (there is no diplomacy you cant make pacts or trade and that limits the fun of making an empire or playing as a king, again mods add this).
No micro management screen for your castles or fiefs, you have to manually enter each city to do anything and are limited to adapting a culture towards them so that they wont get major issues, again mods add this).
No gore (for god's sake im swinging a 2handed battle axe and i cant chop of some peasant's head? cmon now atleast add it as a dlc like other money hungry company's do so you can keep your rating, again mods do this).
Those are for me just the essential mods in order to not have a frustrating playthrough wich is kinda ♥♥♥♥♥♥ if you consider they never thought this was necessary for a 1.0 release.

All in all the game is fun and amazing but needs modding in order to make it a thumbs up would smash that ♥♥♥♥♥♥ peasant again.
(PS batannian fians are balanced).

I dont think ive ever played a game where i could turn into a dragon lich that rips the heart out of a person with a spell only to raise him afterwards to have a discussion about a cardgame.

Or raise a boss after killing him to let him do my dirty work while i sit back and drink some coffee.
Only to have another chat with him later to piss him off and then fight him again. (dont know if that last part is a bugg or not but it was hilarious anyway).

Positives:
All in all great game but it does require alot of reading and learning of mechanics.
Incase you dont know DND or other pen and paper rpg style games.
Management system of your kingdom and army's can get tedious but its a welcome change of pace for me personally so i enjoyed it.
Amazing choice of playstyles with a thousand different options to play with.
Not too many games in today's market that let you enjoy so many hours of playtime whilst wondering what other things you missed or want to play next in terms of classes.
The progession feels good and you go from peasant weakling to a litteral god wich feels very satisfying.
Good difficulty adjustments wich you can manage.
So you wont lose challenge or gain frustration.

Negatives:
Bugs, alot of them.
Ive had vendor bugs, crash bugs, worldmap bugs where i could see enemy army's that spawn when you take a rest so you know when youre being attacked while resting, loot buggs where theres a loot string through the entire zone, quest buggs where i had to solve a puzzle with stone slabs only to have the inventory bugg out so i cant place or remove said stone slabs making me stuck in that step forever, null description of features indicating no information of said feature or skill, missing textures on items, missing textures on models after resurrecting them with a scroll or skill, permanent level drains *its a debuff mechanic* being stuck forever even after safe resting and last but not least a bug where my character respec gets all previous negative penalty's from its race class.
luckilly they are dishing out patches but its obvious that in certain playtesting alot was missed and i speculate the reason of certain mythic classes or hard to play mechanics getting overlooked.
Ofcourse with so many skills, spells and feats this is understandable but that does leave you and me with frustration.
Hopefully those issues will be resolved in the coming weeks.
Some characters are abit boring and shallow but you can choose wich ones to talk and play with so cant really fault it that much.
Some descriptions are weirdly enough adressed as SHE wich i found kind of awkward since the game doesnt know what gender i have, not to be some sjw or cringy boy but it should describe it as *the wearer* or He or she gains ***.
It found me wondering if it was a girl that coded or worded that piece of gear but hey thats just my strange assumption perhaps.
Some mythic classes being gated at certain acts made it strange to find.
Swarm that walks or Devil seem to be locked behind certain quests that require a specific set of motions or choices making it annoying in my view.
Ofcourse the argument can be made for replayability but it feels dumb to lock it behind that in my eyes.
What if i wanted to choose this mythic path? well tough luck you forgot to give a scale to someone in act 1 or 2 and now you can load a save that goes back 2 days *literally in my case* or just go on with the one you chose or have access to.
The allignment system feels strange, and by that i mean the choices you make either being evil or good are very simple and sometimes comical.
The best way to see it is to just disable it alltogether and make your own choices so you dont feel forced to answer in a certain way or go full murder hobo wich the game wants you to be if you are evil wich is just the most simpleton way to play such rpg's as evil alligned.
That way my choices felt good and true to my character or to how i wanted to play without having too much frustration about results.
This does however lead to sometimes switching allignment wich can be detrimental to some mythic paths *lich or angel for example* they obviously need a good or evil allignment base.
Luckilly some companion quests offer easy evil or good choices so you can swap allignment again in town without effecting the overall pase of the game.

If i had to give this game a score i would give it a 8.5/10.
I love rpg's so thats why i probably have some bias but thats just my opinion.
Fix the bugs and you got a great game thats worth of a 9.5/10 or even 10/10.

Overview:
Mix between Dungeon siege, Diablo and Titan Quest.
Great class system that enables alot of different builds.
Good difficulty scaling and hardcore mode.
Only downside of this game is the somewhat lack of special effects in spells.
Dont get me wrong the game looks great but dont expect the most flashy of spells when you decide to make a caster.
That being said there are alot of different spells that enable builds.
However with any ARPG some builds will struggle at certain difficulty settings.

The Map:
Was surprised at how big the game was.
And ofcourse the special area's and dungeons felt great.
Exploration is rewarded and encouraged.

Devotion system:
The Devotion system gives extra options and feels like a good system to specialize in your builds.
Somewhat lacking diversity in endgame towards survivability where you end up picking the same ones (behemoth/dryad for example).
But aside from that its perfect.

9/10 if you got bored from poe, diablo or any other arpg of that caliber you have to play this.

Best ww2 game ive played since call of duty 1.
Great atmosphere and fights wich make evry game unique.
For me the tank gameplay has been amazing although some terrain issues are what's holding it down.
The feeling of arty shells hitting near you or a bombing run make for tense gameplay moments.
The only flaw ive noticed in the game is the anti cheat, or lack thereof.
No spectate function either so its a very trust based system wich usually works out in these titels.
However, since update 8 ive encoutered alot of mg cheaters who run around with lvl 200 accounts so dont expect any real combat against these people.
Luckilly they are very rare and only recently have i actually had to deal with them so dont worry too much from this mention.
10/10 would die in my foxhole again.

Let me start this review with saying that this game has been a refreshing rts to a genre most people might be familair with.
A subgenre called Tower Defence, originating from old games such as Starcraft, Warcraft, and other custom map creator editor games.

The game draws heavy inspirations from starcraft and other rts games when it comes to unit controle, yet retains building options and tiers with its economy driven aspect of citizens.
Thus making a mix of a economy sim with tower defence.
However some options are limiting so dont expect huge supply differences or chain production lists.
I would personally like if they try to make more difference in these supply chains so that the economic state of the game does not grow too stale to improve replayability.
Wich is a huge factor in this game.
Replayability.
Another big point of interrest most certainly when it comes to this genre of tower defence and sim building.

They did a really good job at the replay value of the game.
However, they are slow to develop new buildings or chain buildings.
Also the mapcount is low, understandible when it comes to map balancing with thousands of zombies.
However it should be noted that its inspiration from its own origin is somewhat lacking.
They could pool from a huge number of custom maps made in community's such as warcraft 3 or age of empires 2.
Some games even experienced with the same zombie survival building aspect > Vampires is such a custom map in W3.

So here we have the underlining issue of the game.
They are a slow company and somewhat inexperienced when it comes to its genre.
So iam disappointed in its slow development because the game is a real gem.
And the fusing of building sim with survival rts is somewhat the gaming industry should recognize.
And being a INDY developer most certainly reafirmes the position of the gaming genre.

Now onto the real gameplay.
Units are fun and diverse however the same issue persists, lack of choice.
The game has too few units in my opinion to make really relevant strategy choices.
Perhaps a tier or more diverse way of choosing a certain tech is required.
Such as they try to do with the current Governer system.
However such a system relies too heavily on RNG.
So the Governer System is somewhat flawed and thus results in RNG fest or simply the one proper choice.
Wich is mostly considered Economic gain such as the increase in gold or settlers for the settlement.
So choice is again a big factor here.

Building space is what is currently holding you down or making you become a super city.
So perhaps a bigger map is needed currently to sustain the replay value of having only 3 maps.
The issue is that once i build the entire map full of ♥♥♥♥, the game falls into a stale state.
Again somewhat due to limiting factors of the map size and hostile enemy settlements.
Such as the Village of doom.
A village intent on the underlying theme of having something to deal with during your buildup phase.
Perhaps a patrole system? like in warhammer virmintide could be a good option.
However i fail to see any direct communication when it comes to such ideas.
The train system however is a good step but it fails to keep me satisfied with replayability.
And that is currently in development so again no notice on WHEN it can be expected to even work.

The village's of doom are a fun mechanic however and a simple yet crucial element of the survival element.
In the same way that certain infected crawl up on each other when you use big unit's such as the Titan.

The units such as the Titan are fun and really impactfull on destroying zombies.
However only 6 units are available at this moment.
Far too few to create a real strategy choice instead of just spamming a unit.

Unit collision and unit pathing is still an issue, its rather good however i would say for just a game made by Indie developers.
Still you will have issues when you are above 50+ units in a group, and they will clutter and block each other.
The same counts for zombies however for zombies you require atleast 2.000 before the engine decides its enough and makes them block each other sometimes resulting in a complete halt of unit movement and direction.
Thus making the zombie wave useless and just standing there.

This goes hand in hand to its RNG map generation however, so it is somewhat expected that by random chance you have some pathing issues.
Wich can never be truely adressed its just a fault in the map concept itself and the narrow passageways that can result.

Overall this game is really good and its a shame that its developers are so slow in increasing its replayability.
The community map challenge was a good idea but its the ONLY idea at the moment and that angers me.

So this falls into the catagory of early release hostage.
The game is held back by its developers in certain area's unfortunantly.
The game itself however is truely a gem and i would certainly recommend it to evrybody.
Just dont expect it to change within 5 years from now thats all.

Thanks for reading this far too long review and i hope to get some feedback perhaps you agree or disagree with certain points.

First off let me start that this game is still in early acess, so its subject to alot of changes.
Lets see what this game does right and what it does wrong.
Ofcourse like all games theres a preference for evryone so most of it is from a subjective opinion.
However because i played alot of competitive shooters like csgo i mostly compare them with these games.
Ofcourse the game is ment to be original and have different elements but when you consider competitive play must be alligned with a more succesfull competitive shooter community, hence the cs go comparison.

Pro's -

Good gunplay - The gameplay is smooth and firing guns seems very good. A good selection of different guns and types of play. This combined with good hitreg makes it feel that you are rewarded for good aim. That being said its still on 64tick so well have to see when they upgrade it to 128.
Good maps - there are a multitude of maps that reminded me heavily on cod2 wich had very good compact maps.
There are some exceptions to this where some maps have too many awkward angles wich makes elemination of angles abit weird.
CSGO - the game is focussed on defusal type victory. Plant the bomb, protect or defuse, the most succesfull form of shooter objective wich is competitive.
Competitive - the game is focussed around competitive play, alot of games seem to think that a playerbase will grow into a competitive community while this is ofcourse dependant on the game itself. So developers creating and enhancing gameplay focussed on that is a huge plus and secures a longer lived community that will invest time and effort.
Selective role choosing - You pick a class that suits the role, nothing unbalanced is added like weird after death perks or other game ehancing things that make you required to always use them. this maintains a level of playing field and makes the game balanced.
Good game engine - The game runs smooth and i have yet to experience any major fps drops. The game runs on almost any lowtier spec, myself having a mid range spec i was very much surprised how effortless my rig seems to handle the game. Making a game accessible is always a huge thing so it can help maintain a bigger playerbase aswell as not creating frustration in some scenarios or even downright making it pay to win (as in bigger rig bigger chances).

Cons -

Ninjas, Ninjas evrywhere -Jump shooting and leaping has always been a form of movement however, should never be a main focus point for a game to shine, the game overdoes this where it feels like youre actually a ninja and not a ww2 soldier. Making it so that angle clearing is basicly you jumping and running like youre THE FLASH.
Too Fast to securely hold an angle - This means that with the dashing and jumping holding an angle seems very unreasonable because you can never EVER expect a certain angle to be held at a certain level, Be it crouching, jumping, or fastly dashing it seems that this destroys any form of controle you have over holding an angle so in comparison to for example csgo where a headshot angle at certain spots is preferable. In this game it can be ANYWHERE and that makes it uncompetitive in my book.
Bad Servers - Yes, there are still issues even with the weird journalist reports saying ITS FIXED, its really not and if you havent experienced these issues you will. There also seems to be a monopoly at their server hosting so you can only buy a server from 1 company.
Skyboxes - Some maps are not optimised properly and are subject to weird boosts and glitches, you can at some maps boost on unintended spots. Together with no skyline makes it that for example grenades can often be thrown into a spawn location or very close to it. While some players consider this a tactic, i find it cheap and it creates a big imbalance at some maps where for example one has to reach objective A to defend while under a barrage of grenades preventing one from enetering or defending the site, the same goes for attacking.
Beta testing? - The game seems at some points very refined however on some maps downright awfull. I wont mention specific cases but there are maps where you can literally be behind the map or under it. Also the grenades make it somewhat quesitonable. As for lagg and server issues i cant believe they havent run into these issues as of yet wich makes me question the reliability of the Beta testing.
Ofcourse you can argue well this IS THE BETA, and its early acess so you are the tester basicly, while this is partially true its actually kinda shady, when a game launches for the public i feel is when its already out of beta, and perhaps a new term should be used. Also excluding criticism from being a early acess game is kinda shady.
They can always say well, its early acess and those topics have already led to alot of shady things like DAY-Z etc.


I would say the game is very promising and has alot of good things going for it.
The competitive feel is certainly there in this game.
However with the fast gameplay it feels like its abit overdone, Positional play is meaningless and rushing towards a target is a better strategy than simply outplaying on good angles (brain) or aim.
But you said aim was good right? Yea it certainly is. the guns have good recoil, spray patterns and hit reg.
However the ninja element as i will call it is too extreme, creating too many scenarios where flick shooting is THE AIM and while that is fun should be considered as an extreme case, not a regular one.
If the game would say nerf movement with 30% and a bigger jump difference in distance, the game would probably be the best competitive shooter outside cs go.
So i feel this is a big missed chance at really creating a good competitive shooter.
Ofcourse some people like fast movement > Unreal tournament, however most prefer somewhat slower paced methodical gameplay. Otherwise alot of scenarios will be considered LUCK simply because of the flick shooting mechanic being an intergral part of evry game.
That being said the movement of models itself is fine and it feels like the models are properly placed and coded.

So thats about it, ofcourse the game will change and adapt so im very hopefull for this one.
If you dont like bunnyhopping or ninja's DONT get this game just yet, If you like fast paced movement you should get this one ASAP.