Recent reviews by Hadrim

Just Perfect. What more do you need, than the ability to beat up both strangers and friends in incredibly over the top and insanely cartoony ways, with weapons that range from seemingly pathetic "Aw it's a tiny pew pew".. to AAAAHHHH "What the Absolute H**l is that?". One of the few games where the glitches add to the experience haha :)

Absolutely awesome.
Dungeons 3 summed up is a blast of the perfect blend of corny, comedic and incredibly fun gameplay with an exceptionally well styled dungeon building extravaganza. The Narrator, the building, the combat, the rooms and research trees, and an endless insatiable urge to keep slapping your workers and denying basis sustenance to your troops is all a blast. Quirky and silly in just the right way.
In addition, if you decide to play co-op with pal, it's a different adventure entirely, being able to work on the same dungeon and designate who does what and why; (ie: one person can be a lot better at building, the other fighting etc.) or you can skirmish one and other and have your own dungeons each and see who's the true dungeon master. Definitely try it both alone and with a friend. You won't regret the thrill of burying 20 axes, a meteor strike and just enough traps to seem overkill yet immensely satisfying on one lone guard who's all that is left after his troupe of brave warriors are laid waste along your passages of death. They may of not deserved it, but you did it anyway haha.. Praise the Ultimate Evil!

Let me start off saying I adore the main game. It is one of my top favourites, and I have patiently been awaiting the release of this expansion since it was announced.

I Was Not Disappointed!

Playtime: Shy of 13.0hrs

This absolutely nails the continuation of the story, twisting and turning in new fascinating directions, impending doom, new locations and characters but yet not forgetting it's "Roots" of the base game. With further exploration delving into the future of the world at hand and the scope in which the crisis that brutally befell upon it made its mark.
It also does not forget to continue the atmospheric storytelling that the base game setup and paced so well, popping up throughout; notes, recordings, investigations of the surroundings, all within incredibly well-crafted environments and score, giving subtle prods that get you thinking of the times before The Ark, The Mutants, even Eden and the fall of The Ancients. A lovely blend of show and tell, where the balance strikes just right, not to tip either way and let your imagination do the rest. Though with each story interaction, more questions arise similar to the base game, one's we have not gotten answers to, and possibly never will.
"How did it all spiral so poorly, to lead to humanity taking such drastic measures attempt to save itself, only to make the situation worse."
"What is a lie, and how exactly do we define it?"
"Is for the greater good ever an excuse?"
Sometimes sad, occasionally hopeful and other times a mixture of a strange curiosity of why?

I loved it all. Especially the recording of each character's dialogue to converse with each other when investigating points of interest.

Plus it was awesome having a reason to return to some of the old settings thanks to Pripps missions, Bravo with the fights being indeed challenging but not overboard, not feeling out of place and adding to the dynamics at play. Furthermore, on the mechanics side of things, the new enemies were an unexpected and fun change of pace, having to implore different strategies and characters to conventional ones to focus on those particular enemies first. I used every character constantly throughout my play, switching weapons and hats.

To cap this part off, the atmospheric set up for possible future instalments is both wonderful and welcomed. It's like a cliffhanger for a Great TV Show you want to know the end of but don't.. Because that would mean the End.

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Now for the other side of the review:

However, to keep this somewhat unbiased, I will discuss a few issues I encountered throughout my playthrough that may somewhat of broken immersion.

Performance: The game runs incredibly well until it doesn't. I experienced this in the base game as well, where you can be playing for an indeterminate amount of time and at completely random intervals the game would stall, freeze and the frames would essentially motion blur together into a mass for a brief moment, then stabilize, resume as normal, then do it again.
Now I tracked this down to two possible reasons; either the game was in midst of preparing to crash to desktop (to which this expansion did three times), or your frames will tank from max to one, GPU from 100% to 0% usage and back. I have been unable to solve this issue, whether, through driver updates, settings dropped or otherwise.
In the span of 5 minutes, this can happen half a dozen times. The only place I found it to stay relatively consistent was in the pause menu as that resets the GPU back to 100% usage. No clue why, but that's what convinced me this was game-related as this does not happen in any other program or game I've use.

GUI Overload: Linking with the above, there is a strange GUI glitch that can happen under varied circumstances where all the overlays from every menu and the main play screen will overlap and merge with one and other, and after pushing escape a number of times, bits and pieces of them will remain stuck and displayed on screen, but now with access to the pause menu disabled. To which if you alt-tab at this moment the game will become non-responsive and crash.

Environments and Path-finding: I did not experience this too often in the base game but in this expansion, a number of the environments had collision boxes in certain places that seemed bigger than they should be or angled incorrectly that would cause the followers of the main character to get confused easily and would become stuck and refuse to move. This can happen crossing bridges, ladders, teleportation and periodically after putting them into the hidden mode and bringing them back out. Combined with the GUI issue, the follow me and split up buttons would disappear and stop functioning, to which a reload would be required to fix.

Character Dialogue: I've noticed a few inconsistencies, mainly after combat or just in passing with some of the dialogues seeming a little out of sync with the rest of the Plot.
For example, Bormin shouting "For the Eldar, for the Ark", long after the Eldar has packed up his bags, left and everyone hates him. And if you revisit certain areas with a different group and main character after completing a mission there, it can replay some of the same or similar dialogue from that Quest/Story Branch.
For example, rescuing the Eldar. "There's the Eldar, he's surrounded by some Gouls, let's go say hi". Finish that mission, let the cut-scenes play, proceed to leave and go back to the Ark, come back later to look for any scrap that might have been overlooked and go to that area again and it will play the dialogue dependent on character selections but this time nothing is there. Not a big deal, just a little immersion breaking.

Being removed from cover when exiting combat: I enjoy scouting around for different vantage points, putting characters into tucked away spots around enemies like a crossfire. However, due to the expansive ring of awareness, you have to be stealthy quick to get hidden before someone picks you up. Though if your only observing not fighting, or accidentally hit space bar instead of the right mouse button, you have to switch to another character to leave combat. Otherwise you auto-leave precious cover and suddenly everyone and their nan now have pin-point GPS coordinates of your location and position, your friends position, your friend of a friends position and are now fully aware of what you had for breakfast, effortlessly turning you into a Swiss chocolate as they hit three 25% shots in a row. Now, this is probably a deliberate mechanic, but it's a tad infuriating at times.

Pripps Bar Issues: I've noticed some of the upgrades in Pripps Bar do not apply or refuse to apply. My most notable one was Medkits remaining at + 7HP, even though I bought the upgrade for + 8HP. Once again, not world ending, just a little disconcerting when you've saved your artefacts for them to do nothing.

Wonky Aiming Camera: if your character is near a large wall-like structure like a tunnel, Instead of zooming in to compensate, the camera will occasionally embed itself into a rock where only a black foggy screen and a display a red GUI percentage of whoever you are aiming at remains, unable to make out anything else.

Reskins: A number of enemies are reskinned mechanics.

An Artistic standpoint: Some of the movement for the cameras within the cinematics can feel a little janky at points compared to others, easing in and out before the camera switches scene and having somewhat unnatural movement. Also if when a character was talking, the camera would switch from one static shot to another, say a side on point of view with said character possibly moving their head towards it to compensate and add some emphasis to important dialogues trying to be conveyed, furthering emotional tension, it'd go a long way. This point can be safely ignored, food for thought.

In all. Fantastic additions to the world Bearded Ladies, I enjoyed every minute of it. I shall look forward to your future projects!

One of the best (4x) strategy games I have ever played. Insanely Fun, overly addicting, a multitude of content (including the awesome modding community who are very much active) and the ability to literally carve out a narrative driven story of your own creation in space as a galactic empire, what is there not to love?
Giving an amazingly engaging atmosphere very reminiscent of Star Trek with choice based events, anomalies, alien discovery, diplomacy, artifacts, fleet customisation, space combat, territorial expansion and an engrossing musical score all to the sound of you conquering any and all Xeno's in the known universe who tell you that you can't count pass 1. And to that I say..

01001001 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101110 00100000 01100011 01101111 01110101 01101110 01110100 00100000 01100110 01101001 01101110 01100101

Combined with a modular learning path where you can understand portions the game essentially in sections without having to many negative implications from the get go, allows for one to solve things they've yet to understand without being to overwhelmed, making for a great experience to newcomers.

To wrap up though, let's be perfectly honest, time doesn't exist when playing Stellaris, as it is merely a social construct to be overcome as the phrase goes: "just a few minute--hour---days------weeks more..". "It's not addicting you tell a friend, 350 years into a game and a week having passed in the real world, not having remembered what sunlight is"
One moment you're making a cup of tea, the next it's been stewed for 4 hours because some neighbouring Assimilating douche-bag decided that it likes the look of your mechanical form right next to the chandelier. To which leads you on a devastating path of self reflection for the next half a century, where you have now been in 12 wars, conquered most the known galaxy and destroyed 6 empires, all for relatively minor things that seem to get ever the more nitpicky, like being unbelievably hideous.. even though you had a migration treaty with said empire 100 years previously. And after all that and your resources dwindling, your fleet now being close to non-existent, to which even the pirate factions would laugh at, the century turns to 2400 and the Endgame Crisis tosspots decide roll up and say "What's up chaps, where's the kitchen I'm starving--- oooh it's the guy from WALL-E, how Adorable!, can you count?" Such is life..

Need I say anything more, than it's pretty much the best RTS game ever made and probably always will be, up there with the likes of Command and Conquer Generals. Astounding gameplay, fluid mechanics and dynamics, the greatest I've ever played to say the least and that's putting it midly. The story is superb but brutal, nothing better than fighting off loads of infantry and tanks from multiple angles and or flanks whether it be; Germans, Americans or The mighty fine tea drinking muppets, us British, the fun is endless, I know mine still is :) Go and Play it. Fully Recommend + more (A++) (9.8/10)

Pretty much the best mod ever conceived. A fun, engaging, completely over the top crazy mess of mostly unrelated mechanics slammed together for you to attempt to break and experiment with "because you can", inevitably leading to the realisation of the time sink ahead.

You will never be strapped for ideas!

There is always something new to do; whether it's trying to achieve it, explore it and or build it, an immersive universe one might say, unlike no other awaits.

- Your imagination now officially has no limits.

It's one of those kinds of RTS games. One that you'll remember for days to come, a great sequel to the all time classic Supreme Commander. Engaging, yet an unfiltered cluster of chaos rapped into a refined package with everchanging gameplay, a great multiplayer and never leaves you bored, It's a Must for any RTS Gamers!