Recent reviews by HereticKannon

Cool game with a lot of potential. My biggest gripe so far is that pylons feel like they have a very short range so I have to put them everywhere.

A fantasy zombie survival with multiple factions, heroes, dark atmosphere, good voice acting, a campaign and co-op?

I'm in.

The real challenge of Fallout 76 is dealing with the laughably small stash limit the game gives you. I spend most of my time dealing with my inventory just so that I can do the same events and expeditions over and over in the hopes of getting something worth keeping.

Which I then need to make space for in my stash box.

I want to get off Todd's Wild Ride.

tl;dr: I have to stop playing this. I'd rather step away while I still love what this game could be rather than hate what it is turning out to be.

Sword of Convallaria succeeds at being a worthy spiritual successor to Final Fantasy Tactics or Disgaea. Outstanding pixel and character art, a fantastic soundtrack that I never got tired of listening to, great Japanese voice acting and an interesting story that kept me going and curious what would happen next.

All that said, I can't keep playing this. For the last several days I have been playing SoC not because I wanted to but because I feel compelled to finish time-gated events and complete my daily quests. I've been going through the motions without the joy I once felt upon first playing.

If I could buy this game for 60 dollars I would, no question. I could take the story at my own pace and play for as long as I wanted without feeling pressured to keep going day after day simply for the sake of completing quests and events that are going to expire within two weeks.

With things as they are, the free to play live service model they have adapted pushes a constant feeling of "I should get my quests done for the day so I can do what I actually want to do." I feel like I'm missing out if I'm not constantly making full use of my in game energy and doing all of the quests and it just... drains me.

So for now I'll play something else and listen to the beautiful Sword of Convallaria soundtrack. It sucks, but at least I will have the constant, burdensome thought of "I need to play Sword, whether or not I feel like it right now" off my back.

As a final note, the vast majority of my time playing has been on Bluestacks or my tablet so my time played here is misleading.

In my restless dreams, I see that game.
Deep Rock Galactic.
You promised you'd play with me again someday,
But you never did.
Well, I'm alone there now...
In our 'special game'...
Waiting for you...

02/22/2024 Edit: With the release of patch 4.2 and the influx of new content for Shadows of Change, I'm tentatively changing my review to a positive one.

Is the game perfect now? No, not by a long shot. But at least they're making an effort to fix their mistakes so I'm trying to meet CA halfway.

By that I mean leaving a positive review and actually purchasing SoC because with the added content maybe it's actually worth the 25 bucks they're charging for it. I won't know if I don't give it a try myself.

... (2023 review follows)

I'm not mad, CA. I'm just disappointed.

I remember getting Shogun: Total War when I was 12. My parents bought it as a reward for bringing my grades up at school. I was terrible at it! But that didn't stop me from loving the game. Total War games have been a part of my life ever since.

I own every Total War title except Britannia. I have pre-ordered every dlc for all three of their Warhammer titles. I love these games. I wanted to support the developer.

Now we have the Chief Product Officer for Creative Assembly coming out and telling us that since their costs are going up, so do their prices. With no mention of how CA is making record profits. With no mention of *how* these increased costs are going to benefit continued development of this game. No mention of how the vast majority of players are unsatisfied with the lackluster, infrequent patch support and shoddy optimization this game has suffered from since its release.

This is not the first time they have increased their dlc prices. This is, however, the first time that they've increased dlc prices by 10 dollars in one fell swoop.

No race reworks, some of which are in desperate need (I see you crying in the corner over there, Norsca). No new lore of magic for Mother Ostankya, nor a new lord type to lead her armies. No combat hero for Cathay which they desperately need.

No good reason to buy this overpriced dlc and silently affirm that I agree with the way things are going at what used to be one of my favorite developers.

tl;dr: You got my money once, Rare. Well done. It won't happen again.

Every time someone asks me about this game, I regret that I can't recommend it.

I loved playing this with friends back in 2020. The sounds of water crashing against the hull during a storm. Wood creaking and the tension of the rope in your hand as you turn the sails to catch the wind. Playing sea shanties with your mates while you keep an eye on the horizon. Even the bugs were typically more funny than annoying because at the end of the day we were having a good time.

Sea of Thieves is at its best an immersive open world for you and your friends to enjoy and create memories together. That was until we got fed up with being constantly killed and spawn camped by other players. Over and over. The fun was lost in the frustration and we all quit playing. I kept the game in the back of my mind, though. I was hopeful that at some point the devs would listen to the large part of the community who were asking for some sort of PVE mode. One day we would be able to return.

Years later I come back to check on the situation only to find that threads on their official forums which try to discuss the possibility of PVE/Private servers are immediately locked by the moderators. Ask for a higher FOV setting? The thread is locked and you are threatened with a ban if you modify your fov manually. You can't even comment on their official patch notes and update posts on steam. They are all automatically locked.

The devs do not want to hear your experiences or requests. They want to keep to their vision of a 'PVEVP' world. Everyone can choose to follow along or leave. So we left.

I had some great times with my friends on this game, and I'm thankful for that. But, given that the developers refuse to even allow discussion for an option to play the game without the constant fear of being ganked by some twitch streamer on a sloop or a hacker flying through the air... I will consider this a lesson learned to never buy anything from this company ever again.

The base game is alright and has steadily improved since release but the lack of content takes its toll on vanilla after a couple playthroughs. The real selling point of this game is the incredible work being done by the modding community.

Kaiserreich - for alternate history fans
Old World Blues - for Fallout or post-apocalyptic fans
Road to 56 - for people who want an improved base game experience
The New Order - for people who enjoy suffering
Equestria at War - for people who enjoy psychological horror

The list goes on for major overhaul mods with a staggering amount of content.

For context a lot of what makes each nation special is their focus tree which they use to shape and evolve the country. As today, May 28th, 2021, if you own *all* of the DLC then there are 33 countries with unique focus trees in the base game, some being much worse than others (looking at you, Italy). Meanwhile Kaiserreich has over 90 unique focus trees for the starting date and many more from countries spawning via events as the game progresses.

You can spend hundreds of hours playing through different countries on many of these overhaul mods and still have only experienced a fraction of what they have to offer. If you do buy HoI4 there's almost certainly at least one overhaul mod that appeals to you that will draw you in more than just sticking with vanilla would.

tl;dr - HoI4 is a decent game but it's a better framework for modders to build on than anything else.

"Thank you for paying to beta test Total War: Three Kingdoms, stay tuned for 2023 when we release the real thing!" - CA