Recent reviews by Aeneas137

I played this many years ago on iPad and enjoyed the challenging puzzles. It takes many replays to beat all 8 levels. Very fun way to pass some time.

I usually play a robot empire or do The Flesh is Weak because late game organics become a PITA with all their comfort demands. Whiny bastards!

The best survival game I've played so far, after being VERY disappointed with the still totally broken 7 days and similar titles. Much of the gameplay is sloppy, in need of refinement, and it's frustrating having to look up basic actions online to find an answer, but once you've solved the problem of the poor UI programmed by monkeys as it were, the game starts to become enjoyable.

However, there is limited gameplay life after a certain point when the bugs become just too tiresome. The building features are pointless because your structures just get destroyed quickly (even with "invincible" mode on). I became bored with the gameplay because I prefer defense/survival games, not the sort with endless hordes that wear you down (like CoD: Zombies). This was fun for 25 hrs but then IDK...

Surprisingly bad. I waited 5 years after release and it is still not polished. The graphics are extremely dated for a current-gen game, but then most Firaxis games have issues like that. I've always thought their animation director should be replaced, but what do I know? It's glitchy and hard crashed my PC twice in only one hour of play. I usually turn off all FSAA features when that happens (as it did with The Witcher 3) but still gives me an overall bad taste. I didn't like the character designs, or the levels, or the strange ambient lighting. It's like Firaxis wanted to use HDR but didn't quite get what they were supposed to do with it? My video card is a bit dated (GTX 9700) because I can't find a new one anywhere to buy, but still, I've played many games for hundreds of hours on this card without hard crashing. Stellaris: something like 500 hours. I just don't want to fight with a game like this--I don't want to have to try SO HARD to enjoy it. Like going on a date with someone as a favor. So, after 1 hour, I uninstalled and requested a refund. If I don't get it, oh well, it was only $5. But I consider that a Starbucks that spilled just as I was about to take the first sip.

Okay, I've played this game about 100x now, and switched to chess.com because overall it's better than any chess app or steam game. The reason I switched is because Chess Ultra is just too fricken slow. Every...freaking...thing...you click...takes...forever. It's like waiting for an old lady in a parking lot to get her car out of the way. I don't want to wait 4 seconds every time I click something while some idiotic animation runs. The actual gameplay is fine when the audio works. But, like I said, chess.com is better. Ratings, live players, computer players, play with friends, pay or don't pay for premium, etc. It's the pro site for chess. Not that it's fair to compare C-U with it, except that C-U was very disappointing and irritating to me. The devs need to speed up the fricking game so stuff happens immediately. And, for the love of God, stop making me delete a stored game Every. Freakin. Time. I want to play!

Another of the DLC that I disable now when starting a new game because it's just an annoying distraction after the first few times.

This is the most annoying of the DLC for Stellaris. I always disable it.

Very inconsistent difficulty scaling, to put it mildly. 1-6 was hilarious, then suddenly at level 7 it's like Kasparov sat down to play me. I'm not a very good player, I admit it, but when I'm laughing at the computer player one minute, and then being humiliated in a massive multi-piece annihilation the next minute, there's something wrong with the game. The difficulty scaling should have moved along at a predictable pace for 20-30 levels, instead of going from "how do the pieces work?" to a level 1000 or so player in one round. Come on!

I don't understand why the game board is in the semi-dark. Obviously it's a simple 3D engine, but come on! Is a small lamp asking too much? The game board interface is clunky, and the mistake this game makes is doing click testing on the pieces rather than on the SQUARES. When I've got the board tilted at any angle, clicking on the BOARD is what matters, not which piece is in front of one or another squares. Having to right-click to drop a piece is annoying when this click failure happens so often. I pick up pieces by mistake not because I can't navigate the mouse, but because the damn game doesn't know how to recognize square intersection. Duh.

I don't care if it's free or not, these are basic requirements and the game fails at them. I want to pay for the so-called "premium" edition (in other words, non-nag edition, what's premium about it?), but I'm not supporting a flawed game. The next best competitor is only $12.99 with gorgeous graphics and full-tilt features.

So, no, I don't recommend it just because it's free. What's free? A nag screen every other game. The UI is kind of clutzy but usable. Just overall clunky. The game needs a redesign. Arguably, it is more playable in 2D than with the 3D board. I want to change my rating to Recommend due to the 2D board removing the annoyances I've mentioned, but overall I just can't, the game annoys me too much. Chess Ultra is only $12.99 and is entirely much better.

This expansion makes Civilization VI a pain to play without adding any enjoyable benefits to the gameplay. You have to constantly put up with rebelling cities and it just becomes tiresome. I'm probably going to remove the expac and play the vanilla game with mods.

The loyalty issue goes away after a few centuries of occupation and building, but the second problem with this expansion is that the game becomes really dull after a while. The A.I. players are so idiotic, continuously sending me stupid trade offers for my rare relics (offering only open borders) turn after turn after turn! Endlessly!

I'm just not investing any more into Civ VI. Maybe the additional expansions improved the gameplay but I already spent money on Rise & Fall and regret it.

I spent way too many hours with this game on the Xbox One not working correctly, with most of those hours sitting waiting for loading screens. It was a really bad port. I've heard the PC version has similarly bad loading times. We'll see as I've just started.