Recent reviews by Aeneas137

Lots of action and fun gameplay, like a more realistic Diablo 3, and more fun too imo. D3 gets on my nerves after a while, but this version of Gauntlet is a hybrid, somewhat true to form but also with a modern dungeon crawler feel. Again, impossible not to compare it to D3, but it's a very light comparison. I played it for 3 hrs on my first try, that's how much it hooked me. need a party for best results.

I've read the negative reviews and understand their points, but I only paid $5 for this game and it's easily worth $10-20 for a fan of the series (or genre). Never crashed, never saw any bugs. How is that possible today? This team brought a faithful and well-done rendition of the game franchise to PC with MP support.

What's missing? I wish the designers had brought gameplay from Dark Legacy into this one, as that was the best of the franchise (originally arcade, I own the Xbox version from like 2005). This game looks good and gameplay is solid if predictable. What's missing is some of the goofy stuff that made Dark Legacy so epic. The insane boss battles. The huge amount of collecting. The interactive home base with unlockable areas. I would actually just really love it if Dark Legacy was ported.

I love complex "grand strategy" games but Crusader Kings 2 is just ridiculous. The UI is terrible. The gameplay is like sitting in a college classroom studying family trees. I've given this a huge amount of my time, trying to figure out how to have fun with it, and it's just not fun. I even spent several hours watching tutorials to no avail. Gave up. (p.s. In one of the games I played the King of England, and my advisors told me to get married and produce an heir. So I did, I married a princess of Germany. 1 year later, no heir, but I died of "high stress".)

There are some quality-of-life gameplay problems that may or may not be changed as the game nears completion but I've gotten used to the quirks (like being unable to follow where the computer is attacking even when following).

I'm really fed up with the bugs, though. And lack of any sort of connection to players online makes it impossible to communicate. For instance, even to say "Good game" or "I resign" but when you resign with no warning it looks like a douchy rage-quit.

I'll come back in a year IF the devs finish it. No more early access. I also cannot recommend it so I'm reversing my review.

I've been playing Sid Meier's Civilization since 1991. While I played every iteration for hundreds of hours, some were more enjoyable than others, but each game has evolved the series.

Civ II (and CivNet) was a graphical and gameplay overhaul.

Civ III had troubling A.I. problems that rendered it impossible above Prince (imho) by the mere fact you could never keep your populations happy.

Civ IV was perhaps the first "master class" edition of the game, bringing on huge gameplay improvements, the first full 3D engine for the series, excellent DLCs (which properly "completed" the game), and was really, really fun, without frustrations. When you lose, it's your fault, not due to ridiculous bugs or balance.

Then we come to Civ V which was unplayable until the first DLC arrived. I bought the complete edition many years after the 2010 launch, and it was playable and enjoyable at that point (some 3-4 years later). I was never very happy with the graphics, but Civ V had the best MOD capabilities, and one of my faves was 20,000 BC (the Von Daniken "ancient tech" mod).

I have now put in 30 hours into Civ VI, and feel it's the best iteration of the series for many reasons. First, it's just fun, as the A.I. doesn't cheat, and difficulty does not involve giving the computer civs more gold. It's pleasantly HARD if you don't learn how combat works, how to siege a city properly, but unlike earlier games, it doesn't take 2,000 years to conduct a war (at least on Marathon, I don't know about other speeds). I could ramble on about the features but other reviewers will handle that. I love this game. I bought it on sale, but now feel it would have been worth full price.

I am very pleasantly surprised by the quality of this remake with familiar tech tree and stable gameplay. It's MORE fun than the originals with good artistic style and smooth gameplay. Best of all, it's not loaded with bloat that makes some games buggy, it's straightforward without a lot of crap added. Reminds me of the first game with a few improvements and an excellent UI. I'm talking overall gameplay, not details here. Overall, reminds me of MOO1. But it's vastly improved in every way. I found it very easy to play, but that first game took forever because I wasn't sure how some things worked. 2nd time thru was a breeze. Well done, NGD Studios!

Okay, I finally fired up Europa Universalis IV just to see if I've wasted another $10 on a Steam sale, bolstered by my on/off fanhood of Paradox. Played it for a few hours as the Cherokee and managed to figure out the typically vague Paradoxisms. Got a massive headache from the non-scaling UI. And got the hang of it. I defeated a couple minors nearby with an alliance and immediately afterward my biggest ally turned on me. Okay, well, I have a massive army so I'll take that as an invitation to take his provinces. Great.

Except in the middle of the first massive battle, I accidentally right-clicked somewhere. It happens due to Paradox's crappy UI. My massive army turned and bailed on the battle, causing a loss of -20 warscore and massive fatigue so this army runs like 3 provinces away and refuses to engage again. Keep in mind this was a new army, rested for like 5 years, and an odd click caused them to immediately quit the battle and flee. Shouldn't there be a "oops" dialog before that?

So my 19k army is sitting in the corner hiding, when this enemy's paltry 5k army comes along and defeats them. Because they're shaking in fear and disgrace from "losing" a battle.

And this is pretty much how Stellaris works too, and now I see where the inspiration for the stupidity in Stellaris came from. I'd thought it was just a quirky thing I had to get used to.

Suffice it to say, I'm not spending another hour in EU4 which is a very complex, deep game, but which gives you a headache and soaks away millions of hours of your life for negligible return. I will just lose after 100 years when Europe invades N. America. So what's the point? It takes 50 years to get a single level of technology. Seriously, why are the native americans even playable?

None of which even matters since I still have a headache after quitting an hour ago due to the non-scaling UI and crappy fonts and need some ibuprofen. Uninstalling it.

[Update 10/23/2021]
I finally bought a new video card (3060Ti) so I'm able to play PC games again to their fullest (The GTX970 was a badly flawed/broken/buggy card). Stellaris is remarkably fun in it's latest incarnation. After years of updated (6 years, I think?) it's become the best sci-fi game of all time as far as I'm concerned (or at least the best 4X game of all time, usurping MOO2). I've played the hell out of it since getting the new video card (thank you Newegg Shuffle). The gameplay balance is spot on now, finally, after so many years of updates. PDX, you guys really nailed it. I don't generally praise PDX games. I played Crusader Kings 3 and it aws just bad. Also played a few other of theirs which were equally bad. Just really, really, shockingly bad, like Europa Universalis IV--just horrible gameplay--why do people treat it like free chinese buffet when it's day-old McD's?). Whatever. PDX is inconsistent in their quality but Stellaris is amazing today and I love this game. It is the best sci-fi game of all time. I am repeating myself.

[Update 12/25/2020]
I've just built a new PC and decided to give Stellaris a try after 9 months (I tend to play this about once a year then quickly get tired of it). This time, to test the new rig, I'm going to try a Huge galaxy (for the first time ever), out of curiosity. New build is i9-10850K, 32GB DDR-3600, Samsung 970 M.2. Still running an old GTX 970 because GPU makers are incompetent (and always have been).

[Updated review on 3/18/20]
I had given up on this game a few months after writing the first review because the gameplay balance was quite bad and it was buggy. I came back to it after hearing about the Federations expansion (which I have not bought yet) and decided to take 2 years worth of improvements/bug fixes for a test. Overall the game is more stable, gameplay-wise, more predictable, whereas before it would throw curveballs and ruin 30 hours of game.

Some tech automatically upgrade things in the empire which surprised me (before you had to build improvements). I've put 30 hrs into an Easy game and I have very mixed feelings about the game now. I like that it's more predictable, but some things seem to be really just broken. Like comms. Aliens *NEVER* initiate contact for trade or anything other than warfare. I have to do all trading manually with alien empires. Which is very unrealistic and breaks SoD.

Which reminds me, that is ultimately what this game is about for me--for a while, I want to be so absorbed that I forget it's just a game. That never happens here the way it does with Civ 6, where hours and hours can go by without my notice.

I also do not like that PDX is releasing a horde of expansions. I don't begrudge their improving the game, making money, but there are too many to keep track of.

Overall, I find myself teeter-tottering between continuing play or uninstalling it once and for all. I definitely don't "absolutely love it", it's very much a difficult marriage that requires constant effort to enjoy it. A lot of things just make no sense, and I wonder if that could be due to a base game engine without all of the DLCs plugged in? I mean, maybe having all of the expacs up to this point (sans the new one) would make the game feel less brain dead?

[First review on Sep 24, 2017]
Spent 8 hours playing my first game in a giant galaxy and didn't get killed yet. Actually on Normal the game is very forgiving of a noob player which I like. Don't like to get pounded right away in TBS games. I enjoy exploring and doing research. Until I get better at the game so IMO this is very well balanced in the early game and I'll find out later if the late game works or not. I turned the Final Challenge down to .25 so it isn't as big a deal as some reviewers claimed, and I also made it so EVERY civ must use warp drive. These should balance some of the complaints raised. So far it's fun. Very fun. Just one more turn kinda fun.

[final edit before uninstalling forever] THIS GAME IS GARBAGE. Wasted too much time with the promise of it. Complete waste of time. AGAIN. Never installing again. Permaban from my account.

[edit] I came back 5 years later and this game is still in beta, and still called alpha? What are the devs doing that would take this long? Anyway, I see a lot of improvements so I'm giving it another try.

[old review]
I cannot recommend this game. After trying valiantly for 25 hours to MAKE IT WORK, I have to give up, and that's a LOT more hours than this game deserves. I should've quit after the first game because no amount of "experience" makes you any better. The game constantly fights with you over basic gameplay. I only ever die when the game screws up--the physics going haywire, falling off a ledge, collision stickies... If the game were just hard, I would have managed it by now, but no, it's not about learning how to play, it's an endless series of bugs and bad gameplay that make it ultimately impossible. Sure, if you're willing to spend 1000 hours, investing in building a base, with a bunch of friends, it might be fun--eventually. NOT when developers fix the bugs, but when you've finally learned how to work around all of them.

AND ANOTHER THING! 25 hours and not a SINGLE achievement? Bah... Why do I waste so much time on games like this?

Too dated compared to current offerings, including its successor, GC3. I recommend skipping this even on sale and going with one of the newer 4X games such as Stellaris. I'll "recommend" it but only in the sense that it ran fine and was enjoyable in its prime, but I got quickly bored with it during a recent replay and decided to uninstall it.

It's coming alone nicely. I've been waiting a year for the developers to finish the game and this is fully playable. Just finished my first full game (and lost!) against the AI. It's not finished yet, though. It's like a mechanical game without any soul, and needs some helpful information for those of us who haven't played the board game in 5+ years. Can't assume players know the rules inside & out already.