Recent reviews by Antwog

Crysis 3 is a first-person sci-fi shooter developed by Crytek and published by Electronic Arts and released in February 2013. This review will cover the campaign, the Liberty Dome setting, and the gameplay mechanics.

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Crysis 3 continues the story from Crysis 2, where Karl-Ernst Rasch, who was the co-founder of Hargreave-Rasch Biomedical, was introduced to Prophet. In Crysis 3, Hargreave-Rasch has been rebranded as the CELL Corporation, which has grown considerably in power and influence and has installed the ‘Liberty Dome’ over New York City.

You continue to play as Prophet, who is now reunited with Psycho to support a liberation attempt against CELL. Prophet’s personality is fairly similar to predecessor games, blunt and to the point. The return of Pyscho provides freshness to the characters. His charm is usual and sarcasm needed, but surprisingly, I love the development of Psycho’s character that adds a traumatised element due to the broader narrative. Overall, I found stronger diversity and juxtaposition of the characters in Crysis 3 and definitely felt more focussed than the earlier games.

Crysis 3 features an eight-hour campaign, similar to Crysis: Remastered, but about two hours less than Crysis 2 and this is evident. I felt Crysis 3 rounds out on the broader Crysis series timeline, however I found a heavy reliance on journals and email conversation collectibles to fill the gaps, as Crysis 3 is featured 20 years’ after Crysis 2. While these collectibles are strongly written, an issue in the broader series is the focus on the developers continuing the narrative (and key plot lines) in the comic series, or otherwise, some smaller plot holes (i.e., what happened to Nathan Gould).

In addition to this, as Crysis 3 is two-hours less than Crysis 2, I felt there was room to build the context at the start of the game (and it would not have been out of place in the design of the missions), but ultimately, the story was action-packed and tightly told. With regards to the Alien Ceph, how they are written into Crysis 3 is logical. After its wipe-out in Crysis 2, they lack in numbers and as a result, use guerrilla warfare tactics, until reinforcements arrive. This is a nice wrinkle to them, especially after their overpowered nature in Crysis 1 and 2.

The Liberty Dome feels, as expected, contained and limited, but seeing New York overgrown provides a jungle-like, luscious, and isolated environment complements the ‘’fight-back against the oppressor’’ narrative. This environment also feels like a hybrid of the jungles of Crysis 1 and the urban-warfare of Crysis 2, emphasised by the beautiful vegetation.

Graphically, New York is phenomenal, highlighted by the superb lighting and shadows reflected against the ruined buildings, as well as the water quality, so rich and detailed. I also found it nicely optimised and I did not recall any major bugs, glitches, or crashes. Playing on ‘high’ settings, I averaged about 65FPS throughout the campaign on an i5-6600K, GTX 1070, and 16GB ram.

Crysis 3 enhances the mechanics foundations from Crysis 1, which were streamlined in Crysis 2 (which I liked). Crysis focusses on the introduction of a weapon, the Predator Bow, and a new hacking system. The Predator Bow enables you to play stealthy, which can be customised with different bolts. This addition is extremely fun and allows for a ‘shoot and relocate’ stealth style, however my concern is that the Predator Bow was at times, very easily caught out by the super attentive enemy AI.

On the other side, the hacking system enables you to hack enemy technology, such as stationed machine guns, to support you instead. It operates as a mini-games-like mechanic and it really is quite fun and is logical in the technology-advanced Crysis 3 world. Elsewhere, Crysis 3 offers skill upgrades as did Crysis 2, and while this is neat, both games do not make it easy to understand on the UI (e.g., have to scroll but can seemingly only select one in each skill category…).
 
Ultimately, Crysis 3 is a very enjoyable instalment in the Crysis franchise. It features an engaging, tight, and action-packed story, supported by well-written characters and strong character development. However, Crysis 3 is short and not as drawn out and paced as the more complete Crysis 2 and due to the extended timeline separating Crysis 2 and 3, it just felt like there was a lot of key story parts missed. That said, Crysis 3 has nailed the gameplay mechanics and the graphics are gorgeous, and more broadly, the game is optimised. For $39.95, I recommend this on sale.

8.25/10

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1282690/Crysis_3/?snr=1_550_553__1009

Crysis Warhead (Warhead) is a first-person sci-fi shooter developed by Crytek and published by Electronic Arts in September 2008. This review will cover the campaign and gameplay and technology. I will separately note I am playing through the Crysis series in light of the Crysis 4 announcement. If you are interested, see my reviews of the other games:

Crysis: Remastered
Crysis 2

Warhead follows ‘Psycho’ in a five-hour campaign, who is ordered to complete a separate mission and extract valuable intelligence behind enemy lines. This story happens in tandem with Nomad’s mission in the main game, where you may recall Psycho was re-tasked. The campaign is a very fun and engaging experience, which is much better paced and logically tighter than the original.

Warhead expertly expands the Crysis timeline by filling in story elements from the original (not plot holes) such as how the USS Constitution had captured a Ceph machine. Additionally, Crysis expands the Crysis world through the involvement of Sean O’Neill, who supports Psycho in Warhead, and provides an interesting background on the nano suits program. I will note here that I found the personalities to be fun and compared to the base game, a bit more natural sounding.

Lastly, I found the missions to be exciting and tense, and the mission design resulting in some very fun and diverse objectives. However, I was not a fan of the save system, as I found it a frustrating experience to restart checkpoints due to their length. Additionally, I experienced some glitches with friendly AI becoming randomly and invisibly stuck.

Warhead changes some of the gameplay mechanics from the original game. It features a nice simplified ammo pick-up system as well as a weapon customisation dial. Further, it adds a new dial to change the mana of your nano suit and I think this complicated the base games’ simpleness of changing your nano suit.

Additionally, I really liked the improved AI. They were smarter in their tactics and they wanted to attack you and they wanted to avoid getting attacked – it was much better than the original game, where at times, the AI stared blankly at you. Otherwise, I found Warhead to be silky smooth, albeit granted I played the 2008 version, and I experienced some minor sound cut-out issues, but not nearly the same amount as the original.

Crysis Warhead was a very fun and enjoyable experience. It included a tight and well-paced campaign that logically expanded the Crysis world and introduced a number of new characters and their backstories. Whilst Warhead is not materially different in gameplay to the original, I highlight the strong improvement to the smartness of the AI. Noting the minor issues, the length, and that it was not re-mastered, I felt this was a good expansion that I recommend on sale.

8.5/10

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https://store.steampowered.com/app/17330/Crysis_Warhead/

Crysis: Remastered is a sci-fi futuristic first-person shooter developed and published by Crytek and released on Steam in September 2021. I will note I finished Crysis: Remastered last weekend, before Patch 3 was released this week.

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I originally played and reviewed Crysis in 2016, on some PC that included a GTX 560 Ti. For those interested, the link to the original is here: https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/id/antwog/recommended/17300?snr=1_5_9__402

For the time, I thought Crysis was an enjoyable experience but could not play it on Ultra without performance issues. Have a look at my (back in the day) rating system, below.


These ratings were based on a couple of key things from my original play, including:

• Campaign: ‘’The campaign [was] a great example of a story that starts slow, but builds to a climax. The setting of being on one island suggests a limited campaign, however, the great areas…on the island and in the island create a new variety of missions’’.
  
• Gameplay: “The gameplay is fluid and solid…[and] driving is a nice feature but clunky as the vehicle is very sensitive to player controls…[and] the issues I encountered…is the lack of ammo for an American gun and the very small variety of overall guns in the game”.
  
• AI: ‘’The main disturbance…is the sheer stupidity of AI. Some enemies would run in circles while ally team mates would be useless in completing objectives[.]’’

The above is still fairly accurate, noting in the Remastered version that:

• The campaign features a nice and tight storyline and finishes really well, but I now think the North Korean invasion component was rushed and could have been fleshed out. I also found it a poor design choice that your allies are mostly unhelpful in the missions.
  
• The AI is still really poor. They are still terribly accurate in their aiming and are still very glitchy, noting multiple times of enemies running into invisible walls, bunching together (i.e., in a doorway), and not reacting to the shooting and going into cover.

That said, Crysis: Remastered is sold on updated visuals and technological features and is optimised to current hardware. Playing on a PC with a i5-6600k, GTX 1070, and 16GB ram, I found the Remastered was optimised extremely well and I did not experience any framerate or stability (e.g., crashes) issues. The overall graphical fidelity is a broad improvement on the original and the Lingshan Island is still a beautiful sight, credited to an updated lighting system.

While the graphics are broadly improved, the Remastered did not update all assets and objects (i.e., bag in opening scene, some characters), and therefore, the textures on these are disappointingly low-resolution and blurry. I am also surprised to find a number of bugs throughout my experience, including, but not limited to, the aforementioned AI scripting, as well as constant sound drop-outs during missions and the AI boss fight not triggering in the final mission, requiring a level restart(!).

I commend the legacy of Crysis I, and Crysis: Remastered is a nice trip down to memory lane, particularly in a nice campaign. But I am conflicted because the Remastered version was not overly a good experience. It adds a nice overall graphical upgrade and performance optimisation is fantastic (and I will note Patch 3 further optimises it), but it falls in several areas.

First, it does not address issues from the original game such as AI scripting and if that is not fixable, I appreciate that. It is also unfortunate that the visual improvement does not impact all assets, resulting in a number of low-resolution characters and objects, and there are a high number of bugs and glitches throughout the game. On this basis, I do not recommend Crysis: Remastered.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1715130/Crysis_Remastered/

Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s (Kingdom Come) ‘A Woman’s Lot’ DLC is the fourth and final DLC released for Kingdom Come, and was published in May 2019. The DLC contains two short stories focussing on the female medieval life in Theresa and Johanka, both from Skalitz.

The first part of the DLC focusses on Theresa and her life before and experience during the Skalitz raid. It provides an insight into why Theresa was in Skalitz after the raid when Henry rushed back and how she managed to survive. It also provided relationship building into Theresa’s growing crush on Henry and how that led into Henry courting her in the main game.

The DLC has been poorly received because it is considered a ‘’walking simulator’’ and requires a lot of manual intervention, but there were also different views on when to start this DLC. For me, I commenced the DLC right after Henry arrived at the Miller’s Farm. I think this was absolutely the correct call because it rounded out the gaps concerning the Skalitz raid and set the scene by providing a deeper look into the characters.

Additionally, I agree that certain areas of this DLC component were laboursome and it was further impacted by a save system that saved at lengthy intervals. That said, Warhorse did try to alleviate some of this issue by adding quick-travelling in some sequences. As well, I thought Theresa was very likeable and the dialogue enhanced the lonely and burning environment, that these factors helped absorb the occasional plodding task.

Where Theresa’s questline provides important background to open the game, Johanka’s story is an emotional and engaging tale. When this DLC opened to the player in Kingdom Come, I had already completed a number of quests involving Johanka, so I understood her backstory, values, and struggles. The DLC focusses on Johanka having dreams of messages from Virgin Mary and this translates into a number of quests. While this plot already may be odd, it is not overly out of place because Johanka’s struggles were well documented in the base game.

The story’s central theme is based on the medieval era of women being considered as heretics if they expressed non-traditional thought, and from this view, it is an immersive plot because Johanka develops from a character with little confidence and profound struggle to a strong-willed, or rather, tranced preacher. Surprisingly, I did not expect a well-thought-out story that brought out thought conflict in the population and resulted in a number of emotional endings that impacted the life and involvement of the character cast.

From a design perspective, I was also surprised that this DLC integrated into the ‘’From the Ashes’’ DLC. In spoilers, Johanka was banished and Matthias found without a love, and I offered him to move to Pribyslavitz to start a new life. I must say this was pretty cool to experience.

‘’A Woman’s Lot’’ DLC provides a well-written, engaging, and story-rich experience into two female characters in Kingdom Come. Theresa’s story provides important context and world-building into the game and Johanka’s story provides an emotional tale focussing on medieval views of heresy. For $14.50, I very highly recommend this DLC as a standalone purchase or part of the Royal Edition.

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https://store.steampowered.com/app/1033890/Kingdom_Come_Deliverance__A_Womans_Lot/

Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s (Kingdom Come) ‘Band of Bastards’ DLC is the third DLC released for Kingdom Come, and was published in February 2019.

In the DLC, Sir Radzig Kobyla requests Henry to assist Sir Kuno and his band of mercenaries in patrolling the province from bandits. In doing so, it introduces an intriguing backstory of Sir Radzig and Sir Kuno’s relationship and reveals an element of personal vulnerability in Sir Radzig, a new development in his character. Sir Kuno’s band has some really likeable members who thrive on value and honour, but there are some annoying characters who remind you that mercenary life is based on greed and blood, presenting a bit of juxtaposition in their motivations.

The DLC is focussed on combat and the plot is about figuring out who is causing continuous trouble in the province. Through this, it allows for some crime-like investigation by gathering clues. It also enables some really fun combat scenes that I found to be a highlight of the story. On the flipside, the DLC felt somewhat rushed and despite three hours of content, I thought there was room to expand and flesh out the story, but this nit-pick is probably because I really enjoyed the content.

Ultimately, Band of Bastards is a really good DLC, albeit one that was short. It provides a tight story and an intriguing backstory, whilst introduces Sir Kuno’s camp who most are likeable and honourable, while other members remind you why they are mercenaries first and foremost. For $8.50, I recommend this as a standalone purchase and in the Royal Edition.

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https://store.steampowered.com/app/977420/Kingdom_Come_Deliverance__Band_of_Bastards/

Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s (Kingdom Come) ‘The Amorous Adventures of Bold Sir Hans Capon’ DLC is the second DLC released for Kingdom Come. In this DLC, you play as Henry as you wingman Sir Hans Capon, who is in love with Karolina, the butcher’s daughter.

The DLC contains three questlines that mostly follow the design choices of Kingdom Come. For example, one quest requires an element of stealth and another is more fetch-and-grab. The content does have some promising aspects. Notably, I enjoyed infiltrating a bandit camp and a focus on playing dice to complete the mini-story. In addition, I did find some of the dialogue to be genuinely funny, particularly when Sir Hans spoke poetry to Karolina in the middle of the night.

Despite these rather mild positives, the DLC contains little meaningful content and a good portion of it felt like filler for the sake of filler. As well, it is a subpar attempt at showing Sir Han’s frivolous behaviour when compared to the ‘Next to Godliness’ side quest in Kingdom Come, which executed this vision better and in a more engaging and compact way. Last, it is not a relatively long DLC, at about two hours in length.

I only recommend this DLC if you own the Royal Edition as it provides little substance to the story and character-building of Kingdom Come. That said, it provides additional content for those who have the season pass or for those interested in Sir Hans. As one that obtained it through a season pass, I rushed through it after completing all side quests and ultimately, it was not very worthwhile or memorable.

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https://store.steampowered.com/app/921950/Kingdom_Come_Deliverance__The_Amorous_Adventures_of_Bold_Sir_Hans_Capon/

Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s (Kingdom Come) ‘From the Ashes’ DLC is the first DLC released for Kingdom Come. In this DLC, you play as Henry whom is now the bailiff of a new town Pribyslavitz, after completing Act I of the main story in Kingdom Come.

The town of Pribyslavitz is formerly owned by Sir Divish of Talmberg. As the new bailiff, your goal is to rebuild the town including stocking up the town’s finances, obtaining resources, and constructing new buildings through your Master Surveyor. You also need to manage citizens and address any issues, which adds an element of governing, but quickly can get tiring.

The DLC is designed to complement your playthrough of the main story because there is no linear storyline, like the other DLC, and buildings are costly and revenue is not generated immediately. Additionally, the DLC is integrated into the world of Kingdom Come, to a degree. You can convince refugees and other individuals to resettle in your town, providing you bonuses. I really like this element because Henry’s relationship with these individuals is carried across from the main game.

However, I felt it had potential to be more than its relatively limited scope. Sir Divish noted following completion of construction, you are able to expand Pribyslavitz into the countryside. This oddly does not occur considering it is noted regularly throughout the dialogue. Likewise, I would have visually liked to see the town be expanded with residential areas as you constructed buildings, as the majority of your population still lived in tents on the outskirts of the town.

This DLC is a very fun addition to Kingdom Come and provides a really cool element to the game through city-building and management. I think, however, there is potential to expand on this concept by incorporating society-building (i.e., more personality to the town) and reflecting a growth in industry and residential areas (e.g., farms) as you develop your city. For $8.50, I recommend this as a standalone purchase and part of the Royal Edition, as it provides an extra dynamic as you play the main game.

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https://store.steampowered.com/app/883150/Kingdom_Come_Deliverance__From_the_Ashes/

Kingdom Come: Deliverance (Kingdom Come) is a medieval role-playing game developed and published by Warhorse Studios, as well as published by Prime Matter. It was released in February 2018. In Kingdom Come, you play as Henry of Skalitz, who is on the path of revenge to find the faction that raided his hometown of Skalitz. This review will cover the story, mechanics, and technology. I will likely post separate reviews of Kingdom Come’s four DLCs.

Kingdom Come is set in Bohemia, along the Sasau River. It features a number of cities, castles, and villages, all unique in their own nature and reminiscent of the history of Bohemia. Crucially, these locations are known for their particular features and this is replicated in dialogue throughout the game. For example, Sasau is the religious centre of the province and is building the St. Procopius monastery, and there is dialogue from travellers moving to Sasau to work on the construction, and it is these little things that builds worldly immersion.

Across my 111 hours of play, Kingdom Come has an excellent and well-built story. It is paced incredibly well and it progresses beautifully throughout. It fortunately peaks at the conclusion but the calmness of the storytelling makes the end not seem abrupt, but rather a logical progression given how the story would unfold in history.

Kingdom Come provides flexibility in opting between the main story and side stories, and the side stories are mostly engaging and well-written. They are diverse and quests are open-ended, but the highlight I like is the character progression in this element, where even after you conclude a quest-line (main or side), most of the encountered individuals remember your choices and actions and their behaviour is adjusted appropriately.

This is likely a sub-set of the ’reputation’ system, which your behaviour in different locations in the province determines your likeability and trustworthiness among the population. And while the reputation seems abstract and secondary to the game, it provides another layer of immersion and realism in the province, like in life, because ultimately, historical villages and cities did not have near the level of population experienced in society today.

Circling back to the main story, Kingdom Come’s character development is phenomenal in that throughout the story you see the transformation of a number of characters. An added bonus here is seeing these personalities grow over time and how they address issues and other characters and their contrasting motives. The only glaring issue here is repetitive character models and glitchy animations (i.e., weird facial expressions, stiff, and scripted animations, characters walking into a wall, those sort of issues).

Nonetheless, character development is a key highlight of the narrative and one aided by superb and targeted dialogue, and by targeted, I mean gives you the plan and motives with the right balance of context. I will also note here in the context of character development, dialogue, and the very good, if sometimes robotic, voice acting, the journal system (codex) helpfully rounds out just about every element of the game.

I will note mechanically, I think Kingdom Come’s combat system is good and fun. Duelling is clean and tactical and it rewards patience with a focus on defence, blocking, and counterattacks. These focusses become especially crucial in the later stages where you do not become overpowered because you're levelled higher than others, which is pleasant.

Unfortunately, the duelling system becomes messy when you are attacked by multiple enemies because the system is built on facing one opponent, blocking their strikes, and so forth, and that does not translate to when you face multiple people, particularly when combined with frequent performance issues (discussed below).

The other issue hindering the combat system is the interaction between the animation system and the environment. Flora and the geometry in the environment act like invisible walls, so attempting to flee through a bush and being blocked, for example, becomes frustrating. There are also other instances of your character backing off and unintentionally climbing some smaller trees, so it is a issue affecting combat in confined spaces.

I understand Kingdom Come is built on CryEngine, an engine with reputation of producing beautiful environments and gorgeous graphical details, at the cost of performance. This view is correct in the context of Kingdom Come, a beautiful video game excelling in the level of detail in the scenery, features of characters, and buildings and objects, but there is still areas of poor performance.

For context, I meet the recommended settings and trialled medium and high settings. I noted that on high settings I averaged around 65FPS when in villages like Skalitz and Samopesh and the countryside, but I would drop to an average of about 35FPS in the cities and castles like Rattay and Talmberg, and medium only added a few more FPS, nothing notable. Ultimately, the performance of the game did disrupt my experience often and is one of two real issues throughout my play.

Specs:
CPU: Intel i5-6600k (3.5GHz).
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB DDR4-3200 speed.
Storage: Intel 540s Series SSD 240GB.
GPU: Gigabyte GTX 1070 8GB G1 Gaming.

Kingdom Come is an excellent game featuring a fantastic story that is well-built and intense. The story particularly shines with a great set of characters whose personalities are visibly impacted by the story and the world around them and whose behaviour and actions mature and change as it unravels. I equally praise the richly detailed environment and beautiful towns that provide unparalleled immersion.

Unfortunately, Kingdom Come is fundamentally impacted by fairly poor performance across the board and an animation system that struggles within the interaction between it and the world, suggesting another level of polish is needed. That said, this is a game that bought me into the narrative and has sold me on a sequel and I really look forward to what’s next. I recommend this at full-price.

8.5/10

• An excellent and engaging story.
• Beautiful setting and worldly personalities.
• Great character cast with superb and realistic personalities given the historical context.
• Eye-popping graphical and art details.

• Poor performance optimisation across the board.
• Profound number of bugs and glitches, impacting various areas like animation and combat.

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https://store.steampowered.com/app/379430/Kingdom_Come_Deliverance/

A Way Out is a cooperative adventure story game developed by Hazelight and published by Electronic Arts. It was released in March 2018. Introduced to A Way Out at The Game Awards 2017, Game Director Josef Fares made a comedic appearance in an interview at the show. I suppose its marketing achieved its aim, it showed Fares’ personality and brought attention to, at that point, his upcoming game.

A Way Out features a story focussing on Leo and Vincent, two prison inmates that are planning to break out of prison. Purely in co-op, Leo and Vincent are disparate individuals. Leo prefers violence and fighting, contrast to Vincent being diplomatic. This juxtaposition shines in the concept of the story, from their voice acting, such as Leo’s brashness and Vincent’s calm demeanour, to their dialogue and how both prefer to attack the task or react to a situation. Their character development throughout the story was engaging and the climax of the story, emotional.

Bringing Leo and Vincent into the narrative, A Way Out’s six-hour story is logical, yet an expected progression, but it results in an immersive and tight story. The context is finely introduced, including how Leo and Vincent went to prison and their motives. Through this character development and foreshadowing, the story builds to an excellent ending that is a fitting end and had a hint of cliffhanger. A Way Out uses cutscenes as its main storytelling tool and it works incredibly well in the co-op context, feeling like an interactive movie.

The co-op system is fantastic and integrated incredibly well into the story and gameplay mechanics. The split screen underpinning the co-op allows both players to explore the world. For example, when entering into a cutscene, the screen adjusts to the character in the focus. It is a seamless transition and one optimised very well, only encountering rare stutters in cutscene transitions. The split screen also does not feel cluttered when both characters are doing actions simultaneously, but I think it could have benefitted from players entering into dialogue concurrently.

Accessing A Way Out before starting the game however, could have been better explained. It was not overly clear your friend had to download the game through Origin, after several attempts of trying to access it on Steam.

A Way Out’s art style and graphics quality is really good. The textures are colourful and clean and the environments are beautifully detailed and eye-popping. The colourfulness and vibrancy of the scenes improve as the game progresses, highlighted in the scenes after Leo and Vincent’s escape and the traversal on the boat.

I conclude by noting A Way Out is an excellent co-op adventure complemented by a seamless co-op system that is integrated very well into the gameplay. Leo and Vincent are superb personalities, backed up by an engaging cast of other characters and an overall straightforward, but thrilling story. For $39.95, I recommend this at full price.

9/10

• Logical and tight story supported by a positive juxtaposition in Leo and Vincent
• Cutscenes and the integration of co-op into the gameplay
• Beautiful and detailed environment and colourful textures

• Accessing co-op could have been better explained

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https://store.steampowered.com/app/1222700/A_Way_Out/

Rogue State is a political simulation game developed and published by LRDGames. It was released on 16 October, 2015. In Rogue State, you play as the leader of Basenji, a nation state ravaged by an uprising that removed the predecessor leader King Salman. Your objective is to rebuild the country from this turmoil.

Rogue State features a fun, albeit short story. In rebuilding the country, you are required to complete 60 turns to finish the story and, in this time, you run your country including enacting policies, building infrastructure and bilateral regional relationships, and participating in annual speeches to your population. These mechanics all form part of the campaign where it is imperative you obtain approval of your Cabinet and build country relationships, except Russia who is featured in the game, but they are not nearly as involved as the United States by design (and I am not sure why).

Rogue State’s central concept is an infrastructure tree allowing you to unlock different things across ‘Security’, ‘Society’, or ‘Trade/Diplomacy’. You unlock the items using your finances and they unlock new systems or provide bonuses. For example, an intelligence centre enables you to invest funding into gathering intelligence. The infrastructure tree is pretty good, providing a layer of depth to the game. It includes some neat ideas, notably in the defence space, and think it lays a foundation for it to be built upon in future games.

Throughout my three plays, I particularly liked the events system. Each turn presents you an event that requires a decision and your choice impacts different relationships. I found there to be a nice diverse range of topics presented and an overall number of events covering two playthroughs (about 120 in total). I also found the writing to be generally solid, but thought the dialogue was basic, lacked depth, and there was a lot of repeated content, particularly in the phone calls with other countries, and the voice acting was poor.

I will also note Rogue State has a fairly awful User Interface. When you select different screens in your office, your character walks to the location of the function. For instance, your player will walk to a globe in your office if you select ‘regional map’. This is cumbersome and can get fairly annoying.

Elsewhere, I think the games’ 60 turn scope limits some of the functions, such as special project development and intelligence, where investing in these facets do not amount up to anything material. The developers introduced an ‘endless mode’; however, this mode excludes the storyline.

Earlier, I noted Rogue State has a short campaign, which I timed each playthrough at about 2.5 hours. To address this, Rogue State includes multiple endings and procedural generation (different countries and situations, and randomised events per campaign). I think Rogue State shines in this aspect and the short nature of it allows you to easily try different tactics and tackle different situations. I would suggest three full plays is an optimal amount to uncover all story elements.

Rogue State was a decent experience that features a fun story that introduces an interesting premise in the conflict of Basenji. It is further supported by solid writing, a very nice ‘events’ system, as well as the central infrastructure tree. This is offset by a limited amount of dialogue, poor voice acting, and a terrible User Interface. Overall, Rogue State has provided the introduction into the series and has sold me on the sequel Rogue State: Revolution. At $11.99, I recommend this on sale.

5/10

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https://store.steampowered.com/app/396090/Rogue_State/