Recent reviews by MEGACHAD

I hate giving this game a bad review because I never got to play it, but having never gotten to play it is worthy of a bad review. I tend to give passion games with small dev crews the benefit of the doubt but I really can't recommend this game. If steam had a choice between thumbs up and thumbs down, I would choose it.

1: Slow downloader
2: Had to sign up for an account (if a game is going to sell on steam they should use the steam SDK to automatically sign up players.)
3: Waited over 30 minutes and never got validation emails (tried to resend multiple times)

Another thing that bothered me a bit (since its a MMORPG) is I googled the game and it looks like it's been out for two years already. It's kind of a personal pet peeve of mine that a MMORPG is being marketed as a new game but it's already years old. Starting on release day to stay ahead of the leveling curve is usually important in most MMORPGS. I don't know if this game has PVP or if players have to compete for spawns so maybe it's not important.

Combat is terrible in this game. Probably released too early. UI is non-informative and confusing. Replayability is "ok" but the game feels the same every time. Otherwise it's a great game but I can't recommend it for its $70 price. Maybe more of a $30 game, or even $20.

Edit: After putting in more hours I have a few more things to say about this game:
The game design sounds good on paper, but really is not fun for me in practice.

1: Enemies seem to just show up out of nowhere, or maybe I am just not paying enough attention but because of the nature of the game you want to go through turns quickly because nothing is really happening. Your only warning is "enemy" sighted notifications that are buried in many many other notifications. Also you cannot set your ranged units to automatically fire so they just stand there and do nothing while your lands are being pillaged.

2: Crafting items sounds cool but I have literally zero desire to check every single city to see if its run out of supplies every single turn. Also the game forces you to build many buildings to make many things. I don't want to micromanage all this. They updated the crafting window but its still too much and does not add to the fun of the game in any way. It might be more fun of the citizens built these things automatically when they have the resources to do so, and maybe give you the OPTION to force them to make specific things.

3: Nations will attack for no reason other than "they can". Diplomacy is too simple and there is not a lot you can do about it besides offer "gifts" they they can deny. Even if you are infinitely more powerful they will still annoyingly try to attack you and ninja you.

4: Something specific: Archipilago isnt really an archipilago.

This is like one of those facebook ads for fake games that aren't real. It's extremely easy and begs for money every three seconds. Not sure why anybody would want to feed it. If there was a "meh" rating this would be it. I wouldn't call it "intense" OR "immersive". It's not terrible, just weird and full of frequent money begging tactics that I really hope isn't working on anybody.

It's almost a parody of those fakebook games.. almost a meme really. I can't decide if it's trash or genius. If it weren't begging for REAL money I would give it a AAA rating.

Definitely not a $20 game. Maybe 7 or possibly 10.

Made it to mainland and rage quit after one day. Mainland is exactly the same as newbie island but 10x larger and 10x more frustrating.

I mainly quit because of many many bugs and terrible game design. Technologically the game is crap, even with a RTX 3080 and graphics on low you can skip frames and graphics lag in the middle of combat. Not great for a PVP game.

Frustrations stacked up a bit at a time and became too much for me. I finally snapped when I found that my quest to get a CLASS was in the middle of nowhere with high level mobs everywhere. Why would you have to venture in a high level area TO GET YOUR CLASS?

- Very bad first impressions that drive off players.
- like 5 monsters in the entire game.
- 4 schools of magic with very little variation at all (I kept expecting new spells from drops at least, but nope).
- Lack of drops.
- Annoying mob ai, many of which aggro from across the map.
- Excessively grindy
- Maps and dungeons that encourage ganking

Seems to me this game was designed to keep you on newbie island much longer than 2 hours to limit refunds when you find out the main game is much worse and half-made.

The problem isn't even that it is early access. The problem is the game is for psychotic masochists. The risk vs reward ratio is ridiculous. You would have more fun getting a job and working 80 hours a week than playing this game. I appreciate devs trying something new but much of it is just bad game design.

If youre a low self-esteem troll and/or ganker you might like this game.

Missing features that were promised at launch.

Extremely annoying unbalanced ai.

Forced linear gameplay. They bragged about how you can customize your civ but there is no such thing in this game. Play the way the devs want you to play or suffer for it.

Very small differences between starting civs. Just put it on random, it doesn't really matter. They are all generic.

Too bad it takes over 2 hours to even figure out how bad this game is, or I would have refunded. That was probably the strategy all along, it seems to be the thing to do these days.

- Country selections for NPCs are not saved when starting a new game, so every time you start a new game you have to reselect them all.
- Hard to navigate the map by click dragging., so basically forced to use direction keys.
- Can't choose where to place your first city so you're basically forced to pick specific civ-types based on where you started.
- All civs are the same, the only difference is the name and flag. You are playing that country in name only. No special units or abilities unique to that country.
- Selected starting bonus's don't seem to work.
- Ai sucks. Will always suicide into you, even if there is another enemy closer to them.
- If ai can't beat you it will just send 1000 tiny units to wreck your land. VERY ANNOYING.
- Too many revolutions, not enough ways to keep them from happening, so you're basically always having them unless you play the game in a linear way.
- Want ability to completely disable combat animations as well as age progression animations. They said they did this but shields still show up on the map so if you click them, guess what you're watching the boring combat scene.
- Can't disable barbarians.
- Age of Plagues is not fun. Games are supposed to be fun. When you add an element to a game ask yourself... does this add fun to the game? If not... don't add it to your game. I didn't buy Where's Waldo, I bought a 4x game. I don't enjoy having to scroll around searching the entire map every single turn looking for infections. SO DUMB, ANNOYING and BORING.

Added 5/12: Played a lot more hours. Game still has many VERY ANNOYING "features". Still would not recommend. Every playthrough is THE SAME regardless of what they would have you believe. I have never even finished a map, I always rage-quit out of annoyance before that happens.

I am left-handed so I have to be able to remap keys to play anything. You CAN remap movement keys in this game BUT NOT OTHER KEYS that you MUST USE. Useless and unplayable. Refunded.

Too many ridiculous bugs. Buy it later when it works right.

Got stuck on a trashcan and it ruined my game (cant unstuck). Stupid bug to be in a game. Thumbs down.

My main complaint is there is no casius belli system where you can attack people for settling on your settlers that are already settling. Players trying to cut off other players, etc during the "peace" period of SEVERAL DAYS in a new server. If you complain about it you get trolled by toxic fanfags.

This game was not ready to "release" and is still barely an alpha demo.

Could have been a good game but the dev doesn't care enough to listen to feedback from his players.

Idiot moderators too. Someone sent a "insult" diplo so in chat I said "How dare you insult me! I fart in your general direction!". What sort of retarded idiot would consider a monty python quote even remotely toxic? It is almost as if they don't want people playing their game.