Recent reviews by DarkSetis

So I would not consider myself a very good player, that said I never had problems beating extreme conquest with basically any clan. Sure some had rough maps but usually it was doable. This one however, I can barely produce 3 berserkers by the time the AI comes with 3 shield bearers 2 axe throwers and their warchief and absolutely steamroll me. Issues for me:
- Berserkers taking 2 population, requiring kröwns to make (the more you have the more kröwns you need) and to make them into berserkers you give up the production they can provide (with the lore), so meaning you give up a lot of economy (2 people worth of production) for ONE military unit which gets absolutely steamrolled in a 1v2 which should not be the case because my berserker is made of 2 pop.
- You can make one military unit / training camp, meaning you need to build a metric s*it ton of them, to field a decent army. Camps take up bulding slots BUT to counterbalance all the resources you lose (mainly manpower) you need a lot of houses and a lot of breweries to actually keep growing which also take up building slots, meaning you need lots of territories but you can only colonize with food. So so far you need to have a lot of kröwns, to get more brawlers, a lot of food, to have enough tiles to build houses/breweries and to build all that you also need wood. This together is insanely difficult to do when all tiles are full with wolves and the like which give like 10 food / minimal XP which takes us to the seconf point:
- The berserkers are simply weak compared to a warchief. A warchief can clear 4 wolves on a tile and survive, berserkers cant. Sure they can 1v1 on high levels, but those high levels require a lot, and I mean a LOT of xp which you wont get, because of
A: units give ridiculously small ammounts and
B: you will get steamrolled by the AI by that point

I dont know about PVP, there the clan might be good, but against the AI which everyone knows CHEATS (more starting mats, happiness etc) you cant even get to the point to even defend yourself decently.

How I think it could be improved (not all of these at once):
- Berserkers (not brawlers) should not consume any food or shouldn't count as 2 pop anymore.
- Kröwn price reduce, by a lot to produce brawlers.
- Boost the XP and mat gain from neutral monsters.
- Make the berserkers significantly stronger on lvl 1-4.
- Let the clan colonize using kröwns.
And the one I think would seriously help:
- Make berserkers assignable to their respective workplace: Wolfskins to food buildings, Foxskins to kröwn producing buildings etc. so you can use them even when not fighting.

After finishing the story and the scenarios in one sitting, and as a huge fan of ST sadly I can not recommend this game. The RTS perspective is very very weak. There is no skirmish, no multiplayer, no co-op just the story (17 missions + 1 training), and 2 "scenarios". There are only a few types of missions, its either A: Survive till X time, or B: Clean every bug hive, there was one where you have to save a VIP but that also was like 2% "commando" and rest is survival till X.
Why no escort missions, or CTF, or basically anything out of the said two is beyond my understanding. Campaign is short, missions are easy (some of them are a bit frustrating but easy). To get better units you spend the same resource you use to build static defenses. (Which resource is limited.) Unit pop is also very limited (so you kind of need static defenses to be able to use your troops to push). MI should have a LOT of soldiers. I think the max ammount of the most basic rifle squad you could ever put down (or any that uses 3pop) is 10 maybe 12 but that might be an over estimation (and it was on a hold the whole line mission).
Base building is non existent. You cap additional points which then get occupied when you move out to clean the hives.
AI is dumb as a rock.

I tried to like this game, but it makes it impossible to like.
First, this could be your everyday run and gun, just because you put "Warhammer 40k" in the name and put WH names on weapons it wont become a wh40k game. This is the smaller problem though, the bigger are the gamebreaking bugs!
On act 5 I had a guy glitch through a wall, making it impossible for me to kill him, and the game simply wont let you progress (gate doesnt open) until you kill every enemy. I managed to glitch myself close enough to kite him to his side of the wall, where his close attack animation bugged it through to me. I went on, then killed the boss (who glitched in a staircase thus unable to move so it was an easy target). Then in the very next room I have a guy FALLING THROUGH THE FLOOR yeah, just like that, and the game - obviously - doesnt kill him when he is out of bounds, so I got stuck with no way to go forward.

After finishing the campaign:

The story lacks everything basically. It can hardly be called a story. The ending is lackluster and nothing makes any sense.

So now that time has passed, and the game was finally released and I got around to fiddle with it a bit I think its time I revisit my old review.
Right off the bat I have to say, the added content was very much needed and in the end it was what tipped me in the way of recommending the game. It is very important to note that the game is very far from perfect. This is by all means a sandbox game. The quests you get are sort of guidelines you can follow (the order of some content is questionable) but you cant get through the game just by following the quests. You need to explore, improve your gear and get to know your enemy - figuratively and literally to see resistances, and get better at perfect blocking. That being said the game is way more smooth than before and give you way more tools in the sense of base building. However as with many survival games I find it way more satisfying to play with a friend and not solo - trust me the scares from the game are way better if you can laugh at each other's reactions.

Okay so, after finishing I got myself to write this review.
I finished the story and the interesting sidequests the only ones I didnt finish:
-go defeat these 17 guys
-beat up guys with your fists here and here
-buy all the cars

The main story is not bad, not the greatest but certainly enjoyable, even if a bit predictable.
There are some side characters that are loveable, but most of them are only important until you finish their questline.

The game state at the time of this review is like going to the local zoo and into the butterfly house... full of bugs.
Just a few gamebreaking ones I have encountered myself :
Enemies to kill in certain places to progress the mission spawn inside walls/containers.
For the last 6-8 hours of the game I couldnt pick up weapons and other items well I technically could but they didn't show up in my inventory.
Mandatory interactions with NPCs where you lose movement control sometimes bugged out and didn't progress, even if I tried to skip to the next choice.
On a certain sidemission with cars included, the car I was supposed to get in at the end was located right next to another one (not enterable) and I couldnt get in between them to get in the driver seat (no other doors are useable at that time).

The AI is almost non existent in the game. Civilians act as if crouching would make them invisible to people with guns.
Cars dont try to evade anything. Motorcycle's left brake sticks out to the road? Nope cand go around.
Car parts can not be individually damaged, so no shooting out tyres or anything.
If you happen to park in the line of a scripted route, be prepared for some paranolmal stuff, because NPCs just straight up ghost through.

Shot a civilian by accident while in a firefight? No problem. If you get around the block, the cops will forget they ever saw you, but also be prepared, because as soon as you get wanted status cops will start apparating behind you from mid air like death eaters on the quidditch world cup.

Now on to our own "defined" V, who is well... not defined by you at all. He has a clear agenda that he will follow no matter what road you take. In a matter of speaking your choices dont matter do the least, characters destined to die will die, and those that won't arent really important to the story anyways.

Character creation is another level of disappointment, I swear almost any rpg has better character creation than Cyberpunk does. You can only chose from presets, no sliders or anything.Cosmetics cyberware in a cyberpunk game should not be this lackluster. Functional ones dont feel important, or impactfull at all either.
Speaking of customization. Do you like to pimp your ride, or customise your apartment, maybe even buy a penthouse? Well if you do, this game is not for you. Cars come in preset colour. Apartment also, and you cant buy new ones.
Also cars like to manifest from thin air whenever you call them. No garage, or storage, nothing.

The "immersive and lively" world around is also simply a letdown. There is only a handful of buildings you can enter, most of them only have a few stories, and even when inside you are locked out from most of the rooms inside.
There are quests, and gigs, and thats about it, there is not much to do in the world besides questing, no dynamic encounters or anything.

There are only a few useful shops, and the only thing you can do with them is spend your money on overpriced underwhelming stuff.

Consumables are trash, effects are weak, no custom animations, nothing.

The hacking part of the game is a simple find these characters on the right in the order they show in this table of characters on the left, while alternatively choosing between column / row.

There are "multiple endings". Im saying this in quotes because there is basically 2 outcomes, and your choices through the game dont effect the individual endings. Some endings might be locked behind certain side mission completitions, but the main outcome is always the same 2. Well 3 but one is not really an ending per se.

Overall, if they fix the graphical, and game breaking bugs, it's going to be a bit better, and worthy of one playthrough, but maybe not for 60EUR. Also if you wanted to play the game they promised, with all the new gen stuff, immersive world etc, then just walk away. It's better for the game to live in your dreams of how it could be than to shatter it with the cold harsh truth.

Great as one can be,

So I have been reading the reviews and thinking about writing my own for a long while. I personally like this game, but I'll try to stay unbiased so I can recap the pros and cons of the game.

I would say the learning curve of the game is pretty steep, by this I mean the basics and control is easy to learn, but very hard to master. The game itself doesn't seem too hard, or too complex but doing everything just the way you can maximize your advantage is not easy.

Northgard is not your classic RTS like C&C games or Starcraft. It's kind of a mixup between a survival game and an RTS game, as the hardest challenge you'll face as a new player is balancing your resources in a way that you can expand and not starve, while keeping your clan happy. You need to be mindful of your decisions and resources.
That said some of the points they brought up as negative:
-Laggy, unoptimized : this might be true to an extent, but the fact is that there were much improvements in online play which tends to lag (especially if there are many clans with many units on one tile) but if you play P2P its manageable easily.
-AI cheats : Just as in some other RTS games raising AI difficulty doesnt only come from the smartness of the AI but some unfair advantages. That said, this only happened until a very recent patch, since that the "cheats" are much more manageable.
-Linear: Now this is something I just dont find to be true. Some games you have Forests other times you dont have jack, and you have to make do with the things you (dont)have.
-Boring: As I said in the beginning this is a mix between survival RTS (Like Frostpunk) and your classic RTS with tiles (Kind of like Spellforce 3)

All in all I think the game itself is enjoyable, and holds true challenge. Mastering all the clans and tactics is not as straightforward as some people might think. The devs are constantly balancing (and unbalancing) things, which make the game better (or break it completely). This is not a game you can play all day and all night long, but it most definitely something worth your time to learn properly. It has it's flaws but nothing gamebreaking or such, its a pretty well balanced game most of the patches.
I'd give it an overall 8/10

Okay so, I'll try to summarize my experience with the game. Note that I only played the Campaign so I can't reflect on the Multiplayer element.

I played all the preceding SpellForce games, and absolutely fell in love with the first one. Challenging, yet fun, had a few minor bugs, but overall I loved the concept.

Spellforce 3 introduced an interesting way of limiting your workers. Instead of the Monument limit, now you get an "outpost" which has a limited amount of manpower. This manpower is used to fuel your buildings, and are necessary to man your guard towers with.
You can expand to predefined locations on the map, which also get their own settlement which can be upgraded to host more workers for you.
Outposts share resources, but they aren't instantenously teleported, instead they are carried on wagons, which can be killed, and looted, so "starving" an outpost of an enemy is a completely valid solution. If they lack a certain resource.

To upgrade buildings and units you need to have recipes (at least in Singleplayer, I'm not sure this also works in MP), which is probably to restrict what units one can use on a given map. I personally liked the first game's solution with unlocking units on the way that can be used later on.

The camera gave me a few problems, and sometimes it's hard to see drops / loot / chests so there is that. Especially in the jungle environment.

Also, please @developers, don't tempt us with choices we cant make.
SPOILER:
At the end of the campaign map, when our "guide" offers to teleport to the Palace with the artifact, you can select "I'll take it." And then right afterwards the "guide" persuades your avatar to let him teleport anyways and thus steals the relic.
Im totally fine with having no choice in a matter, but don't tempt me by giving me a choice which then turns out to not effect the outcome at all... looking at you ME-3.

The amount of workers kind of feel well, not enough EG: to man 3 watchtowers you basically have to give up 2 building's production completely, which might be fine, but if you are getting attacked from two sides, you need more manpower and you simply dont have it. I would reconsider having the same workers in the tower and othe buildings, and maybe use the trainable archers up in the defense tower (to a max of 3 or so). Some units need some damage balancing aswell, but overall I would say nice job.

To wrap it up.

The graphics are astonishing, but sometimes you can get lost in the details.
Camera movement sometimes a bit sluggish, I found myself rotating the camera more than I'd like to.
The new outpost based building is interesting, I'm not sure if I like it or dislike it. I can see the potential, but I think the worker's numbers aren't good at the moment.
Less conversation choices that make you think you can affect things while u cant.
It's a strong 8/10 in my book, and I'm looking forward to the release.

Learning this game is easy. Mastering it is hard!

Despite of the vast experiences of rudeness in competitive, I'd like to share some toughts on the game itself. I've been playing on 2 accounts paralel, I have aprox 1200 hr in CS:GO and 1500 in CSS which is not much, compared to others. I'm on LEM level for almost a year now. My experiences/tips are the following:
-There are bad players on every game, regardless of level.
-There are bad games for everyone, a teammate being bad in a game, might carry the enemy team in the next one.
-You literally can't accomplish anything by raging, other than making yourself and everyone else stressed (I know it's hard not to rage, I also do it occasionally, but try to keep it off the mic and only to urself, most of the players know if they ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up, you don't have to bash them)
-Teamwork is rare if you start a competitive solo, try to be the one initiating the teamwork, try to get the return frags, communicate, encourage others to share their toughts.
-Do not categorize people by nationality. I had Russians communicating and working in team as well as any other nation, and also had germans/polish/swedes who were just trolling away.
-If you want to be successful in competitive, try to realize your mistakes, try to learn from them, everyone always improves there is no shame in losing, if you tried your best and lost.
-Last but not least, every game is a new game, leave the last one behind, start the new one with a clear head, if you had a frustrating loss, go take a break to calm down, clear your head so you can do 100% in the next match.

Keep enjoying the game, guys.
GL & HF!