Recent reviews by Curious

meh

I can no longer run the game after the latest update, my computer was just barely able to run the game at release. Adding Denuvo on top is too much for it and I never would have purchased. On the one hand I already mostly finished the game, on the other I've been meaning to come back to it to check out the update and finish off the final chapter of the story and now I can't. In my jurisdiction games cannot be sold as a service, this is a product that is broken, legally Bethesda must repair it or offer a full refund.

Might as well be a mobile game theres so little to it but dice rolls

Does not launch, entirely useless error message in the launcher. Launch issues since 2020 haven't been addressed properly.

Having basically 100%d the game I can forgive most of its flaws except one. The combat system is fundamentally broken, and its down to the behaviour of interrupts which are either bugged or very badly designed. Every big attack from enemies interrupts both casting and channelling of spells, casting refunds your resources and just wastes your time, but getting interrupted channelling generally deletes the effect of your spell while consuming MP/items and putting abilities on cooldown. You can cancel casts to avoid getting interrupted but you cannot stop channelling (your cast has completed but you are waiting some additional time for an effect). To make matters 10x worse your own teams attacks, buffs and heals can also interrupt your casts (not always it depends on whether the ability has an interrupt).

I could recommend this game despite its flaws if they took the time to patch interrupts, your own team should not be interrupting you, and imo enemy attacks should not be able to break channelling and remove your resources and the effect. This one bug causes the majority of negative play experiences in the game and I don't think the developers have played their own game enough to notice.

Controller support is so bad it ruins the initial play experience. The game fails to detect controllers connected after the game has launched, requiring a relaunch. Once launched it ignores all controller input if you leave inputs idle for a few minutes, controllers have to be unplugged and reconnected to regain input. This is basic quality assurance and controller support that hasn't been done and is not especially difficult or time consuming to achieve, all developers have to poll new devices in DirectInput and the documentation includes examples.

The game is tolerable on mouse and keyboard with just one bad keybind for cancelling out of attacks. It hinders switching to defence to block some attacks but the flaws in the combat system are more of an issue. The gameplay is close to a good experience but lacks polish, poor AI behaviour, bad timing windows, wild difficulty swings into boss fights, and a general awkwardness in the realtime implementation of a turn based system just hold it back.

The story swings wildly between the excellently written and directed Studio Ghibli sequences and absolute garbage filler created by Level 5 to pad out mid-sections of the game. Its unsurprising Ghibli lost interest in working on the sequel when their story was butchered by what is probably programmer written sections with Level 5 thinking they don't need to pay a writer. Its unfortunate because from what I've heard of the sequel Level 5 may have learnt from their mistakes with this game.

This is a nice little city builder from the Tropico 4 team. They managed to layer in an exploration and research system that significantly adds to the gameplay. Only downsides are those that affect all city builders, a lack of interesting challenge and an end game with not much to do but sit back and wait for your wonders to get built.

War of the Chosen is essential and makes this extremely engaging.

Incredible game.

Now owned by criminals, zero sympathy for anyone choosing to remain at the studio in the future, no better than staying on at Twitter after the buyout and saying everything's fine. Moral cowardice is complicity.

Excellent continuation of 2016. DLC is overpriced unless you can get it in a steam sale.

GOTY 2016