Recent reviews by Francis (Unsalted)

As you can see from my hours played - i really like this game. But would i recommend it - especially for the current price of 50 Euros?
I don't think so.

Lets start with the Good.

I really like the combat. Directional blocking and attacks are nothing new, but the way weapons feel to use in this game, combined with the system, work really well together. The hit markers for ranged weapons sound very satisfying (so do a lot of confirmation noises!), and learning how to aim feels rewarding as well. Different weapons and weapon stats can feel meaningful and change the way you approach fights.
Commanding troops also feels very rewarding, especially when using better strategy than your opponent gives you so much of an edge that a fairly lopsided battle is still won. The fact that the game slows down when giving commands is a very nice quality of life addition and helps making strategic choices.
Experience gain and progress feels nice, as most actions in game either reward experience, money, or renown, and there are perks to pick from at regular intervals. The breadth of perks allows for several playthroughs with different setups, and helps when playing toward a particular goal.
The world in game is fairly pretty, and the geography of the overworld, as well as the distribution of factions interesting enough. The troop variation is nice, and i recon most people will find at least one faction they really like. The different battle environments make a strategic difference, and also look fairly realistic. Being able to create your own Kingdom and managing it, for example, passing policies to shape the Kingdom the way you want, is great, and the clan management is nice as well. I like the option to have several of your clan members running around the map compared to just having your own troop.

Ok great, so why isn't this a glowing recommendation?
This game just doesn't feel finished - in some places, almost, in other places, not at all.
Take Smithing for example. Great addition to the game, and the ability to create your own weapons to fit your playstyle is fun, but, why are there hundreds of thousands of possible smithing combinations? Why are all of them swords and maybe 10 of them axes? Why do i need all of those sword combinations if there's no difference (apart from aesthetics) between them, and if there is a difference, why do i actually care about 1 more point in 'handling'. A stat that, by the way, is not explained, and as with many things in game, doesn't have a tooltip.
Experience, Perks, and Kingdom management policies? Some of them are completely overpowered, at least, compared to others (or, for Perks specifically, compared to the alternative Perk). A lot of them straight up don't work, or don't work as intended (or advertised), and an even larger amount technically work, but in practise, are irrelevant.
A lot of things seem weirdly unbalanced. Place first in a tournament? On average across a playthrough, 200-ish Denars. However, you might also be awarded a sword! Another 1k Denars. Or a Horse, 20k Denars. Smith a high tier two handed sword, 40k Denars. Smith a sword with even better stats than that, but use a different component, suddenly worth only 5k.

Then there's a bunch of things that seem like the remnants of content that was cut. Lets take NPC interactions. When an NPC has a quest, you can ask them about that. If the NPC has Money, or something to sell, you can talk to them about that. And that's kind of it. Sometimes, there's options to 'Talk about something else', which leads to a Menu where you can only select 'Nevermind...'.
What about the 'Story'. You save your Brother from a Bandit lair, and have the opportunity to behead the bandit, or let him go. If you let him go, he says you'll meet again.... and then you just don't. If you kill him, nobody cares.
Pretty much all the Village/City/Castle settings, outside of battle. They look nice, don't get me wrong, but (almost) everything can be done from a menu, and you never actually need to walk around these places. Why not? And why is it that there's 2 quests where suddenly you do have to walk around for 10 minutes? Was this planned for all quests, or is that only here to make sure you see the environments eventually?


I avoided making the comparison to Mount and Blade: Warband until now, but in many ways this feels like Taleworlds wanted to make Warband better, added a bunch of new systems and ideas, worked on the Ideas that they really liked, and left everything else in an unfinished state.
If the game still speaks to you after reading this, go ahead! Ive definitely had my fair share of fun playing this game. If you're looking for a fully fleshed out experience, this is probably not it.

Despite the many recent bad reviews for Stellaris i still think this is a great game.

For people decided wether to buy this or not and seeing the many negative comments:
With the changes in 2.0 many base game mechanics were changed, the game was slowed quite a bit (my the new war system for example) and several new factors added to the game made it feel very different to Stellaris 1.9, which obviously caused a lot of complaints despite 2.0, objectively speaking, not being a bad game (quite the opposite).

Personally, before and after the changes, ive enjoyed the game and the large amount of variety it offers the player. This of course is increased when playing multiplayer, and i can see why singleplayer can get boring after a while but i do always come back to it. I also feel like roleplaying to an extent, as well as the difficulty options added in 2,0 may help against the possible repetativeness.

Overall: Good game, great graphics, a decent amount of options play-wise, constant updates and a fairly stable multiplayer
Negatives however, a stale late game, some repetativeness and, well, if you played a previous version you might be confused.