Recent reviews by Grogmok

TLDR at the very bottom of the review.
Lets start with the bad, and I will update this review everytime I find a new bug/issue.
-I just spent the hour doing small errands, didnt save my game, went to kill some bandits in a known camp outside of a town. I dragged some of them to the bridge where an NPC caravan was crossing, killed one bandit and the NPC says "you killed him, guards guards" he runs, triggers the investigate AI(totally new behavior for this game, not fleshed out at all) now the guard is demanding I pay 2000gold, or I get branded, or I reload an hours worth of game all because I killed a bandit. Why is the investigate AI so bad, because the developers are lazy.
-The first quest I did was save mutt, I thought having a dog was really cool addition but boy was I wrong.
Whenever the dog takes a hit, which will happen every fight, or over time if you ask him to stay command in a town, you will lose some "obedience" level. This level can be increased(very slowly) by feeding the dog 15-20pieces of meat and petting him 10 times.
Do you really want to pet and feed your dog this many times after every fight?
I am not even exaggerating, I thought it would get better as my levels went up, but I'm near end game now with max houndmaster and the obedience level just dropped from 92>23 after a small main quest fight, and now im feeding the dog meat from a deer 45times, and thats because the MEAT YOU DROP ROLLS AWAY AND THE DOG DOES NOT EAT IT.
So not only did I have to force this dog to eat 20times, but I also had to do the interactions double that amount. its such a waste of my time.
The dog constantly gets in your way, picking herbs, hitting a tree, whatever it was I was doing the dog somehow always managed to run RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. I tried commands heel and free, neither does anything to change this fact. I got so sick of running into him or accidentally attacking him that I just told him to stay the hell away from me.
-The combat is trash, absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ worst of ANY game like this genre in the history of video games.
They took away points of attack and added this "masterful strikes" counter attack that made the game bland, boring, and too easy. Attacking AI should be a matter of reflexes, combos, attacking from weak points in armor, none of this left right left right. I don't even feel like im in this time period anymore.
-archery, what can I say, put arrows into the enemy from afar and they have no idea who hit them, if you miss an arrow they stop, turn their back to you and look in the direction of where the arrow landed because the AI is so dumb that its programmed to look for "distractions" now if you want to cheese the game just throw arrows at everything from afar.
-rogue gameplay is worthless, and don't even think about attempting being a thief with the dog around because he somehow always manages to WAKE enemies up or attack them without your approval even with HEEL command. If you steal anything you WILL get accused of stealing later on, apparently the devs think that this provides realism, but if nobody saw me enter the town or a home why am I still getting blamed by guards and what realism is that? all it makes me want to do is murder every AI for being so stupid, but we all know its the LAZY developers for having such a LAZY AI!
-Firearms are not a great addition to the game
They provide zero stealth like the arrows do and there is NO CROSSHAIR OR POINT OF SIGHT. with a bow you can aim off the arrow, with the gun its like hip firing so you have to just assume where the bullets are going to go. Since reload isn't much faster than arrows, just stick with a bow and poisen the arrows.
-Important AI will disappear!
Several times, I find myself wondering, where is the bathhouse owner, I need to clean my clothes, or, where is the innkeeper? I know im not tripping, I need to rent a bed! Only to find out (the first time) that the inn keeper(who has important quests) is standing around in the forest a short distance from the inn. This is due to the map showing there is a quest available in the middle of a forest??? anyhow, you cannot interact with them at all, it only lets you either nock them out, pick pocket or fight them. I've tried everything, potions, jumping ontop of them, the only fix that seems to work and that is not as punishing, is to literally assault them. they will make you pay a fine and you will lose rep, but at least the NPC will go BACK to their spot. If they dont, you have to nock them out from behind and carry them, even more punishing because as I may have pointed out before in this review, ANY TIME YOU DO A ROGUE STEALTH OPTION the AI seems to be GOD AND KNOWS EVERYTHING. meaning even if you leave, wait a day or two, they STILL KNOW YOU COMMITED A CRIME????
thats not all, the second time this happened to me, I tried punching the bathhouse owner but it didnt trigger her at all, she just took it! so I had to nock her out and carry her to the town, then the guard came, charged me 120gold and proceeded to search me for stolen items, which I forgot, I was playing a rogue playthrough, so indeed I had inventory full of stolen stuff. guess what I did next? reloaded the game, slaughtered the entire village down to the last npc, reloaded the game, AGAIN, and this time left her in the forest until Im ready to calm down and put my stolen items away before resetting her.

I have 89 hours played, currently struggling to find a reason for finishing this game. I spent most of my time completing side quests in the first area that by the time I made it to the second area I lost all interest.
I know its going to be a lot of the same content, i'm max level and there is no challenge. The progression ended hours ago.

I know you want this part of the review to reflect some good about the game, but if you are new to this game, go buy the first kingdom come deliverance. The experience is so much better, the beginning is way more engaging, the story is rich, combat(while not flawless) is worlds better.

1.story is garbage: You do not rise in any ranks or start from the bottom, you begin your story as a renown deathknight commander of many armies who was slain and rose again. Even though all the heroes in the story have risen from the dead one more time, the game tells you that when someone dies now, they die forever. This is further cannon when you play the second mission and you kill some zombies, your character says "they won't be revived again" what kind of logic is that?
2.aesthetics do not exist: No matter what armor or weapon you equip, it doesn't change your appearance
3.lack of customizations: armor and weapons are limited to 1 slot for armor, 1 for weapon, 1 trinket, I think you get where this is going, it lowers they choices you have to make but also feels like a "cut corners" product.
4.No building: You are offered a castle, which you need to earn resources to "build" and uppgrade, but building is so limited, you don't choose how the building looks, its preset, its limited to hospital, merchant, training, etc. it reminds me of a very cheap adobe browser game or mobile app.
5.TUNNEL STORY: this game is not open world. It doesn't give you multiple choices to approach maps, you walk a short distance with walls on your map preventing you from walking anywhere left or right, you are stuck in a linear movement to a "fight" the only choice you make it where you want to place your character before a battle like most RTS games.
6.Basic battling: walk up to an enemy and swing sword, or if you have +2 IQ, you walk behind enemy, and backstab for %increase damage per attack. enemy has armor? put skill points in armor penetration.

TLDR I wouldn't suggest buying the game, I got it on sale for $13 and asked for a refund, I doubt I'll get one because I set this game aside to play it later and I bought it like 2 months ago.

Starting with the bad;
1-LOADING SCREENS LOADING SCREENS LOADING SCREENS. you might not feel it at first, but I have a very fast high end SSD, 8k speed ram 14k intel cpu and the game does not instant load.
The developers could have made many zones, like every zone in the ship, loadingscreenless.
2-Is this on the newest unreal engine? because I could have swore at some moments I was getting bad lag, jitters, and oh, more loading screens? wait the game forces you to load screen into an area that you need to load screen OUT of this area(like captains quarters) and it does this very frequently?
3-Rolls values are garbage, many times at a 95% chance I have instead of hitting an enemy, veered off to hit an ally. SAVE AFTER EVERYROLL IF YOU WANT TO MIN/MAX.
(side note, i'm ok with some bad rolls, but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ is the game based on PURE luck, even down to engagements where anyone can go first)
4-Initiative means nothing. you can save before a fight and infinitely reload until you get the characters on your team to start the battle first. Sometimes an enemy or groups of enemys starting first in a fight means the difference between literally winning or not. prepare to waste your time with more loading screens.
5-because of everything stated above, RTS skill means very little, infact with enough bad luck your skill means absolutely nothing, game is a roll for luck to win, waste your time with loading screens.
6-I had to take a break from playing the game because I clicked an area next to a console and my character not only went the opposite way, but also put himself in danger of immediate death and doomed my entire encounter to a loss. because the game is RNG, I should have saved before I moved, obviously. what good game have I ever felt the need to constantly save, to combat really bad RNG? I cant remember the last good game to make me feel like I had to save before every single thought crosses my mind.

TLDR-Ending with the good;
Its like playing every other rts, xcom, divinity original sin, baldurs gate, pillars of eternity etc
Its not all just turn based with classes, there is also a turn based ship battle
You can upgrade your ship as much as you can your own gear
Leveling is not reduced to just 12, classes and abilities have much to choose from.
Story is not so bad, but its difficult to ♥♥♥♥ up a warhammer story as you have so much to choose from
You don't have to buy it for $50, you can wait for a 50% off steam sale and buy it for what its actually worth.
You get to read this review and save yourself the annoying headache of loading screens.

Game released on 9/21/2023, its 9/24/2023 and I still cannot get into a match without some kind of bug. launch day it was just infinite queue, now its match making error.

Im at this point right now where I want to quit and smash keyboards, there is a very serious and annoying bug in the first act where if you piss off mol he tells the guards and normally I dont care if I have to pass a check, but im so far deep in the act that my only source of a merchant is at the grove, im overweight so I have a disadvantage on checks, i somehow passed the check with a guard before making it to the merchant and it ASKED ME TO DO ANOTHER CHECK BECAUSE OF MOL I SWEAR, UNTIL THIS IS FIXED FOR THE LOVE OF GOD IF YOU ARE READING THIS RIGHT NOW PLEASE MURDER MOL FOR ME. HES IN EMERALD GROVE IN A PLACE CALLED THE DRAGONS LAIR, WHERE THE TIEF CHILDREN HIDE, JUST MURDER HIS LITTLE FACEHOLE OVER AND OVER, PLEASE, FOR ME.

Current state of the game
You only have 4 points of attack(and a kick), up-down-left-right(one is stab, other overhead)
Every single day, people log on and go fight in pvp to claim a castle(territory) late game you can solo cap any castle in the game, npcs have no adaptive AI behavior so you can kite them all and they don't reset HP if they break aggro. you destroy a couple of wooden gates(or doors) to access the castle, then you break 1 door to a generic fort that you see all over the map, walk 2 flights of stairs and access a flag to cap.
sometimes some low lvl npcs will guard the doors but its usually nothing to a lvl 100 geared player.
Siege consists of ram to get the doors down faster and catapult to aoe groups holding a door or to destroy ballista. you only see 1-2 ballistas occaisionally, it takes resources to uppgrade castles and that gives a few ballistas, also a few low lvl guards. you can break an outside wall but the HP is too great and it just means you need to repair the wall after cap which is such a hassle that nobody does it.
The hitboxes have been bugged for a long time, sometimes your weapon phases through the body, sometimes arrows do the same or the arrows hit invisible walls and you wonder why you shot 30 arrows but hit nothing. hitboxes like trees, tents, etc all have invisable corners that arrows get stuck on. you can't lob arrows over shoulders or walls and arrows(power attack) deal around 1/8th the damage of a standard swing of a 2h axe.(non heavy attack) armor is useless other than either increase damage slightly or survive a couple more hits.
Its nothing like bannerlord, kingdom come, chivalry. It has its only unique trash combat system that wasnt ever flushed out. the graphics are as good as bannerlord 2.
I didn't play for 557hours, the game has afk activities so you can go fishing for 24hours, come back and you will still be fishing. more than half of my "played"hours was really just leaving the pc on every day to afk farm.
Apparently the game USED to be full loot pvp, but now thats reduced to a pt system where you can collect 1 t5 equip and only in the middle of the map. everyone fights AROUND the middle map because those zones are pvp-non loot. I guess casuals just wanna log on and fight in some trash combat system doing the same repetitive kill 2 doors, cap a flag. pve is trash, no special mechanics to learn, no big guild raids, just a zerg of over 5 players attacking a mildly larger npc that has the same hit mechanic/aggro, and enlarged HP.

took me almost 24 hours to beat everything. There is still much more to do, lots of secret achievements, hidden objects, harder difficulties and better "grades" meaning completing a level in full with no hiccups all side objectives. it calls for a lot of strategy and thinking.
If you are into mods there's a fix for that here aswell.
You just blow pixels up with different tools, like minecraft but way more indepth and better graphics. The only building involved is when you are using planks or moving objects in the world in order to reach specific things/areas. As a man 10/10 satisfying to blow a hole in a wall of a building, collapse everything, attach 20 rockets to a vehicle(like a van or bulldozer) and then drive it at 200mph straight through a wall of a mall, in an attempt to break the sound barrier and break through every wall in my way.

Do not recommend this game anymore, the developers went downhill.
The game has lost much of its grit and funny moments.
It started with less traps, less of AI pulling out knives to stab you if you didn't keep a weapon on them at all times while arresting them or arrest them from behind, and now censoring the R rated content.
IRL the swat teams do not have the pleasure of having the content they are about to witness be censored, a child convulsing on drugs due to overdose should have been left in the game.

They don't want a swat game, they want profit margin and a broader market. to reach a larger market they had to make the game easier, more casual, and censor the controversial content. This is the direction video games are going to continue to go until you make your voice heard by not buying their games.
This review will change when the censorship is removed.

Only downside is the "power" creep, which plagues all card games respectively.
As of right now, you can still get by totally free, and each "season" you can gain the new released cards free, its a grind though.
I love the game, I think I have owned it since like 2012? back then it was alpha, so few cards that there was only 1 meta, now there is probably over a hundred cards.
In case you don't know what the game is about, you have a hero and a "deck". decks are made up of a few cards, like 8 cards(I don't even remember the exact amount) and each card has a cost to summon, like hearthstone, except the monster summoned starts walking towards the enemy hero. if he encounters enemy players mob, he might attack it, or go straight for hero, depends on the card and cost. some cards cost less but counter higher cost cards, that is where stradegy comes into play. hero's offer passive bonuses, and sometimes hero exclusive cards that counter cards.
There is a team battle version aswell, even ranked co op! 2v2.
I would rate the game 10/10, I have been playing it off and on for a very long time.
I just want to be able to play it on my phone, without having to create a new account and start over with new cards.

Act 3 has a bug in the ivory sanctum where even though your lockpicking skill is at 100%, the door won't unlock, and its a required door to progress with the story. So you get stuck in act 3 and have 2 options, reload previous saves before you made it to ivory sanctum and redo hours of strategic turn by turn based battles which doesn't garuntee a fix. or option 2, restart the entire game on a new save file which takes even more time and effort, and also does not garuntee a fix.
either way this kind of game breaking crap shouldn't exist in any game.
I never finished kingmaker, the game is not as polished as larians divinity sin games, you can't take advantage of mechanics like height, oil, water, etc, combat is just, look this game I can't recommend this or any of this companies games to anyone. I got this game at 50% off and I look at my save files, it says 2days and 22hours on one file and i'm only on act 3. The game doesn't have 3days worth of content, its a few hours at best but they slow you down but creating mechanics that cause you to wait, like traveling a map, encountering enemies randomly, all the small talk that you try to click on in case you might unlock some secret or hidden quest because you have to answer specifically and to top it off, what really sucks all your time is how difficult you put in your settings.
I know nothing about the lore, I don't care to read every single "book" I come across, I never pay any attention to choices in dialogue and in most cases it doesn't effect any story or quests, in some rare cases it effects EVERYthing in such a massive way that you need to literally google "azata path" and follow instructions strictly just to unlock specific paths.