Recent reviews by Hektre

I played a single match with a friend. In that match, he become disconnected from EA four times. He gets 350 Mbps and has a strong connection. I become stuck on terrain as a foot soldier no less than three times and was forced to kill myself, all at different parts of the map. We partied up, but the game would not place us in the same game when we queued and instead I had to browse servers manually to make sure we got into the same one. This game is broken.

This is Dark Souls.

10/10 Perfect Game.

Learning to play this game is like memorizing the dictionary. Seriously, there is so much going on. It doesn't help that some of the tutorial missions have the wrong instructions. There's specifically one where you're supposed to construct a building on your home planet, but the instructions are for building regions instead. If you follow the instructions you'll waste your money and be baffled as to why it's not completing the mission. It's very upsetting to try to learn a game this complex while being lead astray by the tutorial.

Pros:
-You can name and design absolutely everything in the game, which leads to some hilarious moments.
-You can adjust the speed, which allows you to bridge the gap between the multitasking abilities of humans versus AI.
-Lots of interesting default alien races.

Cons:
-Tutorial is weak and provides false information.
-Despite the immense amount of customization, your appearance options are minimal, with some really ugly designs.
-This is the ugliest art style I've ever seen, There are quite a few mods for appearance but because of the weird default art style, they all heavily clash with anything in the game by default.
-There are so many numbers and resource types and stat types for everything the none of it seems valuable. It's very difficult to tell whether the upgrades and traits you take are actually any good because you have no base line to measure against. And since combat is so infrequent at the beginning, you won't actually know whether the thing you selected made a real difference for hours, probably.
-Menus on menus on menus on text boxes on menus. This game has so many menus and anytime an event happens it spawns several pop ups you have to read through. Most of them are just flavor text and mean nothing because the events seem to be based on a random invisible roll. You'll be reading through your third pop up when suddenly four more appear.

RTS is my main genre. I started on Age of Empires waaaaaaay back at the dawn of time and I've played hundreds of them at this point. I thought Crusader Kings III was bad with the amount of micromanaging. This makes Crusader Kings III look like Army Men RTS in comparison. This is too much and even with all of this, nothing happened in the 14 hours I've been playing. I've never felt so frantic trying to keep up with data on a screen while simultaneously been so bored because nothing of value is taking place. Weak stuff, here.

It's a pretty decent city builder. Not as good as Sim City 4: Deluxe Edition, but it's the gold standard for a reason.

The Good:
-Pretty graphics
-Not forced to use a grid, but available when you want it
-Lots of snapping points
-This is the first city builder I've seen that handles resources and industry in a realistic way

The Bad:
-Highway ramp construction is rage-inducing
-Preset highway connections are ugly and make no sense
-Despite the presence of a resource system, this game is yet another entry in the genre that has you making cities designed to be cities for cities' sake, which is massively disappointing and makes your city unrealistic looking because the design is pointless from the ground up.

It's worth getting on sale. Make sure you research the DLC's before you buy them, as some are completely pointless while others are basically necessary to have a full experience.

Absolutely amazing. It captures everything I love about The Thousand Year Door while still incorporating new elements. Sound design, writing, visuals, and mechanics are all spot on.

Great potential, but I think there's something desperately wrong with the memory system. Visiting another planet and then returning results in total loss of frames. It's completely unplayable after that and will not recover. I want to recommend it but right now I can't.

Fun game with a great sense of humor. Good voice acting too. It feels good to play and I'm sure this is the type of game I'd love to 100%. But sadly I didn't check the requirements, as it looks like the type of game that wouldn't be a problem, but my Graphics card doesn't meet the minimum requirements, so a good portion of the game won't render for me. As such, I'll be requesting a refund. But if you can run this game, I'm sure you'll love it!

I made a custom scenario where you play as a railroad company pushing natives out of a territory to make room for the railroad.

This is an exceptional game. It has a simple premise, is easy to grasp, and doesn't waste its time on needlessly high end graphics and animations. The gameplay loop is fun and rewarding and I especially want to highlight the sound design. Every single sound in the game is attractive and makes me feel rewarded in everything I do.

Things I'd like to see added:
-More types of shelves and displays
-Decorations and customization
-A snap-to-grid system for moving shelves around neatly
-A way to set a shelf for an item even when it sells out so that its place is held
-The ability to order more than 10 items at a time
-Checkouts that go the other direction
-An inventory system so I can scan a location, update the on-hands, and receive cases that will satisfy the shelf cap quantities

This game is so much fun and has so much potential. I really hope the devs realize what a gem they have here and continue to give it the love it deserves. I have so many cool ideas for this and all my friends have purchased it ever since I discovered it. We all love it.

UPDATE: Since writing this review like a week ago, the devs have added several additional shelves, storage racks, restockers, a mirrored checkout, and location markers so out of stock items will still have a home. In addition they have patched several bugs and seem to be making updates almost daily. Very pleased with their work. They clearly care.