Recent reviews by killakanz

The game itself is brilliant. Can't fault it.

Well, I can, because it runs via Ubisoft Connect, an absolutely abysmal DRM that rarely works, can't update itself, doesn't know what DLCs you own, and most of the time just straight up refuses to allow you to run the game.
For the past month, the download link for Ubisoft Connect is broken on Ubisoft's own website, my currently installed version says it's too old to update itself (like wtf?). Nobody at Ubisoft cares, nobody has bothered to look into it, whenever you try to message anyone they just say "raise a support ticket"... Which nobody ever looks at.

So yeah. Anno, awesome game, awesome series. Ubisoft, incompetent support, if they even exist, terrible company, worst DRM software to ever exist. Sad to say, save your money, don't buy because at the moment you probably wont be allowed to play the game anyway.

There have been a lot of disappointing sequels recently... But this... This isn't one of them!

This is how you do a sequel for a beloved title. Well done Ironclad and Stardock, you guys blew this outta the park!
This isn't just a remaster, it isn't just Sins 1 but prettier. I mean, it is prettier, but also it adds new features and mechanics that perfectly compliment the game without forgetting or destroying that which made the original so great. Thanks for showing us that this can actually be achieved, where so many other series have failed.

If you loved Sins 1, get this game! If you're a newcomer to the series, get this game. If you like 4x RTS games with a space flavour, Sins 2 is a must have!

Refunded.

First attempt to play the game after buying the deluxe edition and installing it, it didn't even make it to main menu. Crashed.

Second attempt, it got to main menu but could not save changes to graphics settings. So attempted to start the tutorial. Crashed.

Third attempt, loaded to menu and attempted to go straight into tutorial without touching anything else. Crashed.

Also the PDX crash handler doesn't work, attempting to send crash reports also failed.

I can't even say anything about gameplay in this review because, try as I might, I couldn't even get that far. This is so badly broken, what a shocking mess...

So I've been a patreon supporter of this game for years, and it's been an absolute delight to see this game develop from a very barebones tank driving game which was the first demo I tried, to where it is now. It's seriously impressive how far the devs have come with this game, yet they'd insist it's still some way from finished.
Now we all expected that a lot of new players coming to this game post Steam early access release to be coming from a crowd linked to certain free to play competitive online deathmatch tank games. So let me be clear from the very outset: That is not what this game is! GHPC is not a PVP game. Remove all expectation of your tank having a fair and balanced equal on the opposing team. Also remove all expectations of crew levelings, consumables, invisible tanks, healthbars and enemy icons on minimaps... None of that fluff features here. An enemy tank may be sitting 4km away, but it'll still be rendered. If your real eyes are good enough to spot it, you can try and shoot it. My personal best so far was a kill at 6.5km. This is possible and the maps are certainly big enough for it, however most engagements happen at much closer ranges...
Since this game is leaning more towards a simulator, or a "sim-lite" as people are calling it, there is only a handful of vehicles at the moment, however each vehicle is individually simulated to be as true to their real counterparts as possible. There's no templating, so we're not getting a situation where dozens of vehicles feel exactly the same, like certain other games previously hinted at. And yet, despite each vehicle's individualism, they're all tied to a common, simplified control set. So while each vehicle feels different, they're all pretty easy to pick up and play while still requiring practice to master. It's quite an impressive achievement in a game. And while I mentioned earlier that there are only a handful of vehicles, there are already more on offer now than comparable games in the sim-lite genre offer you, with even more in development.
The audio is top notch, I love the boom of a distant exploding tank reverberating around the internal view, and the crew voices provide some excellent immersion as you can hear their stress and maybe even a little panic rising as the vehicle comes under fire, it really adds to the excitement as you duke it out exchanging shots with an enemy platoon.

GHPC is a great tank game already, and it's still early access. The developers are still very much active and very much invested in further developing this title. There is so much potential on top of what's already here!

Game is excellent! I guess with it being over 13 years old, it's a classic by now, but it's long been an excellent city-builder and if you're into the genre, how have you not played this yet! And for those longing for that nostalgia, this release works on Windows 10 and widescreen resolutions!
A word of warning though if you're buying this today, the game currently installs Uplay which is an issue because Ubisoft no longer supports Uplay so it gets stuck in a cycle of failing to update and wont let the game start. You have to go to the Ubisoft website and manually install Ubisoft Connect, then launch the game via Steam and Ubi Connect should see it and link it, then let you play it... It's a pain in the rear, but Ubisoft's DRM always has been a pain in the rear for paying customers, so no change there... But they definitely lose brownie points for abandoning their old DRM for a new one and then failing to ensure all their games start shipping with the new one...

This needs some serious balancing work.
Playing as a Megacorp, there's no way you should be struggling to keep your economy in the positive simply because you have 1 vassal.
I don't mind the idea of paying subsidies towards my vassals for being specialist, But it really shouldn't be a flat percentage of your overall production, and certainly not such high percentages. As they are, you can't change them. With a level 1 bulwark, you start off paying 20% of your EC, Minerals and Food production. This actually slowly increases as they gain XP to level up. Once they reach level 2 you're paying 35%... When they hit level 3 you're paying 50%!! Half of your basics production to ONE vassal!! How the heck are you meant to do this with multiple vassals?
And you cannot lower those settings, you cannot stop the vassal from leveling up. And it's a struggle to pay that *as a megacorp*! This is so imbalanced!
Since I turned my one and only vassal into a Bulwark, I've spent about 50 ingame years trying to bring my economy back into the positive, *as a megacorp*, made even more difficult because the dividends I'm paying are constantly rising as my vassal gains XP, and as I mine more and more resources, the more I have to pay out because it's a flat percentage of your overall production...

I can't begin to imagine how bad this probably is when you're not a megacorp. It's just not worth having specialist vassals because it's so poorly balanced and destroys your economy, which kinda defeats the entire point of the DLC...

Well, the game was very good, so far as I remember.

But I haven't played it for years, and when I try to now I just get a message telling me to verify an email address that no longer exists. There's no option to change it, and rockstar support is an absolute joke since you can't even contact them at all if you don't have a working account...

So what I actually have now is one very expensive (at the time I bought it) game that won't let me play. And absolutely nothing I can do about it.

Leaving this review during Early Access. It shows promise.
It's fun as arcadey PvE tank shooters go. At the time of reviewing there's not a lot of missions so I basically completed the game in just 3 hours, but each individual mission length is good so far, so they don't feel like they're over too quickly.
There's a nice collection of tanks to try out already with more apparently on the way. I really like the art style and the gun-play feels pretty good.

The downsides at the moment are that the game takes itself a little too seriously, there's very little humour in the dialogue. There's also no backstories or character development that makes you care in any way about your crews, they're little more than just pictures to add to your crew slots for no apparent reason... Just like all the other tank games out there unfortunately.
Also as it's single player PvE, it should also be noted that the AI needs some work. There's no dynamic spawning so after a couple of playthroughs of a mission you know where the enemy tanks are going to be, and this is going to limit replayability if not addressed. They also don't "wake up" when they're in your spotting range, they only wake up when you get too close or shoot them first, which is a problem late game when you're driving a Tiger (which can one-shot anything) with a commander that has maxed vision, since you spend most of your time shooting stationary targets that aren't shooting back.
The AI also needs to stop blindly driving into eachother and the player... I had a few occasions where one of my platoon tanks was trying to get back in formation but instead of driving around me, it just drove into me and kept pushing.

Admittedly the above are relatively minor negatives. If you're looking for a fun little tank shooter to sink some hours into, with an anime flavour, maybe give this a try or keep an eye on it. It is early access and the developers do seem to be actively working on it still, it shows promise.

I loved EG1. I played it a LOT. So I'm up there with all the other older gamers who were very very excited when we heard that after 17 long years, EG2 was on it's way (with a prayer of "please don't duke nukem it!"). I wishlisted EG2 as soon as it came onto steam, I pre-ordered it as soon as it was available, I preloaded and spent most of the day waiting for it to unlock.

But EG2 is disappointing.

It's been dumbed down a lot from EG1, and several design decisions seem very questionable to be honest.

- Power management just means you need to build enormous fields of generators, because each individual generator doesn't make a lot of power and a lot of things you're going to be building require a lot of power. About half of your lair will be power generators. Even the upgraded power generator, which doubles the output of the basic, doesn't use much less space than 2 basic ones.

- The world map is incredibly repetitive and also has some questionable design choices. Often the cash missions are either send 3 worker minions and they'll steal 15,000 in 3 minutes, or send 3 worker minions to steal 20,000 in 30 minutes. Generated heat is about the same for both, seems a no brainer which one to pick every time. When heat reaches it's maximum for that region, it shuts down for about 3 minutes and restarts with no heat. But there are missions you can do to reduce heat, again usually 10,000 gold to remove the heat in 3 minutes, or send off 3 workers to remove the heat in 30 minutes. Doesn't seem much point doing the heat reduction missions, Let it shut down and it'll reset for free in 3 minutes. Doesn't take you long to realise on the world map you're just doing the same thing over and over and over again...

- Speaking of repetitivity, that also creeps into the lair building. You very quickly find you're just making more of the same things to get other things... More radio repeaters to set up more crime networks, more power generators to power those radio repeaters, continuously expanding your power plant rooms as you make more of usually the same stuff...

- Traps... this is a biggy for me... Traps were a LOT of fun in EG1, and they are in the early stages of EG2. I say early stages since the bigger, more fancier traps start to cost big bucks... And once you've finally got your death gauntlet ready for those pesky investigators, watch with joy as the now level 3 investigators march into your gauntlet shutting down every trap one by one and getting through it completely unscathed. Because their trap-shutdown ability has no cooldown and seemingly no useage limits. People tried telling me on the forums that disabling traps eats away at their stats, but it doesn't. I checked. A lot. Late game, traps are totally useless.

- ... Made even more useless by the fact that certain super agents do not come in via the front or back doors. No, super saboteurs TELEPORT into your power plants, super thieves TELEPORT into your gold vaults... Super agents teleport in wherever the heck they want then stealth around so your minions can't even see them. It's not difficulty going up, it's just cheese.

Seriously don't even bother setting up trap corridors or mini-mazes or death gauntlets... By tech 3 all the investigators just switch them off and all the super agents just teleport past them... You'd be better off just making armouries everywhere and training up an army of guards...

I wanted to love this game, I wanted to give it a good review. But it's so disappointing. They need to fix the balance, they need to remove the super-agent's ability to teleport in wherever they want, the trap shutdown abilities need cooldowns... Because with all this the late game is just really really bad! This game needs some serious fixing before I can recommend it...
I will absolutely recommend playing Evil Genius 1 though, get that instead.

This game is easy in the way that Dark Souls is a bit easy...

Just a few moments ago I had a great example of how quick it turns south...
My mission was to cruise missile some mainland targets. Because I'm close to the shore, it's waaaay too shallow for things to get exciting... But I start off cautious... I run silent, I wait at periscope depth and sure enough a wild escort appears. It's at medium-long range, but I'm still quite sure it hasn't noticed me. I launch a wire-guided torpedo, make sure run silent is still on and lower myself to about 150ft of the 200ft available (like I said, really shallow). Some time later and a little manual control counter dodging and the torpedo hits it's mark, escort sunk... But a couple of helicopters are dipping sonar close to where they first detected the torpedo. They're not close enough to detect me, yet... and I move away at a painfully slow 5 knots running silent. All seems fine, they can't hear me...
Then I get impatient... Just when I think I'm far enough away to risk a little more speed, get more distance and fire my missiles, I hit the accelerate button... Just to 10 knots... But no sooner had I done this, suddenly bombers fly over dropping torpedoes, helicopters fly over dropping depth charges! Not enough depth to dodge anything and I can't escape... Just utter chaos and aircraft flying from all sides and more helicopters dipping sonar right on top of me...
Died very quickly...

So, in short, this game is fun. It's tense. It really makes you think about what you're doing, but it's not easy. It's really, really punishing, even on the easy setting, make one bad move and you're dead.
Highly recommend that you watch youtube videos of this game before deciding on buying. It's not for the casual gamer... But if intense, sneaky do or die hunter-seeker-runthef---away! tactics are your kind of thing, give this a try!