Recent reviews by Leo Knightingale

Personally, the game has done wonders upgrading the way you can connect roadways and other means of transportation. Making highway systems seems to have greatly improved. They basically took some of the mods from CS and applied them to the original game.

That said, I have encountered certain bugs or quality of life issues, such as cars doing U-TURNS in areas that are not designated for that causing traffic jams. I remember CS had a function that made some vehicles break the road rules. Not sure if that's what is happening here, but having no power to control the flow of traffic from one node to the next is causing issues. It happens often, that I prohibit vehicles form being able to turn a certain direction, and vehicles still do it anyway. I can't block off the area with a physical object so it forces me to do wonky road dividers that don't look nice to solve the issue. It seems the game wants to force you to build roundabouts everywhere because normal intersections are insanely inefficient. You can't time intersection lights, or control traffic lane direction permissions, or even the lights that allow traffic flow. I can't control turning lane lights while making other lights wait, etc, to make the intersection and traffic flow smoother. The idea cars trying to make right turns can't until they have a green light causes major traffic jams. It seems intersections don't auto build stop signs. Honestly, considering this game is a traffic management game as much as a city builder leaves a lot to be desired.


Accidents are an interesting new mechanic. Personally, I like it. It's pretty cool and a real issue in cities.

Road maintenance vehicles are cool and I understand their function, but the way the AI just cuts multiple lanes back and forth doesn't seem ideal and causes unnecessary road delays that wouldn't happen if the vehicle kept to a lane. Maybe that was the intention?

Vehicle AI has gotten incredibly good, but it still needs some work. I have AI trying to merge way to early on some spots causing it to go a bit wack and cause major issues. Cars will completely stop for some reason for other cars merging into the lane, rather than slowly moving and slowly merging, etc.

The concept of the industrial area seems good, but it needs more work. I liked the ability to control the industrial type of buildings in certain districts, for example; a forest district will create industrial facilities that focus on forestry production. That said, I do see industrial buildings and warehouses develop to speed up resource distribution. I like it!

Personally, I love the ability to increase the capacity and purpose of a service building like schools, police departments, hospitals, etc. It's probably one of the best functions in the game. I'm not sure if maybe I missed it, but can we delete those additions once added to a service building?

An issue I personally have with CSII is I don't quite understand the effective radius of the service buildings. In CS the road used to turn green to show service coverage. You could space service buildings to maximize coverage. With CSII, I notice that service coverage to some extent seems pointless sometimes. Schools for example enroll low number of residents for their service radius. The current radius for some services seems very small for a game that demands you build vast suburbs but quite expensive for what they cover. I have a city of 8000 people, with two elementary schools, and only 200 students enrolled per campus. One of the schools had such low attendance, I considered getting rid of it to get back the cash from it, but the service coverage would've dropped incredibly. The same happens with clinics, the small police station and firehouse. The highschool doesn't seem to have a coverage area. Neither does the college or university. I concluded that the reason for that may be because sims are willing to travel to those buildings for their life mechanism. Is there a way to increase service area so people from further are willing to use the buildings? One thing I have noticed is that sometimes, you'll see a building service area cover a location, and after a few minutes, that area is no longer within the service area. Is that a bug? Intentional? Sims being sims?

Perhaps when we add more vehicle capacity to service buildings or student capacity etc, it adds to the service radius!

The milestone system is kinda cool, because you look forward to meeting the next goal to grow so you can keep unlocking new things to help you develop your city.

The new system for water and drainage is alright. You have to be a bit more careful when plotting the pipes because you can easily miss connecting the different systems. As I was growing, I felt there was a lack of variety when it came to water and drainage. Sometimes I want to build small towns far apart from each other, but the lack of variety and affordable systems makes it tough to do that.

One thing I noticed was the lack of interest for sims to use trains and buses. So far, those are the only two services I have used. I connected a train line to an outside city, and I still see a lack of use both in and out. Not just that, but if there is use, it's only a very small number of passengers. I tried using parking to encourage sims to use the services, but they just laughed at me.

Love the change of season and weather. I'm not a huge fan of the sim models. Bus routes don't seem to encourage sims to hang around the stops. Service vehicles don't have animations, making things seem a bit sad.

City and district policies are very few at the moment. I hope we see more as the game gets updated. I like I can have my services focus on certain districts. Finally, my service vehicles don't have to travel far distances to solve another districts issues.

Another gamer mentioned the lack of variation for several service buildings like the train station, schools, police, etc. I have to agree. Like that person mentioned, one school style doesn't make sense in a vast city with many different districts that extends great distances. Normally, that issue is solved with mods, but the game doesn't allow compatibility yet. What about players who like to build rural towns or dense city centers? The railyard is so huge, I have to flatten entire sections of a mountain to place it. We need buildings and models that are more compact and still serve a purpose. Small PD's like the fire station. Small schools, medium size schools, and large schools, same for high schools and maybe different college models?

Overall, the game is already a great deal of fun. I enjoy building vast suburbs so the gameplay favors my style of building at the moment, but sometimes I like to build off on the other end of the map small towns my city sims can travel too.

I was messing around with the information tab on the top left corner of the screen to monitor traffic and other bits of information. I noticed that the roadway tab needs a bit of work. Sometimes it will inform you a certain road is densely used, etc. If I looked at the roadway, it seemed nearly empty and people hardly walked on the sidewalk on that section. Not sure if it's just me, but it doesn't seem to accurately display traffic congestion.

So, my thoughts on the game in summary;

Positive:
+ roadway construction is better
+ service building development
+ district service focus
+ point unlock mechanism

Negative:
- performance of course
- service building variety and service radius
- more roadway variety needed (trees on side of road, etc)
- sims seem to dislike using some service buildings at the moment
- no modding compatibility

I really like this game, and it has great potential. The game requires more assets to make cities and the sims come to life, but I'm sure that'll get fixed with time. Are there some bugs in the game? Yes, but it's just been released and I'm sure those will be fixed too. Just hope the fixes don't require DLC purchases.

Decent storytelling, wonky but decent driving, many loading screens, but the game is alright if you have the time to relax and play for a few hours. I'm sure I can get the alternative ending, but I finished the game and prefer to move on to the next.

The use of AI to help you was kinda cool, but I found the AI to lack when you tried to have them help you drive or fight. Overall, I'd say that if you buy this game on sale, it's alright.

The ending was not really my favorite and it seemed incredibly rushed. If you get the nuclear ending, I'm sure you too will think the same.

Age of the Empires II has and still is a solid game for the quality of the graphics. The game is fun, entertaining, full of single-player stories you can explore, and new content is still being released that expand its greatness.

Age of the Empires IV is seriously lagging far behind at being a great game. Allow me to share the good things about the game since it's easier to list them than the bad.

The good:
- The game has good looking cinematics. The short documentaries are pretty cool. If I was a history teacher, I think Age of the Empires IV was on to something to help history teachers in their classrooms.
- The campaign stories are good.
- Troops can finally man the walls but can't man the wall towers. Almost there... almost there AOE IV.

That's all I have for the good. Told you, short list.

The bad:
- The worst part of this game in my opinion is the unit AI. It seems units are having a stroke on the battlefield as your entire army attempts to rain hell on one individual at a time instead of dispersing to fight multiple enemies at one time. While some units manage to disperse, a large portion of your force will not, instead focusing on one target somewhere amongst the sea of enemies. While that may be a good thing for archers to do, for infantry that's obviously terrible. It's incredibly agitating watching your horsemen run around in circles as they try to clap one guy in the middle of a battlefield only to get wasted by AI troops in the rear. If you build a battering ram with a medium or large force, the movement the soldiers who can't reach the ram make is similar to the AI trying to get to one target on the battlefield. It almost makes using CTRL A pointless.
- The graphics just look so dam cartoonish! The AOEII models look 100 times better than these in my opinion. I don't understand why model graphics in strategy games start off looking like they want to look authentic and mature and as the franchise dishes out new games the graphics turn to toddler level graphics. While the unit graphics are not as good, I do like some of the building graphics and do like the little added graphics they add to some buildings. Note: Once you hit the Castle the street graphic around buildings starts to look kinda gross. I get the idea, but they could've done better.
- Kyc posted his own review talking about the UI and I have to agree with his comments. Where the hell is the recall button for my civs to take shelter and the get back to work button? Still trying to figure that one out. Where is the auto-explore button for scouts? Can't find that neither. No themes? Why are there no themes???
- There is a lack of campaigns. I'm guessing the entire budget was spent on the documentaries and the pretty cool campaign voice over that makes you feel like you messing around in a history channel documentary.
- If you are going to allow different formations like wedge, line, etc, allow us to select which units we want to place at the front. This is probably more of a quality of life thing than an actual issue but I will place it here because why not.
- Maps feel small. Maybe it's just me. I remember saying that about AOE III though. The maps feel like they get smaller and smaller, especially when you play a 4VS4 skirmish.
- The walls are a lot bulkier than in previous games making them look kinda ugly. Not only are they bulky, but they also go down like paper if a ram hits then a few times. I understand the gate going down fast, but the wall? Those things almost feel like paper when you put a ram against them. What happened to siege weapon upgrades from AOE II? A steel ram hitting a wall and knocking it down makes sense, but a wood ram should take a lot longer. The area damage some siege weapons have on troops is crazy.
- Lastly, the home screen looks sad. I liked the AOE II campaign home screen and the home menu screen when selecting multiplayer, single, etc etc.

... Now, you may think this review is over but so far I only have 35 hours of gameplay. Like Kyc mentioned, the game is good, but it could be better. I'm sure most of these issues will be resolved through patches. Hopefully they are.I do recommend the game though because it is good. They on the right path here... but not nearly there to make a better game than AOE II.

Age of the Empires II: Definitive Edition is a beautiful remaster of the original.

The AoEII series has been around for a very long time. I remember playing this game as a young kid and the game has managed to continue to be one of my favorite games to play.

Since the release of the remaster, new campaigns have been included for those of us who like the single player vs. AI experience. More maps are being released; there is even a CO-OP mode that is making this game insanely fun to play. This is the one game that was great, and instead of considering it finished, the devs continue to add more awesome stuff to it even though this game has been around for a long time. They've managed to make the game go from being great to amazing. Personally, having the ability to enjoy the campaigns with a friend is awesome and one of my favorite new updates to AoE II. If you get bored playing the stories, you can duke it out with others online in established fun game rooms or play normal matches that require the basic rules of the game to be followed such as gathering resources and quick building.

If AoE II isn't part of your game list, you're missing out.

I'm a big fan of the Stronghold series. When I saw Stronghold Warlords coming out, I was extremely excited to play this new game. After playing it for a few hours, I have to admit, I could've waited another few years for the next game.

This game is hardly an upgrade to crusaders. If anything, I'd consider it a downgrade. Why?

Maps are incredibly small. Your build area is small. The little space between you and your enemy is filled with warlords and their little useless castles. If a warlord joins you, their useless castle is just a real terrible AI that YOU have to micro manage with warlord points. You can't design their castles, you can't build on the space, and you can't repair the stuff they do have without warlord points. The warlord AI hardly has any units to defend their castles, so you spend a ton of time using your troops to defend them. This means you spend a ton of time not fighting your enemy, and playing defense. You would think that because of this, you have a massive troop count right? Wrong. Defend your warlords with a max of maybe 200 units. Sometimes a little more. In all honesty, the warlord system is probably the worst aspect of this game in my opinion. You constantly have to tell your warlords what resources they should send you. (They don't actually gather any, they just magically have them), you constantly have to tell them to rebuild their defenses and their little base guards (they don't actually have a barracks, they just spawn them), and they don't do anything without your micromanaging orders IF you have the points. So while you spend points upgrading and giving commands, your enemy is spending points in building diplomatic relations with them. Once they have more diplo points than you with that warlord, the warlord flips almost instantly to a different side. What's worse is that you can't kill them. They endlessly revive, so if you get sick and tired of micromanaging them, letting your enemy take over them gives them a big advantage. Some warlords are more for economic assistance, and the warlords that can attack your enemy attack them with a garbage little wave of units.

The warlord system sucks, and is absolutely a fun killer in my opinion. In some maps, there are a ton of warlords, and holy snap, that is a micromanaging nightmare.

When I heard this game was coming out, I was excited to see what types of new buildings would make the game more complex or interesting. Instead, it's nearly all the same stuff. The homes are about the same as crusaders, just have different looks that give bonus points for how attractive they look. The nicer they look, the more wood expensive. The barracks has a few more units than before, and the barbarian outpost from crusaders is just a fancy building that hires mercs. The big difference about the units besides cosmetics is their little special skills they use during combat, like knocking enemies down. That function is rather pointless though, because your troops can't attack knocked down enemies until they get back up. You just spread them out, making it harder for your peps to get to them and kill them. The road feature makes the castle look nice, but are hardly useful. They don't speed up your civs using the roads or your troops when walking on them. I haven't used the temples. I hardly have any space to build essential buildings. Did I mention an incredibly small unit cap? Why would you reduce number of units?! Why?!

Long story short, it's basically just stronghold crusaders with a new look and a terrible AI that you have to micromanage. I rather just keep playing Crusaders and get my money back.

I remember when I was a young lad and was blessed to have the opportunity to play this game when it was first taking off. I looked forward to getting out of school to spend a few hours in the afternoon playing this game with my friends. Personally, I love this game.

I enjoy the different stages of armors characters can make and utilize as well as the different weapons, shields, staffs, spells, bows, and a ton of other equipment. It felt great going up level by level, going from bronze to rune, and working hard to make the cash for dragon and on.

I enjoy the quests and the stories behind them, the lore, the action, the funny lines the characters say. It's pretty good stuff.

I also greatly enjoy meeting people and making new friends, connecting and gaming together. Having the ability to clan up and face other groups that are trying to establish their own dominance over different servers.

The thing I probably enjoy the most about this game though is the fact that it's still getting updates, new quests, armors, weapons, spells, new lore, and much more, all without changing the basics of what makes this game really good.

Getting that max woodcutting or strength or your desired skill will take a chunk of your time, but you can have a good time while you get there, so the grinding ain't as bad as they say.

Great game. In my book, it gets a 10/10. It's a classic.

I started my campaign on a piece of land that could allow me to build a city like Constantinople. I built a small settlement east of where I planned the real city to be built and as I gathered resources, I began to establish the true capital city. Maintaining my city fed and equipped was easy at first but suddenly, the fancy stone buildings, monuments, and services made the population practically skyrocket. I was caught by surprise and was forced to mass produce farms to try to maintain the city population fed. Before I knew it, any land outside the walls of the city were filled with farmland. Only small areas of woods here and there, but mainly farms. Somehow, even with massive farms my people still seemed to struggle getting the food from the fields to storage even though there was plenty of space so I built fancy roads to the furthest lengths to ease the transportation of the goods. I began to invest in technology to improve the capabilities of my people and our farms but the massive libraries needed to maintain the technology couldn't fit in the capital. Construction outside the main city seemed unpopular and when the peasants forcefully finished the libraries outside the city, nobody bothered going out there to work. As I struggled to stabilize the economy, some lowly bandit attempted to force me to give away goods. Goods which I didn't have! I began to mass produce weapons and armor, but my distinct location placed me far away from iron and coal! I was able to muster a few hundred men at most but hardly equipped for a real war. Luckily, the bandit numbers were small and our forces still managed a victory only because of a good flanking.

I managed to finally provide a sufficient amount of food to maintain the large population but the popularity of the city had stagnated and everyone seemed occupied leaving very few to gather goods. Suddenly, I was back to having problems gathering the goods I needed to feed the town, forcing me to reduce productivity, which meant disregarding other areas of the empire, and before I knew it that lowly darn bandit was back with more men. Once again I gathered my troops thinking they would attack me from the east of my city walls which made me chuckle at how easy the slaughter would be. My troops waited, I obtained a notification the enemy troops were within our border... yet not a single soldier.

I scrambled looking at the eastern border but nothing. "This can't be," I told myself... I continued looking and... a shock and fear struck my heart as I dashed back to the capital to find enemy troops somehow came from the west... which I thought was impossible because there was no land! It was water! How did; ... and I caught a glimpse of a small straight of shallow water that connected to the border of the map. The enemy leader outsmarted me... bringing the bandit army through that tiny shallow walkway on the western side of the city and attacked me from behind.

My troops rushed back to the capital to engage them before they entered the western gates but it was too late. Bandits were attacking everything in sight. The troops were low on morale, the city had been ransacked and we lost a great deal of troops due to the lack of preparation and the insidious strategy of the bandit leader. With many dead, there was few to gather foods, almost nobody to tend to the farms, and less people to distribute to perform these tasks. My economy began to collapse, and my great city fell soon after.

Luckily I escaped... and I plan to return with a better understanding of the mechanics of this game. I will reclaim what is rightfully mine.

I woke up standing naked in the middle of the road in what seemed to be a winter storm. I couldn't remember what happened the night before... maybe some beers were involved or something but I was freezing so I decided to go to what seemed to be an abandoned home and see if I could find some clothing. Oddly enough, the door was left open, I made my way inside and started searching the rooms. As I tried to figure out why the house didn't seem to have any dressers or furniture of the like, I got slapped by a guy wearing a zombie costume. At first, I thought he was messing with me until the second hit really hurt. I felt my health drop and I knew at that very moment, I had to slap this guy back. I won. I set up base in this abandoned building. I mined, I chopped, I scavenged the buildings nearby. It seemed the entire world was empty and only myself and 4 store owners were left in this god forsaken existence. To make things worse, those traders were super rude. I built some traps, lay some mines, and went off to hunt. On day 7, the moon turned red and I found myself being chased by zombies by a factory. All that work for nothing. Days and days of work only to be caught by a wave of never ending running zombies...

I climbed to the roof of the factory, and somehow managed to get up to the highest point. The zombies ravaged the building below me. All I could do was pick them off with the gun i'd found during one of my adventures.

A couple minutes before the night ended, half of the building began to crumble. The zombies had destroyed the foundation and the roof was collapsing from the center of the building. I prayed I'd last the couple minutes more, but the roof under me began to crumble as well. I'd thought the building would kill them as it fell, but I was wrong.

If you are reading this, I survived. Not because I valiantly found a solution, but because a friend found me just in time with a couple of pipe bombs and 7.62's. The zombies chased him instead and ate him as I manged my escape long enough to survive until morning. Phew...

I'd like to share a tale of the great nation of Portugal.

Created a powerful alliance between Portugal, USA, Canada, Mexico, and the UK.

Started to improve the economy and create jobs.

Began to purchase technology and military hardware from allied nations.

The world begins to go into chaos. South Korea begins an invasion of North Korea, Japan declares war on China, Germany invades Poland?! (in the year 2021). France, Italy, Denmark declare war on Germany. Germany annexes Denmark. Ukraine declares war on Poland. Poland ceased to exist. Portugal seeks opportunity and finds it when the nations of Northern Africa begin to enter a chaotic period of war.

Portugal invades Morocco and Algeria with assistance from Canada, Mexico, USA, UK, and Iceland???? Portugal annexes Morocco and Algeria, whilst Germany ceases to exist divided in half between Ukraine and the Netherlands which somehow found its way into the war.

France declares war on Italy and begins to lose, when suddenly Spain joins France in the invasion of Italy, but Italy and Portugal share a Mutual Defense agreement and thus, Portugal declares war on Spain while Italy fights France.

Spain is almost no longer a nation. Portugal prepares for annexation.

With the Italian and British allies fighting in the north of Europe, Portugal aims its sights at expansion across Africa.

All hail, la nacion de Portugal.

Started the game like everyone else; on a quest to help my father finish a sword for someone important.

His dependence on my success leads me to a broke drunk to acquire money he owes my old man to buy him charcoal for a fire he needs to get going to work on this blade. Turns out the broke drunk is almost practically a ninja in hand to hand and after getting my butt kicked for a while, I finally grasp how to fight a little better. Spam a button till I win. It works, he tells me to take something valuable to sell, so I take everything he has to remain employed in any form of business at the time. No hammer, nails, axe, you name it.

I proceed to buy the charcoal, but remember the old man asked for a cold beer on my way home, so I stop by the tavern. My buddies want to trash a German dudes home because he is using his European freedom of speech to talk smack. Buddies want me to throw poo at his house to teach him a lesson. I’m a man, but I don’t like to touch poo, and I just barely survived a fist fight with a drunk, last thing I need is another fist fight so I reject joining in on the quest to obtain glory through poo.

Turns out my girl works at this tavern, gets me a beer, we exchange some ideas of a good time later that day, and I leave. I could've probably gotten a beer too, but clearly I’m not special enough to get a beer also on the house.

Take the stuff to father, he gets after me because he hears my buddies got caught trashing the Germans house, even though I wasn’t there and I was doing all this hard work for him, and he completes the blade with my help.

Turns out he too was a ninja but with a blade and he goes down in a blaze of glory. I’m shook. I run away. Then my story begins to get my revenge.

So, I played a while longer, for several hours.

The scenery is pretty good. There are some parts where I traveled through that left me in awe of how beautiful the world was. Some of the gear was pretty cool and interesting to stack in layers and see how it affects my movement and my battles. Expect real confusing moments that will require you to try several different ways to approach a situation. Can’t buy a horse? Steal one. Can’t fight with a sword? The bow and arrow works ok. Some conversations can be pretty repetitive. For the most part, I been enjoying the game. The saving... the saving is probably a tough one. You gotta buy a potion to save or sleep on a bed. Coin can leave your pocket real quick due to that so play smart. I seen several people give the game negative reviews because of the saving system, but this game is an attempt to be somewhat realistic. Saving kinda kills the need to game smart. There are some pretty terrible bugs, and other issues that don’t entirely affect the gameplay that poison the game, but it’s been pretty fun.