Recent reviews by topoftheyear

Perhaps come back after awhile...

I waited to finish a match before writing this. Played 1000+ hours of civ 5 and 6 combined. Long story short, lowest quality civ release I've played, and for $70 is just downright disrespectful.

Short story long: the gameplay changes are interesting and numerous, welcome in many cases. Things that could be considered overly-finicky nonsense in 5 or 6 has been stripped out, streamlining many mechanics to their fundamentals while allowing the same level of control for some of them. It definitely feels overly simple at points, though.

The UI is probably the biggest issue: it lacks any kind of style or substance of past titles and affects game readability, which is the most important thing in any game like this as you need game info communicated to you clearly to make good decisions. Elements feel homeless, largely disjointed, and overly spread apart, despite having dedicated space, like the leader buttons, research and civic tree buttons, and the end turn and turn notifications. Simultaneously, the elements that are contained in boxes lack any style or gravitas to give them weight or importance. The journal is raw text over the map, no background, and is completely unreadable unless the background is ocean or undiscovered map. Tile yields on the map have to be turned on each session. The resource and advisor icons feel stolen from elsewhere for how much they vary in quality. So little information gets conveyed yet what is shown is indistinguishable from anything else. I never believed that UI could ruin a game experience before and I thought the other reviews were exaggerating how bad it was but they're completely correct. I feel blind while playing because of it.

Related, readability issues aren't limited to the UI. The map gets busy fast. In at least the modern age, I can't tell if a tile is occupied by an enemy unit, even with a marker above their heads, because their models blend into the cities and landscape. If you get attacked between turns you get a stacked notification and that's it, the camera isn't moved to show it anymore by default. You'll have to manually cycle through the notifications to see who was hit, where, and how much damage was taken, how much damage was done in turn, and what the situation looks like there anymore. Turning on tile yields to see what you actually get from anything only makes this issue worse.

The AI is making the same old mistakes as always but there are fewer ways to punish them. People will settle towns wherever they want, including around your capital, then get mad at you if you settle near them. Their punishment is a small, temporary hit to their influence and they'll dislike you more. If you take those towns in war, razing them will land you with a permanent happiness and damage debuff against everyone in war, but keeping the unwanted town could land you over the settlement limit and you get a happiness debuff until you correct. Everyone will spy on you at all times. If they get caught, their punishment is a small, temporary hit to their influence, getting everything they would have gotten anyway, and they'll dislike you more. Your recourse, counter spying, can only be done against one person at a time. People will declare war on you, lose horribly, then still insist on keeping cities they've lost. People will settle on your borders then get mad at you for sharing borders. People will dislike you enough for things they did that they'll declare war on you over it. Then they'll hate you because they declared war on you. People will do whatever they want, face no punishment, and your only possible responses will see you punished instead. It feels like being back in public school.

The game operating in 3 distinct eras doesn't land all that well. Everyone is forced between them simultaneously, so in every aspect people can't ever fall that far behind, but no one can get ahead either. It grants each era an impermanence while still stressing that your performance now will matter later. Build buildings now but they won't work later but they'll be kept around automatically because they'll kinda work but they won't tell you how much. Make friends and alliances because of the benefits but the relationships are functionally reverted to scratch each era so why bother. I was friendly with 4 of the 5 AIs only for them to turn on me and declare simultaneous wars because 125 points of good relationships means nothing in the face of a single -252 Opposed Ideologies metric.

The performance is worth noting, too. My PC is going on 9 years old, still runs the game at 60 fps with some acceptable stuttering. What gets me is the performance changes each time I launch the game. Sometimes it'll be 20 fps, sometimes it'll be 60 fps, with no change in settings whatsoever. No DLSS as of writing, but there is XeSS and that's pretty good too.

If it sounds like I hate the game, I don't, I'm just disappointed and expected better, especially for the price tag. I just wrote so much because I'm venting and no sane person should read all of this. I'll probably play more because I'm stupid.

It's mini golf.

Yeah...

Originally negative over the Epic account fiasco. It's no longer needed, but the Epic online services are a downgrade over 4.1 or 5 making co-op quite a bit more frustrating. Friendly fire has always been a feature but when EOS struggles to keep player positions synced, you're way more likely to get into accidents you won't find funny. The game is still good, I just have my gripes.

Inventive, unique, rewarding, disturbing, uncompromising, and constantly surprising. All the hallmarks of a good metroidvania and more.

Considering the developers currently have 3 early access titles in development simultaneously, and their most recent release Palworld has most of the features people expected of Craftopia, I have no confidence this title will ever reach it's promised potential, especially when Palworld is one of the biggest games ever on Steam. Just buy that instead.

It's extremely over dramatic to say the game is bad but it's no Morrowind. There are issues. There's some extremely poor but minor or avoidable design decisions in the gameplay for example. The loading screens are the source of most of the game's problems and people's issues, ultimately discouraging exploration making the game feel smaller and less interesting than it is. Regardless, the game is immersive with some good and interesting quests and that's more than enough to carry the experience.

This game makes me feel smart.

An action-adventure game that remembered the adventure part. Main game is excellent with the thrill of discovery around every corner. Only complaint is the extra secrets are overly esoteric and don't add much.