Recent reviews by Xenofang

I didn't care about Pharaoh at all when it first came out, as its setting is not one I am interested in at all. It flopped hard & deservedly so. Dynasties is a drastic improvement over Pharaoh to the point where I genuinely cannot see why anyone would want to play the original version over Dynasties.

That being said, from my time playing it I can't recommend this game. Lets start with the good things about it.

- Custom Campaign Options Menu. Before you click to start your campaign, you can select the custom campaign menu and change so much. I like using mods which reduce my unit upkeep so I can field more armies. With the custom campaign menu, I can do this without needing a mod. Please CA this is great feature, please add this option to all future Total War games.

- Massive Campaign Map & Playable Minor Factions. The campaign map is genuinely massive & really impressive.

- Formations. Formations are pretty good. I like the addition of a formation with advance and fall back options so the units in formation will move forward or backwards, still facing the enemy and staying in formation. This allows a lot more tactical flexibility in battles.

- Family Tree & Dynasty Menu. Another great addition to the game, the family tree is back, you can choose who you want as your faction leader's heir & can seek political or diplomatic marriages. Your leader and his officers now age and die over time. You can adopt other faction's families in to your own & see them in your family tree, which is a nice addition.

- Trade & Resources. I never played Troy so do not know if this is the same as in Troy, but the addition of adding Food, Wood, Stone, Bronze & Gold natural resources as a requirement for construct buildings, recruiting units/Generals and to maintain the upkeep of units is a good addition in my opinion.

I also like how the upkeep requirement increases as your empire & military grows. This means you need to take in to account your domestic infrastructure before planning further expansion and recruiting more armies for a major campaign. Good thing is, you can trade with other factions to gain resources you not have enough of within your empire. These can be one off trades, or repeated trades. I found selling a surplus of a resource I do not need to another nation is a good way to make extra gold.

I also really like how each region within a province has a specific resource bonus, meaning you have a genuine incentive to take that province to benefit your economy. If your short on Bronze, then ether trade for it, or take over the settlement with a Bronze resource mine and secure that resource for yourself. Many wars throughout history have been fought over the acquisition of resources, so this is a really good addition I would like to see in future Total War games.

- Changing General Bodyguard Equipment. Another nice addition is the general's bodyguard changes based on your general's equipment. If your general has heavy armour, a spear and a shield equipped, his bodyguard will use that type of equipment. Want your general's bodyguard to be a unit of heavily armoured chariot archers? Ok, just equip the general with a bow, heavy armour & mount him on a chariot. I would like to see this option in future Total War titles.

- Outposts - Apart from your major and minor settlements within a province, we also have outposts. These are minor structures added to specific points within a settlement's region. These buildings have a passive bonus & a bonus applied to an army which visits the Outpost. The universal bonus is refunding some spent movement points on top of the bonus unique to that outpost type. Like visiting a shrine of Apollo to gain increased ranged damage and reload speed for archers. You can build forts, which have a passive bonus of reducing the upkeep of all units in an army stationed there by 50%. Very good for keeping an army in range to respond to invasions, or keeping them at a choke point.

- Faction, Native and Special Recruitment. Dynasties has three types of recruitment options, 1. faction units which are unit to the faction your playing. 2. Native units who are available in specific area of the map, like recruiting Agean units units native to Greek regions for example. This means, as your empire expands you get a lot of extra units to recruit from which is cool. 3. Special Recruitment is mainly based on the court system. When you secure certain court positions, or become Ruler you will be able to recruit special elites for that Dynasty. These units can be pretty powerful, so worth adding to your armies, but they can be expensive.


- AI The AI is still brain dead. They will blindly charge in a long line at your army, instead of actually using a formation, with reserves. So, apart from army composition, its very predictable to know exactly what the AI will do. They still also charge their generals straight to their deaths... Considering the amount of AI mods in fans have made in multiple Total War games, which drastically improves this, you would think CA would be able to do better by now.

- The Court System Pharaoh & Dynasties added a court system where factions of a certain culture would be grouped under a single "nation", Like the Egyptian Dynasty for the Egyptian factions, the Agean Dynasty for the Greek factions and so on. Problem is, nothing about this feels like you are part of or ruling over a nation with vassals kingdoms. I played Troy, whose King starts as the ruler of the Agean Dynasty. Nothing about this felt like I was ruling over the Agean factions. It just felt like a standard total war game, where I build up my empire and expand as normal. The court system is very dull and utterly pointless. You can get some decent bonuses if you secure a court position, but its really bad compared to the excellent court system from Three Kingdoms, which expands with new offices as the size of your empire grows. If CA wanted to group factions in to a larger nation, then you should feel like being part of a larger nation. If I am one of the smaller factions, I should be actively punished for attacking another faction within this nation unless I can fabricate a reason for war.

- Battle Animations Another bug bear of mine, the battle are boring to watch due to the lack of sync kills. I believe there are sync kills & adding the blood pack helps, but compared to some of the older games with active sync kills per model death I found no enjoyment zooming in to watch the melee. Mods will most likely improve this, but its still an issue in the base game.

- Unmodified Upkeep costs & Lethality The game can be very punishing with the upkeep costs, yes you can amend the unit upkeep with custom campaign option but this does not change the insane upkeep for generals. A single general's upkeep can be the cost of between 3 to 4 units! This is on top of the growing upkeep costs from empire infrastructure and army sizes. A new mechanic added in Dynasties in lethality. This grants units a percentage chance on hit to instantly kill a model, with the lethality rate increasing based on the elite status of a unit, making elites more dangerous. This also makes Chariots more deadly and ranged units are very dangerous. This is especially true for ranged units with a high reload rate, as lethality is calculated based on her hit. I tried it, didn't like it and turned it off in custom campaign options.

Overall Dynasties is a mixed bag, I have enjoyed playing it and listed far more positive than negatives. Some people, especially those who really like the bronze age setting will enjoy this. Those who don't most likely won't. I will keep an eye on the modding scene to see if any cool mods come out over time, but as of right now I have no further interest in playing more.

Update: 22/05/2024: I see most people have removed their negative reviews and are naively think we won. If Sony genuinely removed the requirement, then why are still over 177 countries still blocked! This is Sony's decision, not Steam's. I know this from speaking to other devs who sell their games on Steam. The requirement will come back, quietly in the future. If it wasn't then Sony & Arrowhead would open up sales to those 177 countries again.

Also, I still see no apology or any signs from Arrowhead that the toxic moderators who attacked & banned on mass their own customers who darted speak out against their anti-consumer practices and even accused someone of s*xual assault with no evidence on their company social media account are still representing the company.

Nothing has changed & until it does I will not remove this negative review and will continue to boycott Arrowhead. I am so disappointed with Arrowhead as they made an excellent game.

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Update 05/05/2024: I see Sony has recently made a post back peddling on their plans to force pc gamers in to linking their Steam accounts to PSN just so they can play a game they already bought...

This is a good step forward, however we still have heard nothing from Arrowhead confirming this and as we speak Arrowhead's community managers are still abusing their customers for daring to criticise this anti-consumer behaviour and calling them the usual childish social media insults. One of their community managers on their company account has even accusing a popular steamer of being a r*pist.

This is not the behaviour expected from the public face of a company trying to in good faith rebuild all the good will they flushed down the toilet a few days ago. My review will remain negative until we get an official announcement from Arrowhead, which must include an apology and confirmation of at least disciplinary action against their abusive community managers who are clearly not qualified for such an important and sensitive job.

Let this be a text book example of how a company can create an excellent game, build up a massive fanbase who love them & then utterly destroy all of their hard work & fan good will over their own foolishness.
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Original review

I really enjoyed this game and would have happily recommended it, until Arrowhead Studios no doubt with Sony ordering them to do so decided to force Steam users to link a Playstation Network Account to their Steam account after launch! A thing which was not mentioned on the Steam store page until recently, which was well over a month after I bought the game...

Well done Arrowhead & Sony, you have severely tanked your PC fan base support which may never recover.

As you can tell from my over 660 hours playtime, I was a big fan of Warhammer 3. As a Warhammer game it is pretty fun, made even better by adding in some of the top mods on the workshop. One of my main gripes is actually the overbloated number of Legendary Lords on the map, making early expansion for some factions a massive pain. I wish they would just improve and expand on the game's core mechanics instead of constantly trying to make new factions or new lords all the time. Some of the newer factions are more interesting and more powerful than the older ones. Sadly its become an ocean with the depth of a paddling pool.

I was worried when the Chaos Dwarfs DLC (which was pretty cool by the way, but not worth the asking price compared to content of previous DLC) that the £20 pricing would become normalised if it succeeded and it did. Then what a shock the next DLC, which arguable has less content than previous DLCs is charging WAY more...

The Steam & Total War forums are on fire with outraged fans. CA responds with a tepid but muh costs argument. Well maybe if CA was not needlessly employing over 800 staff, while delivering less than most indies, their costs would not be anywhere near as high. Something I think some people are not aware of, CA even received a grant from the UK government, which was intended for start up companies, but CA got it for some reason. Good to see my mediocre political class are wasting my taxes again...

As it stands I cannot recommend Warhammer 3 to anyone thinking about buying for the first time. Its massively expensive, not well balanced by the developers and the DLC practices are constantly getting more predatory with every release. If they change course and fix the problems listed in this review I will update this.

Update - 05/09/2023. Decided to play WH3 & CA are so desperate to sell this dlc they have it splashed over as the front page of the in game main menu. However, they do this for most dlcs, but they let you swap the front page art to the dlc or original game front page of your choice. I go on today and this ability to change it as been removed! Seriously CA, this is pathetic...

Update - 27/09/2023. Just uninstalled this game for the last time. I am so sick and tired of how this game's AI massively cheats, instead of being competently programmed and working within the same limits a the player. Played a couple campaigns and in my latest one after the new patch, I have a Chaos Dwarf faction to my southern border a faction who have expensive units with 4 full armies of 20 units each supported by only maybe 2 provinces... To put this in to perspective, at the point I am at in my campaign I can only support 1 & a half armies on two provinces.... The AI always cheated, but at least it was in a reasonable way, after this patch It is so blatantly out of control I am done playing a game where the AI is dumb as a brick and is able to compensate for this by massively cheating to provide the illusion of a challenge. I might play again when SFO mod is updated, because unlike CA they can actually balance the game competently. Do better CA.

This game was a mixed bag for me. If you want to know whether this game is worth a buy, then the simple answer is yes. Like Farcry 5 the gunplay is very good, the game graphics wise looks amazing & the post apocalypse theme is done well. Its very good with a friend, but plays just as well alone or using 1 of the 8 companions.

Expeditions
You unlock these early on and will unlock more when you complete on for the first time. Eventhough they are basically just a locate the bag, grab it, get to the evac point before you get overrun with angry bandits, they are fun to do. You can do them multiple times which increased the difficulty and grants greater rewards. I didn't need to, nor did I care to. The locations for each expedition are very different which is good.

Weapons, Vehicles & Enemies
Overall you do get a good variety of weapons, land, air & sea vehicles. The enemy variety is ok to. All are ranked by different tiers from standard, rare, epic and legendary. A lower tier weapon won't to much damage at all to a higher tier enemies. The earlier tier weapons are pretty bad too not just with damage but also reload speed, so its best to focus on upgrading them asap. When you get to the epic and above weapons the combat really starts to get fun. Once you get to legendary weapons you can also upgrade the damage of any weapon you want. So if you spend way to much time playing, grinding and upgrading you can get very overpowered, lol. Personally I do not like the tier system and preferred Farcry 5's system way better. I did really like how most of the weapons of all tiers look like they had been scraped together with bolts and duct tape, which fits the theme of the game well. My personal favourite was the lever action shotgun that has a kitchen knife strapped on the end as a makeshift bayonet, I had so much fun bayonetting bandits.

Companions
Each companion is fairly unique in fighting style, personality and the vehicle they can arrive in when you summon them. You even get 2 beast companions who are fun to use. I do appreciate the ability for your dog to ride in the passenger seat in this game :P You can command them exactly like in FC5 & as they ket kills they unlock new abilities which make them stronger and better in combat.

Story (No spoilers)
Here is where things go down hill. The game begins strong with you being the security Captain of a group coming to the aide of another group of survivors in Hope County who have been terrorised by a very strong gang of band of bandits called the Highwaymen. You are there to help rebuild, fight the bandits and free the locals. Problem is the main villains, the twins are so cringe and dull it made me wanna stop playing every time I had to deal with them and the stupid situations the game forces you in to with them... The amount of times I was shouting at the screen "FFS just kill them already". The voice actresses did a good job, but the material they were given was dreadful, the game even at times wants you to sympathise with them, which just made me roll my eyes. However, the New Eden faction you encounter early on are interesting. They are the remnants of the cult you fought in FC5 and are very much a religious, back to nature, no technology culture. But not crazy violent like in the first game. There are also some pretty cool mystical stuff you encounter as you progress, I won't say anymore as that would lead to spoilers. Safe to say, I really liked the story parts involving New Eden.

I have been playing Code Vein for a decent amount of time and its basically Dark Souls 2 anime vampire edition. The mechanics are very similar to Dark Souls 2, the good and the bad. However there are some cool differences, like the ability to swap Blood Codes (classes) when ever you like out of combat & the ability to carry over skills from one class to another when you master them. This gives you many ways to customise how you play. For example I mastered the Ranger blood code's teleport power and use it on my Caster blood code to let teleport behind enemies in my face and back stabbing them to drain Ichor (mana) back.

The combo skills are very flashy and powerful when timed correctly, the drain power which is different depending on your blood veil (armor/cloak) look amazing, deals a decent amount of damage and is a good way of regaining Ichor. My favourite drain so far is the bladed tail. Its so cool & reminds me of Tokyo Ghoul.

One of the star features of this game has to be the jaw dropping level of customization for your character. I have literally created Dark Ichigo from Bleach & Kaneki Ken from Tokyo Ghoul. The customization options are that in depth. There are the classic anime tropes like little boob, big boob women, but I don't care about that no matter how much some hack "games journalists" complain about it. Its an anime game to its core, what do you expect. The Japanese don't give a sh*t about western wokeness & good on them for it. The devs clearly made a game they are passionate about and you can tell. A lot of western studios should pay attention, looking at you EA & Activision-Blizzard.

I am finding the game really enjoyable, but the bad things that personally irritated me about Dark Souls 2 are in this game too. The camera can be a pain in tight spaces and corners, some animations can be clunky & co op system is pretty restrictive just like Dark Souls compared to other games, like Neoh & Remnant: From the Ashes (my fave). Overall its a fun and challenging game with many options on how to play.You can play alone, with an NPC companion who are actually competent in a fight and point out some useful information, like enemies above you or pit falls. You can also invite a player to co op with you alongside the NPC companion to form a squad of 3. It does reduce the challenge, but its up to you how you prefer to play. So far the game has never forced me to play a certain way.

Code Vein is the first game I pre-ordered in years, after I saw raw game play footage from Youtubers a week before its release. Clearly they had full confidence in their product & I can say I do too. I have no problem recommending this game.

I have just finished the game and can honestly say Ori and the Blind Forest is an amazing game. I am not a fan of platforming games. Rpg & rts are my thing, but after seeing some gameplay footage of this game I had to try it out for myself.

The two things which made me want to trying this game is the absolutely beautiful artstyle & music. The animation quality of this £14.99 game puts many triple A developers to shame. For example, simple things like when you walk to the edge of a wall you can climb or jump up, Ori will put her hands on it and look up as if to prepair. Also as I jumped through some vines she put her arm out to touch them as she went by. Simple things like this make such a difference and makes the world you are in feel alive.

Exploration is encouraged and rewarded, if you dont find some of those hidden places I doubt you will max out the skill tree has some nice upgrades which are make a difference to how you play. For example you can unlock underwater breathing or upgraded vision, which allows you to see hidden rooms.

The save system in this game is pretty good. There are static save area (shrines), but you can use your mana to create a save point, which also gives you acess to the upgrade tree. You will need to learn when best to create one, or you may find yourself loading up ages away from where you died.

You will unlock many new powers as the game progresses and the puzzles leading to the end of an area will give you ample practice to perfect your use of that power, before you face the *boss* moments where you need to use all you have learned to escape. Each new area offers new challanges & encourages you to think. Every time I died, I never felt like the game was screwing me over as it reacts well to the input you give. I played on a gamepad, so dont know what keyboard and mouse is like.

The world itself is open and you can freely travel back to any place you have been so you can unlock new areas or secrets once you have the right powers.

And finaly the story is really heart warming and draws you in. It is a really good story about love, despairation and revenge. I even felt sympaty for the main enemy, anyone who has already played will know what part I am referring to.

On a whole Ori and the Blind Forest is a ray of light in the massive pile of bug filled, micro-transation loaded or dlc milking releases which have plagued us this year. You can see the developers have put their heart and soul in to making this game & I would say this is a game everyone should experience atleast once in their life.

I have been playing the game now for about 5 hours & I have to say I am really enjoying it. After playing both Dark Souls 1 & 2 this game is definately more forgiving and does not have the depth of the souls series with combat, exploration or magic types, but the combat is fun, responsive, a good challenge (for me so far) & lit ook really cool (the artstyle reminds me of Warhammer Fantasy & Darksiders.) I did have a few crashes on launch, but they put a temp fix in while working on a patch & I havent had anoher crash after playing for 3 hours straight. So far I would say it is worth picking up, I will update as I get further in to it.

I have completed the main story and have 92% done, now what do I have to say about Shadows of Mordor? Well this game is one of the best I have played all year.

Combat
The combat feels great and really responsive, combos flow in to each other and change depending on your angle to your enemy. As get stronger the and more powers are unlocked it becomes much more entertaining, I love the executions. :) That being said you are not an invincable god, near the end of the game you can take on a lot more orcs at once but it is still not a good idea to aggro tons & in strongholds you can have 50-60+ attacking you at once! As you progress through the main story missions other types or Uruks will start to appear like the Berzerkers who if you do not counter or stun before attacking will know you on your backside.

Unlike Assassin's Creed (I am going on my experience from the first game up to Brotherhood, not play the others.) it actually has a working steal mechanic, assassinating orcs can be just as challanging and fun as running in to a crowd and hacking them apart. You can use you wraith powers to attract Uruks to your position so you can ambush them, or using your bos distract a few away from your target isolating him before striking from the shadows before anyone even see you were there.

Mounts
Mounts are a thing in this game when you unlock it you can ride Caragors (imagine a cat version or a Warg), they are not just for transportation you can fire your bow and use your sword to kill or knockdown your enemy. The most amusing this is when to get the Caragor to bite a downed enemy, it will proceed to maul the helpless begger which sounds so funny & it heals your mount. But my fave is the Groug, imagine a Rancor crossbred with a Cave Troll on sterioids then you can imagine what this monster is like. Near the start avoid at all costs, later you can mount these thing and wreak havoc.

Nemesis System
But as with most open world games this stuff can loose it's charm as time goes by, which is where the Nemesis system comes in. This is really cool, there are many types of Uruk Captains in Mordor and then the Warchiefs. As you fight your way through this game you will encounter alot of them, each with their own personallity & goals. You can come across one or even four at a time just by wandering around, but the best thing to do is gather intel on your target from interrogating Uruks and other means, this will reveal their strengths and weaknesses. I had one who was afraid of Caragors, but immune to pretty much all kinds of damage (apart from ranged immunity you can hit them with stealth or combat attacks but they will counter them.) I mounted a beast rode in to his camp, he saw it & ran like a little girl and them my pet proceeded to eat him, good times.

I have rambled on for a bit now, but seriously if you enjoyed the assassin's Creed or Arkham games or even like a good open world action game, pick this up I can promise you wont regret it.

I really loved the first Bioshock games from start to finish & loved playing this one too up until the point were I am getting constant crashes, the first of which was 10 minutes in to the game. I have only played for three hours but I love some of the improvements to the combat & really want to see the rest of the story....but the pc version is not worth playing from what I have experienced no doubt partly due to the dreadful games for windows live system which I am happy is soon to be dead and buried where it belongs. This game now uses Steamworks but there are still some stupid bugs like the sound not working from time to time, the vending machines are dead silent instead of the querky comments they say when you use them, the boring hacking system compaired to the first which was challenging, but the crashes is what does it for me, I really want to play this game but this game was released in early 2010 and still has these bugs and crashes which clearly shows a p**s poor pc port. I will enjoy this game but on console instead which is hard to say for a person who is primarily a pc gamer. This game is really cool, but do not touch the PC version seriously it is a waste of money.

Just finished the game & it was an amazing experience and here are the reasons why.

Unlike most first person shooters Bioshock adds a great deal of variety to combat in not only weapon types but in the ammo types aswell. Each weapon has three different types of ammo, some are elemental while others have some nice little tricks to them like the crosbow's trap ammo, turning a bolt in to an electrified tripwire. The plasmids which are technically magic are also alot of fun to use, some set people on fire while other can cause your enemies to start fighting each other making combat a blast.

Hacking is not only worth your time doing but is also a challenge most of the time. Trust me hacking a medical turminal then watching an injured splicer run over to it to relieve the pain of 500 bee stings only to be sprayed in the face by poison is priceless.

Speaking of the splicers (psycotic plasmid junkies) they are not to be underestimates expecially in a group, they can easily kill you or atleast make you run low on medpacks if you are not careful but the best thing about them is the random dialogue from one singing passages from the bible & begging for forgivness to another having an aguement with a security camera who he acuses of cheating on him. The iconic Big Daddies, never take on one unless you are prepaired these hulking metal mostrosities can be a pain to take down and hit like a truck in the face.

And finally the story and Rapture itself is top notch, the dark creepy feel of a city destroyed by its own greed & cruelty is really cool. This game acually makes you want to explore every square inch to find out what is behind the next door. For those like me who love to find out more story and lore in a game there are plenty of recordings from many denizens of Rapture which provide a nice amount of back story for the events that led to the fall and the people of the city.

All in all well worth your time.