Recent reviews by Muah Chee

Pretty good but probably best to wait for a few mods to come out and then play it. Excellent when listening to audiobooks or podcasts. It's my first Farming Simulator so I had no prior expectations on the quality or gameplay as I had no comparison. The core gameplay of the typical large mechanised monocrop farms is the main thing for the game, greenhouses, hydroponics, and no-till/minimum till styles of farming are not represented well. Get to experience the drudgery of farming but with actual profit (in-game), very cool.

Crack Cocaine: The MMORPG
It's just an extremely good MMORPG that keeps getting better, sort of. The progression in-game makes your brain release the feel good chemicals and you can customise your character well to make your brain release even more feel good chemicals. Do not play this game if you lack self-discipline IRL because it's an immense time sink. Inventory management is kind of bad though.

Great graphics, art style and one of the smoothest gameplay for a Total War game at launch.

The Chinese voice overs (enable it in menu) are really good but the battle taunts get repetitive after 1 hour and you'll likely want to disable that function.

For the faction choices, there are quite a few factions to choose from. I think you would like it more if you know stuff about the Three Kingdoms period because you can then play as your favourite characters. For their unique units, buildings and abilities, there are sufficient differences for some characters. The Yellow Turbans have a different technology system and unit roster as compared to the rest.

For the campaign map, it is quite big and with varied sceneries to represent the different landscape China has to offer. Though the building system may be somewhat limited due to a rather limited roster and a few "must have" buildings, it still works. There's food, trade, population, public order, revolts etc.

The main plus point in the campaign would be diplomacy. It has improved a lot as compared to previous titles, as there are more options to choose from and diplomatic alliances or agreements matter more in this game. The spy system though sometimes useful, can be neglected. Still, there should be changes to better include UI and tooltips regarding administrators, the family tree and recruitment.

For battles, the maps are an upgrade as compared to previous games based on looks. Towers and trebuchets are potent in this game. The tactics used are about the same as other Total War games but in Romance mode, the duels look good and the generals are essentially tanks. A limited unit roster does make gameplay slighty more repetitive sometimes but it's Total War.

Sieges can be quite similar though. Most often it is trebuchet for towers/walls -> archers for towers/units) -> duel to decrease morale (if you win) -> charge and repeat
Granted there are variations of walled town sieges and resource sieges, they roughly play out about the same. Sometimes if you outnumber the AI in artilery they would charge out in resource battles which makes it easier since they bottleneck at the entrances and with flaming shot for trebuchets it's over.
It's quite fun for the first 100+ times maybe, after that no so. Perhaps more options to use while defending or attacking would help (hot oil down the walls, booby traps, tunneling under walls)

There's a lack of Naval Combat which is a bit sad but then again, it is difficult to put it into this game. Perhaps there can be DLCs which has scenarios that allow naval combat to be implemented (Korea stuff) or there can even be focused maps that make the rivers larger and more important than it is now.

As for character portraits, let's just use mods because other than the few unique characters they're all about the same and it is hard to have as much fun as when you have had the unique characters. Probably an expansion would be put out sometime later.

Overall, if you like China and Chinese history this is a very good game. I bought it at launch and felt that I have enjoyed it enough to warrant the purchase, I think it's one of the more polished and smooth Total War games. But I'm still kind of salty about have to pay for blood in this game though... The title is literally "Total War"

Shooting is similar to Verdun, for an early access its not bad. The maps are big and it can get quite chaotic. Shooting is like verdun but there is a real lack of different weapons. There are currently no scoped rifles, you get revolver,pistol,melee and bolt action rifle. The map mode is different to Verdun as in you need to capture many points and try flanking the enemy, its more dynamic now. But the voice chat is not to squad to team, it is to all. So its realy noisy sometimes when you get kids whining about somethings. Overall not bad and hopefully more maps, guns, and features will be added in the future. Also, if you're an player in Asia like me, have fun with 200+ ping minimum because the asian and australian servers are basically graveyards.

Extremely good game with great depth if you're very rich to purchase all the DLCs. I reccomend not to purchase it till a massive sale or humble bundle discount, it is really not worth it after the recent price hike. Though it may be a little pricey to purchase DLCs to add a few buttons to press, it adds fun. Basically, this sandbox game would allow you to do many cool things, it satisfies a particular craving for grand strat games. The learning curve is quite steep and I'd reccomend watching some videos or some guides about the game. I think that the game community is quite welcoming and getting this can allow you to learn some history and geography pretty well. This game can teach, and is fun and frustrating at times. If you like thinking about ethnic cleansing and debating the virtues of convertion of religion vs accepting other faiths, painting maps, being patriotic about your country and conquering stuff with it, then get this game.

Fly your way to the top.